Installing the VDDK Package

The VDDK is packaged as a compressed archive for Windows 64-bit and for Linux 64-bit. The VDDK packages include the following components:

■	Header files vixDiskLib.h and vm_basic_types.h in the include directory.

■	Function library vixDiskLib.lib (Windows) or libvixDiskLib.so (Linux) in the lib directory.

■	HTML reference documentation in the doc directory and sample program in doc/samples.

Caution In the VDDK 5.5 release, VMware has discontinued the Windows installer and 32-bit executables for Windows and Linux. The VDDK is delivered as a ZIP archive for 64-bit systems only.

To install the package on Windows

1	On the Download page, choose the .zip file for Windows and download it to your development system.

2	Place the .zip file in a folder under Program Files – you can choose the name – and unpack it:

cd C:\Program Files\VMware\VDDK550

unzip VMware-vix-disklib-*.zip

3	Go to the bin subfolder, locate the vstor2install.bat script, and double-click to run it. The batch script should be run in place so that the current directory for execution is the bin subfolder. By running it, you implicitly accept the VMware license terms.

4	Edit the Windows registry with regedit and check for the following key. If this key exists from a previous VDDK install, right-click to delete it. Add a registry entry with the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VMware, Inc.\VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit

For convenience you might want to edit the Windows Path environment to include the VDDK installation folder, C:\Program Files\VMware\VDDK550\bin in the example above.

To Install the package on Linux

1	On the Download page, choose the binary tar.gz for 64-bit Linux.

2	Unpack the archive with tar to create the vmware-vix-disklib-distrib subdirectory.

tar xvzf VMware-vix-disklib-*.tar.gz

3	Change to the newly created directory to see its subdirectories:

$ cd vmware-vix-disklib-distrib; ls

bin64 doc FILES include lib32 lib64

The bin64 subdirectory contains a reporting program and virtual disk manager. License terms are in the doc/EULA file. The sample program is under doc/samples. Header files in the include subdirectory are for compiling your VDDK applications. Normally the lib64 components are installed under /usr/lib, /usr/lib/vmware-vix-disklib/lib64 for instance.

4	Install components as needed. You might want to edit your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment to include the library installation path. Alternatively, you can add the library location to the list in /etc/ld.so.conf and run ldconfig as the superuser.

Repackaging VDDK Libraries

After you develop an application based on VDDK, you might need the VDDK binaries to run your application.

As described in Redistributing VDDK Components, partners can sign a license agreement to redistribute VDDK binaries that support VADP applications.

To enable VDDK binaries on Windows virtual machines without VDDK installed

1

Install the Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) redistributable, possibly as a merge module. The latest MSVC runtime works as side-by-side component, so manually copying it might not work on Vista. See details on the Microsoft Web site for the redistributable package, x86 processors or x64 processors. Side-by-side is also explained on the Microsoft Web site.

2	Install VMware executables and DLLs from the \bin and \lib folders of the installed VDDK, and the vstor2-mntapi10.sys driver into the Windows\system\drivers folder or equivalent.

3	Create and install your application, compiled in a manner similar to the vixDiskLibSample.exe code, discussed in Virtual Disk API Sample Code.

How to Find VADP Components

ESXi hosts and vCenter Server similarly implement managed objects that support inventory traversal and task requests. Before you write VADP software in Java, you need to download the vSphere Web Services SDK. You can find documentation and ZIP file for download on the VMware Web site.