Days ago I introduced the new licensing APIs since vSphere 4 and a sample that prints license expiration dates. Here is yet another sample that replaces an old license with a new license.
You may be wondering why anyone would do this. This is in fact not a typical use case. You probably know that vSphere Client does not treat license keys like passwords which are not visually displayed as dots or asterisks. As a result, anyone who can access a vSphere Client can write down license keys and use them elsewhere.
Normally this is not an issue at all. What about Read more... (423 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)
A new feature called vCenter Linked Mode has been introduced in vSphere 4. It allows several vCenter servers to form a linked mode group. When you connect to any of the vCenter server via vSphere Client, you see all of them behind a single pane of glass.
I got questions from time to time, “what does it mean for vSphere API?” More specifically, if you connect to one vCenter in a linked mode group, will you “see” all of them? If not, how can vSphere Client achieve that? Read more... (383 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)
In my previous blog, I introduced the new licensing APIs since vSphere 4. As promised, I will write samples showing how to use the APIs.
Here is the first sample (stay tuned to next one, coming soon). What it does is to check the licenses in vCenter server for their expiration dates, and print them out in the console. You can of course save them into other format, say an CSV file so that you can use Excel to further analyze it. To run the sample, you must change the IP address to the vCenter server, the username/password, as would with most VI Java API samples.
Note that a license could be an Read more... (290 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)
There has been a total change in vSphere licensing model since version 4. Before that, you need a special/dedicated licensing server which may be more flexible/powerful but also cause many troubles in production environment which made licensing related issues one of the top categories in tech support.
vSphere 4 has dramatically simplified the whole licensing model, and removed the licensing server. To find out how the new licensing model works, check out the VMware vSphere 4 Licensing Guide. It covers both the vSphere side and the portal with which you can easily manage your license keys: splitting/combining, etc. This article does not cover the portal part but related APIs only.
Management APIs reflect product features. If you check the latest API reference, you will find out Read more... (1111 words, 1 image, estimated 4:27 mins reading time)
After I touted the idea to have a meetup last week, I got quite positive feedbacks from the community. More importantly, I secured sponsorship from my employer VMware so that we can have the event at VMware headquarter. Due to a little time conflict, we will have it on May 18, instead of May 25 as I planned before. It’s still a Wednesday and food/drinks will be served with no charge.
This event was designed for professionals like developers, system administrators. Even if you are not but interested in virtualization and cloud computing in general, you are still very welcome to join us.
The first 100 registers for onsite will have chance to win Read more... (249 words, estimated 1:0 mins reading time)
If you want to read information about a virtual machine from the guest OS running on it, the vSphere Guest API is for you. It’s a C library coming with VMware Tools. Unlike the vSphere API which can be used anywhere, the vSphere Guest API is only available in the guest OS.
High Level Characteristics Read more... (376 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)
- It’s read only. You can use it to retrieve state and performance of a virtual machine running on ESX, but you can NOT
If you think vSphere Client exposes everything, you are wrong. The vSphere APIs actually expose more features than the vSphere Client, which is a great product. This is one reason why system administrators should learn vSphere APIs.
While writing my book, for example, I noticed that vSphere APIs actually allow you to change guest OS screen size with a simple call setScreenResolution(int width, int height).
Given the time pressure, I didn’t summarize these API only features at that time. To be honest, Read more... (215 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)
By this May, the open source VI Java API will turn 3 year old. While there is a big community out there, we haven’t organized any event for people to meet each other in person.
I think now is a good time to do so. How about a meet up in the silicon valley around May 25(Update: 18 as new date) which is a Wednesday?
Agenda Read more... (251 words, estimated 1:00 mins reading time)
- 6:30PM-7PM. Reception and Networking.
If you have a mobile phone and travel to other areas or countries, you can still use it to make and receive a call. Your phone number does not change. This is called roaming in the wireless telecommunications.
In the cloud environment, your virtual machine can “travel” around as well, maybe from one datacenter to another, from your enterprise to one of your service providers or the other way around, or from one service provider to another.
It’s relatively easy for a virtual machine Read more... (583 words, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)
Chargeback is an important feature for computing infrastructures. Even inside an enterprise where IT users are not charged with real money, it’s still nice to see the usage patterns and sometimes avoid wasting resources. As I mentioned in IBM RC2, applying chargeback reduced unnecessary usage overnight.
VMware vCenter Chargeback is a component for this purpose. It can run standalone with Web GUI, and surface to vSphere Client as a plug-in. Although its name includes vCenter, it can also work with vCloud Director (see Using vCenter Chargeback with VMware Cloud Director).
I just spent some time over the weekend reading the API documentation, including vCenter Chargeback API Programming Guide, API Reference. The version 1.5 of the API Read more... (550 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)
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