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.”