Glossary

A

appliance

See virtual appliance.

C

CIM (Common Information Model)

A set of object-oriented schemas defined by the DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force), that is not bound to any particular implementation. CIM defines how managed elements in a networked environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships that multiple users can view, share, and control.

CIMON (CIM Object Manager)

A component that stores class definitions and populates requests for CIM operations with information returned from specific data providers. See also CIM (Common Information Model).

H

hash

One or more key-value pairs that define attributes and their values.

I

inventory

The collection of all managed entities on the server, that is, of all instances of HostSystem, Datacenter, VirtualMachine, ResourcePool, ComputeResource, ClusterComputeResource, and Folder.

M

managed entity

One of the managed object types that extends the ManagedEntity managed object.

The ManagedEntity managed object type is an abstract class that defines the base properties and methods for vSphere objects, the same kinds of manageable components found in a physical IT infrastructure, such as datacenters and hosts.

managed object

A server-side type that encapsulates properties and operations available on the server. Different managed objects offer different services (operations, methods). From the highest level, the various managed object types on the server define common administrative and management services one would expect to use in a typical datacenter, services such as managing performance (PerformanceManager), finding entities that exist in the inventory (SearchIndex), disseminating and controlling licenses (LicenseManager), and configuring alarms to respond to certain events (AlarmManager).

managed object reference

A type of data object that enables distributed computing for the vSphere environment. A managed object reference identifies a specific managed object on the server, and encapsulates the state and methods of server-side objects, making them available to client applications. Clients run methods (operations) on the server by passing the appropriate managed object reference (mo_ref) to the server, in the method invocation.

MOB (Managed Object Browser)

A Web-based application hosted on all VMware ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server systems. The MOB lets you explore the objects on the system and obtain information about each object’s properties and methods.

V

vSphere API

A set of Web services, hosted on ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server systems, that provides interfaces to vSphere components such as hosts, virtual machines, and datacenters and operations on these components.

view

A client-side Perl object that the vSphere SDK for Perl has populated with the state of one or more server-side managed objects. Client applications and scripts work with view objects rather than with the managed entities that exist on the server. To create a view, call the appropriate vSphere SDK for Perl subroutine (Vim::get_view, Vim::get_views, and so on) with the managed object reference for the entity of interest.

virtual appliance

A virtual machine that is prepackaged with an operating system and a set of applications.

virtualization

Separation of a resource- or service-request from the underlying physical delivery of that service. Virtualization provides an abstraction layer between computing resources, physical storage, networking hardware and the applications that use these resources. Virtualization can greatly enhance the computing environment, optimizing the use of available physical components. For example, virtual memory enables computer software to use more memory than is physically installed, via the background swapping of data to disk storage. Virtualization techniques can be applied to all layers of an IT infrastructure such as networks, storage, laptop or server hardware, operating systems, and applications.

vSphere Web Services SDK

The package of components (WSDL, sample code, and other artifacts) required for developing Java, C#, or other Web-services-enabled client applications that invoke operations on the Web-services-based vSphere API.