The

ServiceInstance

managed object is the root object of the inventory on both ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server systems. The server creates the

ServiceInstance

, and creates the manager entities that provide services in the virtual environment. Examples of manager entities are

LicenseManager

,

PerformanceManager

, and

ViewManager

.

The

ServiceInstance

is the primary point of access to the server inventory. Your client application starts by connecting to a server and creating a reference to the

ServiceInstance

. After you have connected to the server, you can call the

ServiceInstance.RetrieveServiceContent

method to a

ServiceContent

data object.

ServiceContent

provides access to the vSphere managed object services. See Overview of a Java Sample Application for the Web Services SDK for an example of connecting to a server and using the

ServiceInstance

reference to retrieve the

ServiceContent

object.

Figure 1 shows the object model for the

ServiceInstance

and

ServiceContent

objects. The figure shows some of the

ServiceContent

managed object references and the target objects of the references. Each managed object reference identifies a specific managed object on the server with its type and a value. (The

value

property is an opaque string.)