SDK Versions and VMware
vSphere Product Compatibility
VMware has released SDK products to support
various versions of the VMware vSphere product family. You can use the VMware
vSphere Web Services SDK with many previous versions of VMware vSphere servers
and its predecessor, VMware Infrastructure, including:
- ESXi 6.7, 6.5, 6.0, 5.5, 5.1, and 5.0
- vCenter Server 6.7, 6.5, 6.0, 5.5, 5.1, 5.0
All versions are supported by the WSDL declarations in the
vimService.wsdl
top-level file in the vim25
directory.The VMware vSphere API is a Web service that runs on VMware vSphere ESXi
and vCenter Server. The API exposed is the same in all products. However, vCenter
Server provides the following capabilities which are not available through an ESXi
Web service:
- Collecting historical performance data
- Optimizing resources, including managing distributed resources
- Enabling migration from one host system to another by using VMware vMotion
- Providing distributed resource management, including recovery, across all host systems under its control
If you attempt to invoke an operation on an ESXi system that is supported
only on vCenter Server, the server returns a fault saying “not implemented” or “not
supported.” For example, the ExtensionManager API is available only on VirtualCenter
Server. Attempting to register an extension to an ESXi system returns a fault, “not
supported.”