In environments with many hosts, managing hosts with scripts is faster and less error prone than managing the hosts from the vSphere Web Client.
vSphere includes several scripting languages for host management. See the
vSphere Command-Line Documentation and the
vSphere API/SDK Documentation for reference information and programming tips and VMware Communities for additional tips about scripted management. The vSphere Administrator documentation focuses on using the
vSphere Web Client for management.
- vSphere PowerCLI
-
VMware vSphere PowerCLI is a Windows PowerShell interface to the vSphere API. vSphere PowerCLI includes PowerShell cmdlets for administering vSphere components.
vSphere PowerCLI includes more than 200 cmdlets, a set of sample scripts, and a function library for management and automation. See the vSphere PowerCLI Documentation.
- vSphere Command-Line Interface (vCLI)
- vCLI includes a set of commands for managing ESXi hosts and virtual machines. The installer, which also installs the vSphere SDK for Perl, runs Windows or Linux systems and installs ESXCLI commands, vicfg- commands, and a set of other vCLI commands. See vSphere Command-Line Interface Documentation.
Starting with vSphere 6.0, you can also use one of the scripting interfaces to the vCloud Suite SDK such as the vCloud Suite SDK for Python.