One of my biggest pet peeve when it comes to deploying the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) and other OVF/OVA directly onto an ESXi host is the lack of OVF property support. If you have deployed the VCSA before, you are probably aware of the different user experience when deploying to a vCenter Server versus deploying directly to an ESXi host. For those of you who are not familiar, the difference is when you deploy an OVF/OVA that contains custom OVF properties such as the VCSA, you have the ability to provide input to these parameters when deploying to a vCenter Server as seen in the screenshot below.
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Check out the new and improved VMware Developer Center!
One common piece of feedback that we have heard from customers and partners over the years is how difficult it can be to get started with using VMware's API and SDKs. The biggest challenge is not actually using the API and SDKs, but actually finding out what is available for a particular product or the solution you are trying to develop. The other challenge of course is where to download the API/SDK, language support and their corresponding documentation.
In the past, this information would be scoured throughout VMware's website and Google searches will usually lead folks to the VMware Developer Center. The site has been in need of a major revamp for awhile now and I am glad to see that VMware has taken this feedback very seriously as I have provided similar feedback when I was a customer as well as employee.
I am happy see that we have re-launched the VMware Developer Center which now contains a wealth of useful information that has never been available before! I was one of the lucky few who received early access to the new VMware Developer Center to help provide feedback on how we can better improve our user experience with the site. This will continue to be a work in progress based on on-going feedback from customers and partners.
Here are a few things worth checking out ...
Development & Certification
The first thing I think everyone will just LOVE is that VMware is now listing EVERY single API/SDK that is available which includes public API/SDKs as well as what is known as "Gated API/SDK" that usually are available to partners only. The reason this is a big deal is if you are a new partner, how do you know what is available to you and how can you add value on top of the VMware eco-system? You now can get a list of all VMware API/SDKs under the Developement & Certification section and it provides you with a high level of what each API/SDKs provides. For gated API/SDK, you will see a tiny lock symbol next to it. When you login to MyVMware and you are supposed to have access to these API/SDKs, the icons will be unlocked and you will be able to get more details including downloads and documentation. You can also filter the views by specific API/SDKs as well as scripting/programming language.
vCloud Suite Library
Earlier I mentioned that it was quite difficult for someone to figure out exactly what API/SDKs are available for a particular product, especially within the vCloud Suite. One really neat feature is under the "Library" section which provides you with a high level diagram of the VMware vCloud Suite and it is an interactive diagram which you can hover over and it provides information about each product. If you click on one of the products, it will provide more information on the API/SDKs that can be used to integrate or access that particular product. This is a great way to learn about VMware products from a scripting/programmatic perspective and we also have one for the Horizon Suite.
VMware Standards
One other cool page to visit is the "Standards" page which currently just contains the UX design standards for the vSphere Web Client. If you want to learn more about the design principles used to create the vSphere Web Client or looking to build your own vSphere Web Client plugin, you may be interested in this section. I suspect over time we will be publishing more design standards that can be shared with the general community and hopefully useful for our partners and integrators.
Be sure to explore the rest of the site, though this is only the initial release of the VMware Developer Center, if you have any feedback feel free to leave a comment either on my blog or in the VMTN community forums. I know the team responsible for the VMware Developer Center has so much more planned including more sample code for each of our API/SDK as well as more content and interactions from each of the engineering teams. So stay tuned and check back often!
How To Run The SilverLining Fling Without Installing It In vCloud Director
A few weeks back the VMware Lab's team released a cool new fling called SilverLining which allows users to build a simplified user-interface for vCloud Director. This interface can be run from any modern web-browser that supports HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript. To access the SilverLining interface, you must first install it on a vCloud Director 5.1 Cell.
From a development or proof of concept perspective, it would be really nice to be able to run SilverLining locally from your desktop and point it to a valid vCloud Director 5.1 instance for testing. Well, this is exactly what Andrea Siviero, a Consulting Architect for VMware discovered while playing around with the SilverLining Fling.
UPDATE: 2/28 - For Safari, you can use open /Applications/Safari.app/ --args -disable-web-security
Disclaimer: The solution described here is specifically for Chrome running on Mac OS X or Windows. I have not looked into equivalent settings for other browsers.
Here are the steps required to make this work:
Step 1 - Download SilverLining and extract the contents to your local desktop
Step 2 - Under Silverlining->js directory, there is a file called main.js that needs to be modified. Add the following right under "$(document).ready(function() {" which should point to the base URL of your vCloud Director instance:
localStorage.server = "https://vcd.primp-industries.com";
Step 3 - Launch Chrome with the additional argument via the command-line and load the index.html in the SilverLining directory:
open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/ --args -disable-web-security
Note: For Windows version of Chrome just pass in the following either via command-line or shortcut to Chrome.exe -disable-web-security
If everything was successful, you should be able to login to the vCloud Organization of your choice and see all the vApps and Catalogs you have access to!
If you receive the "You are attempting to connect to a system no longer supported" shown in the screenshot below:
You may be pointing to a vCloud Director instance that is using a self-signed certificate and you will need to trust the site before proceeding. To do so, open up a new tab and enter the following URL (substituting your vCloud Director URL):
https://vcd.primip-industries.com/api/versions
Click on the "Proceed Anyway" and then reload the index.html page and you should now be able to login to vCloud Director.
I would like to thank Andrea for sharing this awesome tip! Now you can easily develop and test your own custom interface using the Javascript SDK provided by SilverLining all on your desktop. Best of all, you can now point this to any remote vCloud Director 5.1 instance whether that be private or public!