Starting with vSphere 8.0 Update 1, you can use the Virtual Infrastructure Management API which introduced a new way of accessing and using the vSphere Web Services. That is, you can now use the JSON data format over HTTP and create REST-like requests to the vSphere Web Services. Use the Virtual Infrastructure API or the vSphere Web Services API to create a cluster. For more information about how to authenticate and use the Virtual Infrastructure Management API, see the

vSphere Web Services SDK Programming Guide

,

An Introduction to vSphere APIs

, and

Getting Started with vSphere APIs

documentation. You can also check the

Virtual Infrastructure JSON API

reference documentation at https://developer.vmware.com/apis/vi-json/latest/.

You can use the

POST https://

<vcenter_ip_address_or_fqdn>

/sdk/vim25/

<release_number>

/Folder/

<moID>

/CreateClusterEx

request and submit the name of the cluster and a

ClusterConfigSpecEx

data object in the request body. In the data object, among other properties, you can specify the desired state for the cluster. The

desiredSoftwareSpec

property in the

ComputeResourceConfigSpec

data object contains the desired software specification for the cluster. This property is available for applications using the vSphere Web Services API of version 7.0 and later. You can create a

DesiredSoftwareSpec

data object and specify the base image that must be applied on the cluster with the

baseImageSpec

property. Optionally, you can specify a vendor add-on to be added to the software specification with the

vendorAddOnSpec

property.

Starting with vSphere 8.0, you can also enable the cluster to use

by setting the

enableConfigManager

property of the

ComputeResourceConfigSpec

data object to

true

.