VMware vCloud Suite SDK for Python 6.0 Release Notes

Released 12 MAR 2015

 

This document contains the following information:

Overview

This SDK provides programmatic access to new features introduced in vSphere 6.0 and existing features that did not have a public API prior to the vSphere 6.0 release. Access to existing features is exposed through the vSphere Web Services API. The vCloud Suite SDK for Python also contains samples that demonstrate how the libraries work with other vSphere APIs.

The version 6.0 SDK supports services exposing access to the following capabilities:

  • Service discovery (Lookup Service)
  • Authentication (Single Sign-On)
  • Session management
  • Tagging
  • Content Library

Note:  Single Sign-On authentication is available through the VMware vCenter Single Sign-On API. Service discovery is available through the Lookup Service API.

Distribution Kit

When you extract the contents of the vCloud Suite SDK for Python distribution kit, the SDK files are placed in the VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Python-6.0.0 directory:

    VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Python-6.0.0/
        client/
        docs/
        provider/
        open_source_license.txt
        SDK-EULA.txt
        vCloud-Suite-SDK-Python-README.html

The provider directory contains a Python toolkit which can be used to generate client-side Python bindings for third-party providers. Third-party provider development is supported only by the vCloud Suite SDK for Java. However, you can use this toolkit to create compatible bindings for use in a Python client.

Known Issues

  • Internal Server Error if Tagging Description Field is Empty

    The Tag Category Description field is optional in the vSphere Web Services API, but it is mandatory in the vCloud Suite SDK. Therefore, if the description field is empty, the vCloud Suite SDK can return an internal server error that states, "the ‘description’ field of the Category model is empty".

    Workaround:

    When creating tags, do not leave the description field empty. If you do not have any description, you may add a whitespace character (i.e. space).

  • Unauthenticated exception following long-running operation

    After an API client completes a long-running operation, such as an upload to the content library, the next operation might fail with an "Unauthenticated exception" message. This happens if the long running operation did not complete within the lifetime of the authentication session.

    Workarounds:

    • Keep the session alive by issuing short operations on another thread until the long running operation completes.
    • Increase the session length using the VMware vSphere Web Client. Select Administration > System Configuration > Services > vAPI Endpoint > Manage > General, and increase the value for the Maximum session idle time.

  • Validation of server certificates. The samples in the vCloud Suite SDK for Python do not perform server certificate validation for all endpoints. You can add certificate validation to a client by using third-party security libraries. The following libraries are suggested for communication with common service endpoints:

    • To communicate with the Lookup Service, the SDK samples are written to use the suds module. To add certificate validation, substitute the suds_requests module, which integrates SOAP capabilities with the Python requests module.
    • To communicate with the vCenter Single Sign-On Service, the SDK contains the file client/samples/src/com/vmware/vcloud/suite/sample/common/sso.py, which uses the httplib module. To add certificate validation, modify the sso.py module to use the requests module.
    • To communicate with vCenter Server, the SDK samples use the open-source pyvmomi module, which does not yet implement certificate validation. For more information, see Issue #13 in the pyvmomi discussion forum at github.com..

    To communicate with the vCloud Suite endpoint, the SDK samples already use the requests module, which does certificate validation by default.