WilliamLam.com

  • About
    • About
    • Privacy
  • VMware Cloud Foundation
    • VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1
    • VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0
  • VKS
  • Homelab
    • Hardware Options
    • Hardware Reviews
    • Lab Deployment Scripts
    • Nested Virtualization
    • Homelab Podcasts
  • VMware Nostalgia
  • Apple

Search Results for: guest operations

Duncan's 50 out of 140 vSphere 5 Features Challenge

08.26.2011 by William Lam // 4 Comments

You may have heard that vSphere 5 has officially launched today (well last night ~7pm-ish PST), but you may not know, that there are over 140 new features introduced in this release. Duncan Epping shared a blog post vSphere 5.0 Features detailing a list that was generated internally from VMware on the 140 features. Duncan also provided a challenge to the readers:

Now before we will give you the full list we want to challenge you... Who will be the first one to show 50 of the below listed features in an article? We will give a "vSphere 5.0 Clustering Technical Deepdive" book signed by both authors to the first 5 people who manage to write a single article detailing 50 of the below features with short paragraph about what this feature brings including a screenshot.

Even though I had already purchased the colored copy of vSphere 5.0: Clustering and Technical Deepdive which I am still trying to finish (only half way done), I decided to accept Duncan's challenge and here is my list of the 50 features I decided to write about.

Note: I personally have not worked with all 50 features listed below, some of these were selected due to ease of capturing a screenshot.

[Read more...]

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // ESXi 5.0, vSphere 5.0

vSphere 5 Summary on virtuallyGhetto

07.29.2011 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Here is a collection of all my blog posts relating to vSphere 5 that I have worked on over the last 6 months.

General Topics
1. How to Enable Support for Nested 64bit & Hyper-V VMs in vSphere 5
2. Automating ESXi 5.x Kickstart Tips & Tricks
3. Major Enhancements in esxcli for vSphere 5
4. What's New in VMware Vsish for ESXi 5
5. SSH Keys & Lockdown Mode Caveat in ESXi 5
6. How to Create Custom Firewall Rules in ESXi 5.0
7. How to Format and Create VMFS Volume using the CLI in ESXi 5
8. HBR (Host Based Replication) CLI for SRM 5
9. New vSphere 5 CLI Utilities/Tricks Marketing Did Not Tell You About Part 1
10. New vSphere 5 CLI Utilities/Tricks Marketing Did Not Tell You About Part 2
11. New vSphere 5 CLI Utilities/Tricks Marketing Did Not Tell You About Part 3
12. New vSphere 5 HA, DRS and SDRS Advanced/Hidden Options
13. How to Trick ESXi 5 in seeing an SSD Datastore
14. Free Linux & Windows Syslog Alternatives to depercated vi-logger in vMA 5
15. Host Profiles Free in ESXi 5?
16. vi-fastpass esxcli and resxtop bug resolved in vMA 5
17. Tips and Tricks for vMA 5
18. How to Enable Nested vFT (virtual Fault Tolerance) in vSphere 5
20. When Can I Run Apple OSX on vSphere 5?
21. How Fast is the New vSphere 5 HA/DRS on 64 Node Cluster? FAST!
22. New Hidden CBRC (Content-Based Read Cache) Feature in vSphere 5 & for VMware View 5?
 

API + SCRIPTS
1. There's a new mob in town, FDM MOB for ESXi 5
2. New SRM 5 APIs
3. Automating the New Integrated VIX/Guest Operations API in vSphere 5 
4. Automating Storage DRS & Datastore Cluster Management in vSphere 5
5. How to Automate Host Cache Configuration in ESXi 5
6. 2 Hidden Virtual Machine Gems in the vSphere 5 API
7. New vSphere Health Check 5.0 & ghettoVCB Script
8. New Performance Metrics In vSphere 5
9. How to Persist Configuration Changes in ESXi 4.x/5.x Part 1
10. How to Persist Configuration Changes in ESXi 4.x/5.x Part 2
11. How to Automate the Upgrade of Classic ESX 4.x to ESXi 5
12. New Application Awareness API in vSphere 5

If you have found these and other resources useful on this site and would like to support us, you can donate here. Thanks!

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // ESXi 5.0, vSphere 5.0

What is the VMware VIX API and it's future?

11.21.2010 by William Lam // 4 Comments

Some recent twitter conversations about vSphere SDK improvements, specifically around VMware VIX API and few emails around the use cases was the motivation for this post.

I will provide a very high level of what the VMware VIX API is, since there is a awesome presentation by Matt LaMantia at TechExchange in VMworld 2010 SF that goes into more details about VIX (video below). The VIX API (Virtual Infrastructure eXtension) is an API that provides guest management operations inside of a virtual machine that maybe running on VMware vSphere, Fusion, Workstation or Player. These operations are executed on behalf of the vmware-tools service that must be running within the virtual machine and guest credentials are required prior to execution.

The current incarnation of the VIX API is a little odd because it provides guest management operations which is unique to the VIX API but it also provides virtual machine operations. These virtual machine operation overlaps with some of the functionality provided by the vSphere API which is used for managing your vSphere infrastructure. Part of this overlap was due to origins of VIX which started from Workstation on the desktop. I almost consider this VMware API sprawl 🙂

Currently if you want to automate your vSphere infrastructure and want hooks into your virtual machine and guestOSes you need to leverage both the vSphere API and VIX API. I have seen this cause some confusion in the communities. Users wanting to standardize on VIX API and realize that 80% of what they want to do is available in VIX but the portion requires the use of the vSphere APIs. Don't get me wrong, the functionality of VIX is very powerful. When I first learn in version 1.6.2 of VIX where it officially supported vSphere, a whole new set of possibilities just opened up for administrators and developers.

There are several ways of using the VIX API today. If you are using PowerCLI, there are actually a few cmdlets that directly integrate with VIX, which requires you to install the VIX client libraries local to your PowerCLI installation. One such cmdlet is the Invoke-VMScript and here are a few example use cases:

  • http://www.virtu-al.net/2010/02/05/powercli-changing-a-vm-ip-address-with-invoke-vmscript/
  • http://www.jasemccarty.com/blog/?p=477

If you don't prefer the dark side 😉 and want to run something like the vSphere SDK for Perl, C or COM, the VIX client libraries also includes client side bindings to these languages. If you are a Java shop and want to leverage Steve Jin's VI Java there is also an open source project called VIX Java Toolkit that can be used. Here is an example use case with vSphere SDK for Perl:

  • http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2010/07/automate-update-manager-operations.html

You can also just install the VIX client libraries which also includes a pre-compiled binary called vmrun that provides majority of the VIX operations all bundled into one utility. It also supports VMware vSphere, Workstation, Fusion and Player. Here is an example use case:

  • http://professionalvmware.com/2008/12/vmware-vix-changing-ips-of-a-guest-vm/

There is also a very interesting application called VGC (Virtual Guest Console) created by the VMware Lab guys also known as flings. This is a graphical interface similar to VMware Remote Console, but it is 1000x better and provides integration to all the VIX operations. The application allows you to view running processes in a guest, kill a particular process, deploy application to a guest, download/upload files and browse guest filesystem and much much more. I would highly recommend taking a look at this tool!

As you can see, the possibilities are endless! but you still have to use two separate APIs. I along with others in the community have asked for a consolidation of the VIX API and merging with the vSphere API, makes the most sense. I think our feedback has finally been heard and if you watch the presentation given by Matt, you will see that future of VIX API is exactly that, consolidatation with the vSphere API. Though we will not see it anytime soon until the next major release of vSphere dubbed vSphere.next (MN) and vSphere.next^2 (OP), it is a change I am looking forward to.

One other interesting thing to point out, during the first release of the VIX API that supported vSphere which was 1.6.2, there was a tiny bug that was identified regarding licensing. As you may or may not know, VMware requires that you have a "paid" license to be able to leverage the various APIs and CLIs for automation, configuration and management of your vSphere infrastructure. This is generally not an issue when dealing with vCenter or ESX, but with ESXi, you have option of a free license.

In the VIX 1.6.2 release, you actually have full VIX read and write operations against an ESXi host using the free license. This was of course fixed in subsequent releases and the trick only works with ESXi 4.0 or older. You will notice on the VIX landing page, there is no mention of the release notes for 1.6.2 release other than 1.7.1 superseding it. You however still can download 1.6.2 release under VIX 1.6 and you can still see the release notes if you search on VMware's site or on Google.

For more details about VIX and downloads, take a look at the following:

  • http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vix-api/
  • http://blogs.vmware.com/vix/2008/07/what-is-vix-and.html

PPC15 Guest Operations Using VMware VIX APIs and Beyond:

Guest Operations using VMware VIX APIs and Beyond from heyitspablo on Vimeo.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // vix api

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • …
  • 22
  • Next Page »

Search

Thank Author

Author

William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

Connect

  • Bluesky
  • Email
  • GitHub
  • LinkedIn
  • Mastodon
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Recent

  • What Host Lifecycle Operations Are Available after Importing vCenter into VCF 9.x Fleet? 06/24/2026
  • VCF 9.1 - Enabling High Availability for a Small VCF Management Services (VCFMS) Deployment 06/22/2026
  • Clarifying Minimum Required ESX Hosts for VCF Deployments 06/18/2026
  • VCF 9.1 - Auditing VCF Management Services (VCFMS) IP Pool Usage  06/17/2026
  • VCF 9.1 - Auditing vCenter Server Connections using the Connection Utilization API 06/15/2026
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.

To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Copyright WilliamLam.com © 2026