Step 3: Connect to the Server

The vSphere API is hosted as a secure Web service on a
and ESX/
system.
By default, the Web service is available over HTTPS. Clients must provide valid credentials to connect to the service. Depending on the specifics of your server, you might have to enter only a user name and password. You might need other information. See Table 1.
A call to
Util::connect()
connects to the server.
When a script reaches the call to
Util::connect()
, the vSphere SDK for Perl runtime checks the environment variables, configuration file contents, and command-line entries (in this order) for connection options. If the options are not defined, the runtime uses the defaults (
localhost
and no user name and password) to set up the connection.