Several folks asked me about how to use vSphere(VI) Java API to connect to a VM running on vSphere. The quick answer is vSphere Java API is not designed for this. You will need VMware Remote Console, browser plug-in, remote desktop/VNC, SSH client etc. However, it can help you to get the information required by the console or plug-in. Tal Altman from CISCO suggested that it be a topic for doublecloud.org. Here it is.
There are 3 ways to connect to the VM from your client side outside the vSphere and Web Access which have built-in support for console access.
- Using VMware Remote Console which is a standalone application
- Using browser plug-in to either IE or Firefox (Note: this is NOT supported by VMware. Please don’t call the company tech support for this.)
- Using Remote Desktop, VNC or SSH
The first two connect to the ESX host, and work even there is no guest OS installed on the VM. The last one assumes you have guest OS installed, and have IP network and server components in place already.
Note that these 3 ways work for the VMs in the public cloud as well if the related ports are open in your firewall. It is, however, not the case for most enterprises, therefore I particularly say it’s for VMs in private cloud. If you don’t have firewall issue, feel free to give it a try with public cloud as well.
Let’s go over one by one in details and see how vSphere Java API helps. Read more »
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
Last week VMware released a news “VMware Expands VMware vCloud Developer Ecosystem With Open-Source Java and Python SDKs for VMware vCloud API”. It says,
VMware has also made a number of open-source contributions to the Cloud Tools project, which powers the SpringSource Cloud Foundry service, enabling Java developers to deploy, test, and manage applications for VMware environments via VMware vSphere(TM) and the VMware vCloud API.
The contributions are the two adapters I developed for the CloudTools project to run on both vSphere and vCloud Express. I wrote the following news on VI Java API project home, which was then quoted in a SpringSource blog by Charles Lee.
DIY PaaS made possible with VI Java API and CloudTools
Nov 23, 2009
As mentioned earlier, VI Java API was leveraged at VMWorld 2009 Keynote demos. Now I got legal approval and contributed the related adapters to CloudTools code hosted at Google.
The CloudTools/CloudFoudry was originally designed for EC2. The CloudTools is open source; the CloudFoudry is not. With our contributed code, you can run CloudTools with vSphere for deploying your Java (Groovy) based web applications to your internal cloud. It offers both Maven and Grails plugins so you can do all the deployment with one line of command. Even better, you can integrate the plugin command with Spring Tools Suite (STS) and have a context menu in the Eclispe based IDE. This is what I call DIY PaaS (Do It Yourself Platform as a Service): vSphere + VI Java API + adapter + CloudTools.
The vCloud adapter was designed with Terremark vCloudExpress platform for the SpringOne 2GX keynote demo. The adapter does not use the VI Java API, but leverages the vCloud REST API. Besides the basic part, the Terremark vCloud API provides extensions for managing the network like public IP, InternetService, and node.
Although you see two different adapters, the user experiences are the same. Both adapters implement the required interfaces defined by CloudTools. Technically it’s not a big deal, but business wise, it is a big deal — you can seamlessly deploy to private (vSphere) cloud and public (service providers like Terremark) cloud, whatever best suits your needs.
DIY PaaS has many advantages overal typical PaaS especially ultimate flexibility and no vendor lock-in, which are critical for enterprises. I will detail more on the DIY PaaS concept, stategies and architecture in a later blog.
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
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