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