With the release of VirtualCenter 2.5, VMware offers third-party developers and partners the ability to extend the VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client) with their own product-specific menu selections or toolbar icons that provide access to external, Web-based functionality. These extensions, or VI Client Plug-ins, comprise the set of configuration files, URLs, icons, and Web-server-hosted resources that work together to display extended menu items, icons, and other user interface (UI) items in the VI Client and provide access to the external functionality.
Link to the technical Note that provides information about how to extend the VI Client. Provides background concepts as well as step-by-step instructions.
Link to the XML Schema Definition file that defines the elements and their usage for the VI Client Plug-in configuration file.
Monday, April 21. 2008
Getting Started with VI Client Plug-ins
Saturday, April 19. 2008
Announcing "Programming and Managing VMware Infrastructure" by O'Reilly
Andrew Kutz, the man behind viplugins.com is busy writing a new book. This book will be the definitive guide for systems administrators and developers eager to make use of the VI and CIM SDKs. The book shows their use with several popular languages, including the VI Perl Toolkit and VI Toolkit (for Windows) as well as C#, Java, and Python. Advanced topics, such as creating client plugins and communicating with VMware through its web service, are also covered.
Friday, April 18. 2008
Portable Apps is cool
This week I delivered a DSA training, one of the students was carrying an USB stick with all his favorite applications. When he plugged it into a PC he could run them immediately. I thought wow this looks like some sort of application virtualization. The beauty of it all is that you can get this for free at Portable Apps. Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use. The Portable Apps Suite™ is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share.
Tuesday, April 15. 2008
VMware DiskMount Utility
The Virtual Disk Development Kit contains a tool called the VMware DiskMount Utility. This utility mounts VMware virtual disks under Microsoft Windows. VMware DiskMount is a utility for Windows and Linux hosts that allows you to mount an unused virtual disk as a separate drive or partition without needing to connect to the virtual disk from within a virtual machine. You can mount specific volumes of a virtual disk if the virtual disk is partitioned. After you mount a virtual disk, you can read from and write to a mounted disk as if it were a separate file system with its own drive letter or mount point on your computer. For example, you could scan the disk for viruses or transfer files between the host system and a powered off virtual machine. When you are finished using a mounted virtual disk, you should unmount it so the virtual disk can be used by virtual machines again. Here's the output :
vmware-mount.exe /?
VMware-mount [driveletter:] [path-to-virtual-disk] [options]
VMware DiskMount Utility version 3.0.3 build-84675
Copyright (c) 1998-2008 VMware, Inc.All rights reserved.
This utility mounts VMware virtual disks under Microsoft Windows.
Use "VMware-mount" without arguments to list the currently-mounted volumes.
/v:N mounts volume N of a virtual disk (default=1)
/d deletes the mapping to a virtual drive volume
/f forcibly deletes the mapping to a virtual drive volume
/p displays the partitions (volumes) on a virtual disk (local disks only)
/L lists the currently-mounted volumes
/i:InventoryPath inventory path of the VM owning the virtual disk
/m:[w|n] mount in read-'w'rite or 'n'on-persistent mode
/h:host name or address of server to access managed virtual disk
/u:userid user name on the server
/s:password password on the server
/P:port# port number to access the server (default=902)
/? displays this usage information
VMware Virtual Disk Manager
The Virtual Disk Development Kit contains a tool called the Virtual Disk Manager utility to manipulate offline VMDK files on Windows or Linux (clone, create, relocate, rename, grow, shrink, or defragment). Virtual Disk Manager manipulates virtual disk (VMDK) files, and has many useful capabilities. One key feature is the ability to enlarge a virtual disk so that its maximum capacity is larger than it was when you created it. If you need more disk space on a given virtual disk but do not want to add another virtual disk or use ghosting software to transfer the data on a virtual disk to a larger virtual disk, you can change the maximum size of the disk. Of course this is not possible with physical hard drives.Here's the output:
VMware Virtual Disk Manager - build 85132.
Usage: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe OPTIONS <disk-name> | <mount-point>
Offline disk manipulation utility
Operations, only one may be specified at a time:
-c : create disk. Additional creation options must
be specified. Only local virtual disks can be
created.
-d : defragment the specified virtual disk. Only
local virtual disks may be defragmented.
-k : shrink the specified virtual disk. Only local
virtual disks may be shrunk.
-n <source-disk> : rename the specified virtual disk; need to
specify destination disk-name. Only local virtual
disks may be renamed.
-p : prepare the mounted virtual disk specified by
the drive-letter for shrinking.
-r <source-disk> : convert the specified disk; need to specify
destination disk-type. For local destination disks
the disk type must be specified.
-x <new-capacity> : expand the disk to the specified capacity. Only
local virtual disks may be expanded.
Virtual Disk Development Kit
The Virtual Disk API, or VixDiskLib, is a set of function calls to manipulate virtual disk files in VMDK format (virtual machine disk). Function call semantics are patterned after C system calls for file I/O. This API enables partners and software vendors to manage VMDK directly from their applications. These library functions can manipulate virtual disk on a VMware Workstation or similar product (hosted disk) or virtual disk contained within a VMFS volume on an ESX Server (managed disk). Hosted disk is an original VMware concept meaning a disk managed by the Workstation host for a guest operating system. The Virtual Disk Development Kit is a collection of C libraries, code samples, utilities, and documentation to help you create or access VMware virtual disk storage. The kit includes:
The Virtual Disk library, a set of C function calls to manipulate virtual disk (VMDK) files.
C++ code samples that you can build with either Visual Studio or the GNU C compiler.
Virtual Disk Manager utility to manipulate offline VMDK files on Windows or Linux (clone, create, relocate, rename, grow, shrink, or defragment).
DiskMount utility to access files and file systems in virtual disks on Windows or Linux.
Documentation about the Virtual Disk library and the command-line utilities.