vCloud API Operations
The following sections describe commonly used vCloud API operations using vCloud SDK for .NET. The API descriptions in this chapter do not provide complete backup/restore implementation details, but focus instead on identifying a set of vCloud API methods that facilitate certain operations that use vCloud Director.
You should be familiar with vCloud Director and vCloud API concepts. Every resource in vCloud Director can be accessed using either its unique ID or HREF (the reference URL) in the vCloud API. The .NET SDK provides wrapper utility classes for commonly-used resources to make the programming easier.
The operations described in the following sections are:
- Getting Access to vCloud Director – Shows how to connect and authenticate with the vCloud API.
- Inventory Access – Shows how to retrieve data for different Organization types.
- Retrieving Catalog information – Shows how to retrieve Catalog entries for backup.
- Retrieving vApp Configuration – Shows how to list virtual machines and vApp configuration data.
- Preventing Updates to a vApp During Backup or Restore – Shows how to use maintenance mode to quiesce vApp configuration.
- Associating vCloud Resources with vSphere Entities – Shows how to get Managed Object References of virtual machines and storage resources from vCloud Director.
- Restoring vApps – Shows how to import virtual machines into vApps.