Connect the Extension to vCenter Server

You must provide information about the vCenter Server instance to which you connect an extension. Set the details of the connection to vCenter Server in the client-side stub of the extension.

Note:

If you deploy your extension using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), you can integrate it with the vCenter Extension vService. The vCenter Extension vService automates the process of registering extension with vCenter Server, so you do not need to provide any connection parameters. See Integrating an Extension with the vCenter Extension vService.

To connect an extension to vCenter Server, provide the following information to the client-side stub of the connection.

A username and password for a vCenter Server administrator account, if you do not use the vCenter Extension vService
The extension key for the extension
A reference to the SessionManager instance in the vCenter Server

You can define the connection to vCenter Server in the MyVimConnection class.

The MyManager class can perform the following functions.

Implement the MyVimConnection class to establish the connection to vCenter Server when the My Solution starts.
Uses the Spring framework to obtain the connection information from the mysolution.properties file that you configure when you set up My Solution.
Passes the connection property values to MyVimConnection.

Prerequisites

Download the vSphere ESX Agent Manager SDK.

Procedure

Create an instance of the ManagedObjectReference data object to define the connection to the extension.
The MyVimConnection class creates a ManagedObjectReference object of type ServiceInstance, named _siRef.
```
  public MyVimConnection(String host, int port) {
   [...]
   _siRef = new ManagedObjectReference();
   _siRef.setType("ServiceInstance");
   _siRef.setValue("ServiceInstance"); 
  }
```
Define methods to get and set the vCenter Server host, ports, username, password, connection timeout, and session cookie.
The MyVimConnection constructor defines methods to obtain the host, ports, username, password, connection timeout, and session cookie from the information that you set in the mysolution.properties file.

Connect to vCenter Server by obtaining the SessionManager managed object for the vCenter Server.

MyVimConnection.java defines a method named connect(). The connect() method defines a standard connection to vCenter Server that uses WSDL. The following segment shows the calls to the SessionManager.login() and SessionManager.loginExtensionByCertificate() methods that establish the connection to vCenter Server. The _stub variable is an instance of VimPortType, _sc is a ServiceContent object, and _siRef is the ManagedObjectReference object of type ServiceInstance.

  private synchronized void connect() {
    [...]
    try {
        [...]
        VimService locator = new VimService(wsdlURL, new QName("urn:vim25Service",
                                                               "VimService"));

        _stub = locator.getVimPort();
        [...]

        _sc = _stub.retrieveServiceContent(_siRef);

        ManagedObjectReference sessionManager = _sc.getSessionManager();

        if (_extensionKey == null) {
          _stub.login(sessionManager, _username, _password, null);
        }
        else {
          _stub.loginExtensionByCertificate(sessionManager, _extensionKey, null);
        }
    [...]
     _connectionStatus = ConnectionStatus.Connected;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        _logger.error(e, e);
    }
  }

MyVimConnection defines a registerExtension() method that implements ExtensionManager.registerExtension(). MyManager calls MyVimConnection.registerExtension() after it has set the properties for the extension.

  public void registerExtension(Extension ex) {
    try {
         Extension findExtension = _stub.findExtension(_sc.getExtensionManager(),
                                                       ex.getKey());
         if (findExtension == null) {
             _stub.registerExtension(_sc.getExtensionManager(), ex);
         } else {
             _stub.updateExtension(_sc.getExtensionManager(), ex);
         }
         _stub.setExtensionCertificate(_sc.getExtensionManager(),
                                       ex.getKey(), null);
         } catch (Exception e) { 
             _logger.error(e, e); 
         }
  }

Results

You registered an extension with vCenter Server.

What to do next

Provide an extension key with which to register the extension with vCenter Server.