vSphere Integration Services
vSphere provides a great flexibility to third party developers to integrate their product with vSphere product stacks. vSphere can be integrated using one of the following options
- API Integration
- vSphere client plug-in
- Orchestrator plug-in
API Integration
Main components of vSphere product stack i.e. ESX and vCenter server exposes the following API interfaces, which can be leveraged by third party developers for product integration
- VI Web Services – Used to manage the virtual infrastructure. Communication protocol SOAP/HTTP.
- CIM – Implementation of following types of CIM profile. Communication protocol CIM/HTTP
- SMI-S
- SMASH
- VDDK – C / C++ client libraries to perform the read / write operations on virtual disks. Mostly used by developers to build data protection software
- VIX – C / C++ client libraries to manage the guest operating system. Mostly used for automation purposes.
- VMCI – Virtual machine communication interface, which allows the fast communication between virtual machines under same host.
vSphere client plug-in
VMware offers third party developers and partners the ability to extend the VMware Infrastructure Client (vSphere Client) with their own product specific menu selections, views, tabs, and toolbar icons, to provide access to external, Web based functionality.
Developers can extend the vSphere Client by identifying the web applications, scripts, or other components that they want to make available through the vSphere Client.
Configuration file needs to be created to define each of the components and identifies where in the vSphere Client each should display at runtime. Configuration file defines each of these components as an extension element. Client plug-ins enables a wide range of integration and extension scenarios.
Orchestrator plug-in
Orchestrator plug-ins allows third party developers and partners to access and control external technologies and applications. The external technologies which can be accessed via plug-ins can include virtualization management tools, email systems, databases, directory services, and remote control interfaces.
Orchestrator provides a set of standard plug-ins to allows third party developers and partners to incorporate such technologies as the VMware vCenter Server API and email capabilities into their automation workflows. Orchestrator implements open standards, to simplify integration with external systems.
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