When a remote plug-in is registered with a vCenter Server instance, each linked instance is notified. Each notified instance responds by checking compatibility constraints specified in the plug-in manifest. The constraints determine whether the notified instance will involve the plug-in in future requests that access vSphere resources on the registration instance.

Each notified instance must satisfy client constraints, and the registration instance must satisfy server constraints, to enable plug-in traffic. If both sides meet the constraint conditions, the notified instance deploys the plug-in for future connections to the registration instance.

Deployment includes configuring extension point metadata to deploy plug-in views in the vSphere Client user interface, and setting proxy rules to forward view requests to the plug-in server. This applies to views that access vSphere resources that the vCenter Server manages.

In the plug-in manifest file you can specify two points of control for plug-in compatibility. First, you can control whether any vCenter Server instance is compatible with the plug-in's user interface views. You specify this with the

vsphere.client

property. Second, you can control whether the plug-in is compatible with a vCenter Server instance where it is registered. You specify this with the

vcenter.server

property.

For example, if your plug-in is compatible with only an on-premises vCenter Server, you should specify that limitation in the

vcenter.server

object in the manifest. If the plug-in is registered in a cloud environment by mistake, vsphere-ui will refuse to deploy it. Or if your plug-in is incompatible with vSphere Client versions before 8.0, you should specify a minimum version of 8.0 in the

vsphere.client

manifest object. If a user connects to an earlier version vCenter Server, the client refuses to display any view served by the plug-in.

To specify compatibility constraints, modify the

requirements

object in the remote plug-in manifest file. The following nested objects are available to specify compatibility:

where

version

is an integer or a series of dot-separated integers:

n

[.

n

[.

n

[.

n

]]]

Although bracket and parenthesis look unmatched, "[" is inclusive and "(" is exclusive. For example [8.0, 9.0) means everything from 8.0 up to but not including 9.0.

A best practice is to specify the form

[

version

,

version

)

to indicate compatibility that begins at one major release and includes all minor releases up to, but not including, the next major release.

The

version

property in this context applies to a vCenter Server instance with which a remote plug-in is registered. If a version constraint is present in the

vcenter.server

object,

vsphere-ui

processes in all linked vCenter Server instances will verify that the registration instance satisfies the version constraint. If it does not,

vsphere-ui

will not deploy the plug-in for connections to the registration instance of vCenter Server. If the

version

property is absent, any

vsphere-ui

is free to deploy the plug-in if other compatibility constraints are satisfied.

where

version

is an integer or a series of dot-separated integers:

n

[.

n

[.

n

[.

n

]]]