What is in the vSphere Extension APIs
The vSphere SDK provides a set of APIs that you can use to register extensions with
vCenter Server
. To develop vSphere extensions, the most important object in the vSphere Extension API is the ExtensionManager
managed object.Use the
ExtensionManager
managed object in your
vCenter Server
instance to register a new extension. Extensions can add new objects to the
vCenter inventory. Extensions define tasks, events, and faults that relate to
actions that the solution performs on the objects, the events that occur in the
extension, and the problems that the objects encounter. You can also use
ExtensionManager
to add
user interface elements to the
vSphere Client
to allow users to interact with the objects that your extension provides to
vCenter Server
.
vCenter Server
extensions can have both a client and a server component, or they can consist
of just a client component or just a server component. Each instance of an
extension is represented by an
Extension
data object.
You can indicate that an extension manages the virtual machines or vApps that it creates by setting the
managedBy
property in the ManagedEntityInfo
data object for that virtual machine or vApp. When you register an extension with vCenter Server
, you can define an icon that represents the virtual machines that the extension manages. Virtual machines that an extension manages display the icon that you define in the inventory of virtual machines in the vSphere Client
. The vCenter Server
shows a warning if users try to perform manual operations on a virtual machine or vApp that the extension manages.ExtensionManager
adds data objects to the vSphere Extension APIs that integrate extensions as
vCenter solutions that you can manage.
For information about how to develop
vSphere Client
extensions, see the Developing Remote Plug-ins with
the vSphere Client SDK
documentation. For information about
developing vSphere applications, see the
vSphere Web Services
SDK Programming Guide
and the
VMware vSphere API
Reference
documentation.