vCloud Air clients and servers communicate over HTTPS, exchanging XML or JSON representations of vCloud API objects for the Compute Service. This simplified example of a RESTful workflow includes logging in to Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand and requesting service details from the Service Controller.

Using the plan and instance data returned from the Service Controller, you can create a vCloud session to obtain the list of virtual data centers for a Compute Service. For the steps to create a vCloud session to access the vCloud Compute Service, see the Access the vCloud API Through the vCloud Compute Service in vCloud Air in vCloud Air Compute Service Programming Guide.

These tasks assume that you have registered for Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand and have received your user account information.

For information about signing up for Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand, see Create Your Account in vCloud Air – Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand Getting Started.

This guide documents how to use the vCloud Air Platform APIs to retrieve information about the Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand plans and for customers to retrieve information about their instances.

A user in vCloud Air can access the vCloud API through the vCloud Compute Service. The vCloud Compute Service is the service that exposes the compute, networking, and storage functionality that is available to customers of Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand.