Talking SOAP to your ESXi box: VMware vSphere Web Services SDK
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/09/22
Note that what you can do through the SDK (and vMA and its’ virtual appliance or that matter) is limited by what your ESX / ESXi license allows.
The VMware KB has more information on this: you will need at least a vSphere Essentials license for your ESXi box to use it..
If you have a free ESXi license, you will often get messages like these:
SOAP Fault:
Fault string: fault.RestrictedVersion.summary
Fault detail: RestrictedVersionFault
You will find this when doing backup/restore purposes, and re-regisestering .vmx files on the same machine. You can work around this by browsing your datastore (Browse datastore, find .vmx, right-click and “Add to Inventory”).
mstfysn1981 worked around this for remote shutdown by using ssh.
Some other things can be solved by using the esxicontrol.pl script.
But depending in your budget you might want to buy a non-free liceense.
VMware has a comparison of features for each license type online.
It doesn’t contain prices (so far for transparency), but the shop contains the cheapest non-free license; as the time of writing, they are these:
- VMware vSphere Essentials Kit (of you have 1 ESXi box; current prices is USD 495)
- VMware vSphere Essentials Kit for 3 hosts (of you have 2 or 3 ESXi boxes; current price is USD 611)
You can always upgrade a cheaper vSphere license to a more expensive license.
–jeroen
via: VMware vSphere Web Services SDK Documentation.
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