Introduction to Tenant vApps

The vApp is a management construct that encapsulates one or more virtual machines running in the vSphere environment. The tenant vApp is a higher-level construct that allows vCloud Director to manage vApps and virtual machines running in a multi-tenant datacenter, or in a multi-tenant cloud, based on vSphere.

vCloud API Object Taxonomy shows the objects within a single organization that you can access with the vCloud API.

vCloud API Object Taxonomy

Multi-tenant and self-service capabilities of vCloud Director provide multiple levels of protection for a vApp. A service provider can offer vApp protection at the system level, the tenant level, or the end-user level, managed by the system administrator, Organization administrator, and end user, respectively. This chapter focuses on the protection provided at the system level, where service providers can employ backup solutions from vendors of data protection software.

This chapter describes how to design software to back up and restore the vApps in a vCloud. To back up or restore a vApp, you need to deal with both the vCloud configuration and the virtual machines that belong to the vApp. In vSphere, a virtual machine is represented by configuration files and virtual disk files.

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with programming concepts and techniques. You should also be familiar with vCloud, vCloud API, vCloud SDK for .NET, and vSphere concepts. VMware also provides the vCloud SDK for Java and the vCloud SDK for PHP, but this chapter focuses on .NET for the backup and restore examples.

VMware recommends that you design backup and restore software for the vCloud environment using the following APIs:

Table 1. APIs Used To Back Up vApps

Product	API	Data
vCloud Director	vCloud API or vCloud SDK wrapper	vApp metadata
vSphere	WS API	virtual machine configuration
VDDK	VixDiskLib API or VixMntapi	virtual disk contents

You use the vCloud API or SDK to identify vApp targets for backup and restore operations. The vApp metadata identifies the virtual machines that constitute the vApp. You use the WS API to back up and restore virtual machine configurations. You use the VDDK API to back up and restore virtual disk files.

Note This chapter uses the term “metadata” in a general sense to mean all the vApp configuration data, in addition to user-defined data that the vCloud REST API serializes in the <Metadata> element.

You should be familiar with the use of the WS API and the VDDK API for backup and restore of individual virtual machines.

Other Information

This chapter does not, in general, duplicate information available in other documents. In particular, this chapter does not provide details about any storage or data protection API that you need to use for backing up and restoring virtual machines in vSphere. You should consult separate reference documentation for details about specific API calls.

This chapter emphasizes the use of the vCloud API and SDK for the purpose of managing metadata of the virtual machines and related artifacts in vCloud Director. The vCloud SDK for .NET translates your C# code into REST operations using the vCloud API.

To learn about VMware vCloud and vSphere concepts and usage, refer to the vCloud Director documentation available from the VMware Web site, http://www.vmware.com/support/sdk_pubs.html. You can also visit the VMware SDK community forum at http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn.