VMware Infrastructure (VI) API Reference Guide

Welcome to the VMware Infrastructure API Reference Guide. This API reference provides comprehensive information about all data structures available through the VI API:

• Managed object types
• Data object types
• Properties
• Enumerations
• Faults

The VI API is exposed as a Web service, running on both ESX Server and VirtualCenter Server systems. The API provides access to the VMware Infrastructure management components—the managed objects that can be used to manage, monitor, and control life-cycle operations of virtual machines and other VMware infrastructure components (datacenters, datastores, networks, and so on).

This VI API Reference Guide is a core component of the VMware Infrastructure SDK (VI SDK). The VI SDK enables developers to create custom solutions for managing VMware infrastructure components, or integrate existing datacenter management solutions with VMware technologies. Using the VI API, you can quickly create, customize, or migrate virtual machines, for example.

Navigating the API Reference Guide

This API Reference Guide is an HTML frameset—click an entry in the left-hand pane to display information in the right-hand pane. You can find specific object type definition by clicking the appropriate category name and then refining your search by entering the specific object name the search text field.

For More Information

This VI API Reference Guide is reference information only: for conceptual discussions, sample code, and how-to information, see the appropriate guide in the VI SDK download package:

• Installation Guide. Provides information about setting up your development environment for using the VI SDK with Java and C#.
• Programming Guide. Overview of the VMware Infrastructure object model, how to create client applications, using the various managed objects.
• Porting guide. How to port your VMware Infrastructure SDK 1.x applications to the VMware Infrastructure Web Service 2.0. This guide contains a listing of all the legacy SDK 1.x operations and their 2.0 equivalents.

The most recent published versions of these guides are available at:

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer