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After creating a light virtual appliance last year, Timo Sugliani continued with a full fledged version of virtual appliance with all you need for vSphere development with Java and Jython. This is what Timo called “my linux powershell toolkit.” The biggest advantage is that you are no longer limited by Windows as your development platform.

The virtual appliance is built on top of the latest Ubuntu 10.04. It has Eclipse 3.5 installed with PyDev plug-in preconfigured with Jython and latest VI(vSphere) Java API. It also has Komodo Edit 5.2 installed. So you have choice to use either of these two.

The appliance also ships with two samples:

Simple sample : Connect to a vCenter Server and list Virtual Machines (first & second screenshot)

More complex sample : Connect to a vCenter Server, and with the input data (Virtual Machine id list), will return a JSON list of dicts containing the vm id and the screenshot url for that vm id. (third screenshot)

With all the things packed together, the virtual appliance is about 2.5G in size. I think it really worths the time to download it based on my personal experience playing with it. Actually I tested it before Timo released it. If you want to get started with automating and managing vSphere with least effort, this appliance is for YOU!

Ready to download it? Click out Timo’s blog site . It also lists 3 screenshots showing you what it looks like.

Note: if you would like to use your existing OS with Eclipse or other IDEs, you can download the vSphere Java API from its project home.

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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After I blogged the top 5 myths of vSphere API, William Lam suggested me to write a bit more on the views in his comments. If you haven’t followed him (@lamw) at Twitter yet, you may want to. His vGhetto Perl repository is one of the best resources for people who use VI Perl.

For sure, VMware loves the term “view”. As far as I know, there are 3 different ”views.” Two of them are for APIs; the last one is for the desktop product family. We are not going to talk about the product View in this blog. You can find more information at VMware web site.

Let’s instead focus on the two “Views” for developers: one is in VI Perl and .NET/PowerCLI; the other is part of the core vSphere API. 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.

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After my presentation yesterday, I had more time on the break-out sessions and self paced lab today.

Accelerate Your Services With VMware Services Automation Tools

This session is by Budianto Bong, VMware Sr. Product Manager. He demoed three tools from VMware PSO that help consulting partners: Migration Manager, Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator, and HealthAnalyzer. The first one is not the P2V converter, but a management tool that tracks, manages, and reports large scale migration projects.

Using the VMware vSphere PowerCLI for Automated Installation And Configuration of ESXi and vCenter for ISV Partners

This is a joint presentation by VMware TAM Ken Brady, and CareFusion network engineer Fisk Shogren. Ken introduced the basics of PowerCLI and VMware TAP programs. Fish showed off his PowerShell code that is used to set up the environment, which took 2 days, if lucky, of manual work before. It’s a great example on how much you can get by automating vSphere API, particularly with PowerCLI. I handed over my business card so that Fisk can show more of his code later.

Getting Stoned With “Project Onyx” 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.

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You may have read blogs from my colleagues Mike DiPetrillo, Duncan Epping about the VMware Script-O-Mania contest. The prizes are $2,500 (1^st), $1,000 (2^nd), and $500(3^rd) respectively. The contest ends in March 15, 2010. So act quickly!

“Wait, how can I WIN the prizes?”

Well, first of all, you want to read carefully the criteria. Note that your script is for System Administrators with ESXi. So it could be for initial server set up, health monitoring, trouble shooting, reporting auditing, or anything else that is cool and creative. I suggest you talk to system administrators what REAL PAINS they have, and how they would like to fix the problems.

When you are clear what problems to solve, then let’s move on.

If you are already familiar with PowerCLI and RCLI, you should probably stick with them. You can get helps from VMware Developer Community.

If not, open source VI Java API can help you!

Here are 4 ways the API can do for you to win the $2,500: 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.