VirtualMachine Management Objects and Methods

You create a virtual machine by calling Folder.CreateVM_Task, and configure the virtual machine by using properties and methods of the VirtualMachine managed object. Most of the properties point to data objects that the methods use as input. Figure 1 shows some of the properties and methods.

Client applications commonly access and manipulate the following virtual machine related objects:

• VirtualMachine – Managed object used for most virtual machine manipulation. Includes methods that create templates, clones, or snapshots of a virtual machine, perform power operations and guest OS management, and install VMware Tools.
• VirtualMachineConfigInfo – Data object which allows you to retrieve configuration-specific information from a virtual machine.
• VirtualMachineCloneSpec – Data object which allows you to specify virtual machine properties for a clone operation. Argument to VirtualMachine.CloneVM_Task.