Inspecting Depot Contents

You can use the vSphere Automation APIs to inspect the contents of the already synchronized and imported depots. You can list the available base images, add-ons, and components, or retrieve some detailed information about a specific software update.

To retrieve a list of the base images available on a vCenter Server instance, call the list(filter_spec) method of the com.vmware.esx.settings.depot_content.BaseImages interface. To narrow the list of returned base images and retrieve only items matching to specific criteria, you must pass a com.vmware.esx.settings.depot_content.BaseImagesTypes.FilterSpec instance as an argument to the list method. Use the retrieved list to get some information about each base image, including their display name and version, release date, and their category. You can also get some detailed information about a single base image by using the get(version) method of the com.vmware.esx.settings.depot_content.base_images.Versions interface. The information includes a list of the components present in this base image.

To retrieve a list of all currently available add-ons in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager depot, call the list(filter_spec) method of the com.vmware.esx.settings.depot_content.AddOns interface and pass null as an argument. You can filter the available add-ons by using some specific criteria such as the add-on vendor, name, versions, or minimum version. You can retrieve some detailed information about a single add-on version, by calling the get(name,version) method of the com.vmware.esx.settings.depot_content.add_ons.Versions interface. The information includes the list of components part of the add-on, and the list of components that were removed by this add-on version.

To retrieve a list of all components currently available in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager depot, you can call the list(filter_spec) method of the com.vmware.esx.settings.depot_content.Components interface and pass null as an argument. To retrieve a list of components that matches some specific criteria, define your preferences with a com.vmware.esx.settings.depot_content.ComponentsTypes.FilterSpec instance and pass it as an argument to the list method. Use the retrieved list to get some information regarding each component.