Have you ever tried to automate a specific vSphere operation but were sure which vSphere API to use or if known, how to actually use it? This is something I frequently see and get asked about quite often!
Did you know about this hidden little gem that has been available since vSphere 6.7, built right into the vSphere UI that can help with these questions!?
It is called vSphere Code Capture or what I typically refer to as your ChatGPT for vSphere Automation, but without the hallucinations 😀
While official support for running ESXi on Apple Hardware (Mac Pro and Mac Mini) has concluded with ESXi 7.x, it certainly has not discourage users from experimenting with newer ESXi releases. In fact, ESXi 8.x still runs like a champ on most x86 Apple Hardware platforms including the vintage Apple Mac Mini 7,1 (2014) and to the most recent Apple Mac Mini 8,1 (2018)!
For those with an Apple Mac Mini 8,1 (2018), the onboard Apple NVMe storage device can not be used out of the box with ESXi, without the use of the Community NVMe Driver for ESXi Fling. Surprisingly, the Community NVMe Driver for ESXI Fling is still functional even with the latest ESXi 8.x release, even though it was only created and supported during ESXi 7.x timeframe.
From the recent reports from the VMware Community, the Apple NVMe device can be detected up until ESXi 8.0 Update 1c (Build 22088125) but after upgrading to ESXi 8.0 Update 2 (22380479), it was no longer showing up.
Up until vSphere 8.0, there were two primary sets of vSphere APIs:
Note: Technically, there are other vCenter Server API endpoints including vSAN, Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM), etc. but for the purposes of this article, we are focusing on the core vCenter Server functionality.
The vSphere Web Services API was available starting with the Virtual Infrastructure (VI) 2.x release back in 2007. To date, the vSphere Web Services API supports the latest vSphere 8.x release and still also has full backwards compatibility going all the way back to Virtual Center 2.x!
As you can imagine, the vSphere Web Services API covers an extremely large amount of functionality over the past 16 years since its introduction and it continues to be widely used by almost all customers either directly or indirectly through the various vSphere SDKs including PowerCLI, pyvmomi (vSphere SDK for Python), govmomi (vSphere SDK for Go), Terraform Provider for vSphere to just name a few. In addition, we also have many 2nd party solutions from VMware and thousands of 3rd party offerings from our broader ecosystem of partners that provide integrations with the vSphere platform, all consuming the vSphere Web Services API!