Creating a New Relation Between vSphere Objects

The vSphere objects that make up the virtual infrastructure are organized as a graph of related objects. Each type of vSphere object maintains parent-child relationships with adjacent objects. For example, a host object can have several related virtual machine objects as children, while many host objects might have a single cluster object as a parent. The relationships between vSphere objects are reflected in different places in the vSphere Web Client GUI, including the object navigator and on the Related Objects tab in an object workspace. The object navigator and object workspaces can display the related items for a vSphere object, such as the virtual machine objects associated with a given host object.

The vSphere Web Client uses relation extensions to represent the relationships between objects. A relation extension defines a relationship between a vSphere object and any other objects in the hierarchy of the virtual infrastructure. Certain extensions, such as some object navigator nodes and object list views, reference relation extensions to obtain their information. You can create relation extensions to add new relationships between vSphere objects in your vSphere environment, and to have other areas of the vSphere Web Client reflect those relationships.

This chapter contains the following topics:

■	Use Cases for Adding a Relation Extension

■	Defining a Relation Extension

■	Describing the Relation Using the RelationSpec Object