In the "proposed change to release Road Map" thread we decided to add support for VMWare Free Server 2.x in the next release. I'm interested in working on this and hope to get started soon.

The first step will be figuring out which API to use. There are a number of different VMware APIs available:
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/sdk_pubs.html

Ryan Johnson brought up the VMware VIX API. This looks promising since it supports VMware Server 1.x, 2.x, ESX, and ESXi 4.0.

I know a few on this list have worked with the vSphere SDK for Perl, which used to be named VI Perl Toolkit. I'm guessing this may have some more advanced features that VIX doesn't. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the vSphere SDK can be used for VMware Server 1.x or 2.x. Please share any info you may have regarding pros/cons of any of the APIs you have worked with.

As part of this effort I would like to come up with a framework that makes the different VMware provisioning modules easier to implement and consistent, and to make it easier to add support for any new VMware APIs in the future. I'm thinking of creating utility modules specific to each VMware API, such as VIX_API.pm or vSphere_SDK.pm. These would contain basic functions such as power_off() but would not contain load() or capture(). The provisioning modules could then share the basic code that makes API calls. Please reply if you have any thoughts regarding this.

I plan to take a look at VIX.  Please reply if you're interested in working on 
this.

Thanks,
Andy

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