Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

This week I overwhelmed Robert Baumstark with a lot of questions regarding his ViClient.dll. I started with downloading the pre build dll files from Rob’s website and added them as a reference to my Visual Basic application. So far so good, then I pasted the code from Rob under a button and there was trouble in paradise.  Rob warned that this code was written into an e-mail without testing and compiling so it could contain some typo’s and I did. Rob gave me a lot of good tips and hints and after a few hours of struggling there began to shine some light at the horizon. The hardest part of writing your own VMware VB application is to understand how the object references can address an object within your VI-3 environment . I took me some time to get a good grip on that subject. When you finally have all the pieces together you can start programming :-). I created a little demo witch query’s the VI-3 environment for information about Virtual Machines. Especially the number of CPU’s but my final goal is to query the VM’s that won’t start automatically when the ESX rebooted. This is the most forgotten setting in the properties of a VM and this topic isn’t covered in the VI3-IC course either. Another function I would like to add to my first application is to query all virtual machines in a DRS cluster for a connection to the CD player. This connection is important when you want to V-Motion a VM to another host. So I am happy to announce that my first handy application has seen the light. When you want to take a look at the source code just scroll down.  

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During the VMware TTT DSA class in march 2007 two of my fellow VMware trainers discovered how to use the vim sh command to put an ESX server into maintenance mode. After the information was posted in the Dutch VMware user group I discovered that there are a lot of other undocumented possibility’s regarding he vim sh command. I tried to squeeze some extra information from Jeremy van Doorn during an interview I recorded at the TSX in Nice. After a lot of hacking I created a script witch you can use to lookup witch hardware is in your ESX server. Last week Gavin Jolliffe and Paul Davey from Xtravirt published the Guide to VMware ‘vimsh’ white paper. This paper discusses the currently undocumented VMware ESX ‘vimsh’ command and seeks to explore its options and possibilities at a high level. This paper assumes the reader has good technical knowledge of VMWare Virtual Infrastructure 3 together with some basic scripting experience.

Virtual Rob has released the source code for the VIClient.DLL that was included with his Virtual MAC tool. The download links can all be found @ his new blog:  http://virtual-rob.blogspot.com/. Using the regular SDK from VB (or any other .NET language) isn't that hard. The hard part is getting all the references in place and stub DLLs built.So Rob has updated his blog with instructions on how to do just that.  And if you're still having problems, he included compiled versions of the stub DLLs. He has also cleaned up the code and released an updated version of his VIClient.DLL, as well as its full source code.  Right now I guess thats about the closest thing there is to a VI VB Toolkit - though it would work equally well from any .NET language.