In the world of virtual infrastructure management, efficiency and automation are key to maintaining smooth operations.
VMware's vCenter Content Library is a powerful tool for managing templates, ISO files, and other VM-related content across multiple vCenter instances.
However, as an environment grows, managing and automating these resources manually can become increasingly challenging.
In this article, we'll explore the step-by-step process of how to manage VMware vCenter Content Library using vRealize Orchestrator, discussing key benefits, potential use cases, and practical workflows to help you leverage these tools for seamless automation in your virtual infrastructure.
General goals
- Support multiple vCenter instances and VAPI endpoints.
- Support content libraries that offer locally or subscribed content.
- Support dynamic content fetching.
- Write all the code in JavaScript.
- Automate everything as much as possible
A use case:
We want to be able to fetch and show all the items of the selected content library. To do so, we need:
- Configure VAPI Endpoint/s
- Get VAPI Endpoints
- Get all configured content libraries for the selected VAPI Endpoint
- Show all the items of the selected library
The solution
Configure VAPI Endpoint
The vCenter VAPI (vSphere Automation API) Endpoint refers to the REST API provided by VMware vCenter Server. It allows programmatic access to various vCenter functionalities, such as managing virtual machines (VMs), datastores, networks, and other vSphere resources.
The necessity of this feature stems from the fact that not all vCenter functionalities are fully implemented and accessible through the JavaScript API. The missing APIs can be effectively utilized by VAPI.
To add a new VAPI endpoint, there is a built-in workflow for that called “Add vAPI endpoint”.
Provide vCenter FQDN in URL format and credentials.
If everything is done properly, we should see a new item in the Inventory under the vAPI plugin.
And new APIs will be available for us in the API explorer.
