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Check out the new and improved VMware Developer Center!

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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 clear the ARP cache in ESXi prior to vSphere 5.5

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Yesterday, I wrote an article about a new ESXCLI command that will be available as part of the soon to be released vSphere 5.5 release which allows a user to clear the ARP cache on an ESXi 5.5 host. It was my understanding that with past releases of ESXi, that it is not possible to clear the ARP cache. While working on that article, I came across an internal thread and learned that it was possible to clear ARP entries prior to ESXi 5.5, however the method is not as ideal as using the new ESXCLI command.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk

In ESXi 5.1, you can list the current ARP entries for an ESXi host by running the following ESXCLI command:

esxcli network ip neighbor list

To clear a particular ARP entry, you will need to use the unsupported vsish interface. To delete a specific ARP entry, you will need to run the following command:

vsish -e set /net/tcpip/v4/neighbor del [IP-ADDRESS]

Here is a screenshot of listing the current ARP entries using ESXCLI and then deleting one of entries using vsish:

As mentioned in my previous article, I am glad we have made this into an official command in ESXCLI 5.5, but if you are in a crunch you can still clear an ARP entry if you are not running ESXi 5.5 using vsish.

How to clear the ARP cache on ESXi using new ESXCLI 5.5

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The ability to clear the ARP cache/table for an ESXi host is feature that has been requested from customers from time to time and usually for diagnosing network related issues. In previous releases, this was not something you could easily do and it was nice to see this feature get implemented in a new ESXCLI command that will be available as part of the vSphere 5.5 release.

The ESXCLI "network ip neighbor" namespace has been enhanced to include a new option:

You can list ARP table entries using the "list" operation and you can now clear a specific ARP entry using the "remove" operation.

To clear an ARP entry, you will need to specify the IP Address you wish to clear, the IP protocol whether it is IPv4 or IPv6 and you also have the option to specify the particular VMkernel interface. If you do not specify the particular VMKernel interface, then the entry will be removed for all interfaces.

Here is a screenshot of listing of the current ARP entries and then removing an entry for VMkernel interface 1:

This will definitely be a useful ESXCLI command to be aware of the next time you need to troubleshoot a network issue!

Note: I mentioned earlier that clearing the ARP cache was not something that you could do prior to vSphere 5.5. However, while working on this article, I actually learned it was possible to clear the ARP cache, but it was not very user friendly like the new ESXCLI 5.5 command. In a separate article, I will show you how can clear the ARP cache on earlier versions of ESXi.

If you wish to clear the ARP cache on an ESXi host prior to ESXi 5.5, please take a look at this article for more details.