Overview

The VMware vSphere Automation SDKs provide support for your client application infrastructure with services to perform management operations in your vSphere environment. The vSphere Automation SDK for Python also contains samples that demonstrate how the libraries work with other vSphere APIs.

The version 6.5 SDK supports services exposing access to the following capabilities:

Service discovery (Lookup Service)
Authentication (Single Sign-On)
Session management
Tagging
Content Library
Virtual Machines
vCenter Server Appliance management

Note: Single Sign-On authentication is available through the VMware vCenter Single Sign-On API. Service discovery is available through the Lookup Service API.

Distribution Kit

When you extract the contents of the vSphere Automation SDK for Python distribution kit, the SDK files are placed in the VMware-vSphere-Automation-SDK-Python-6.5.0 directory:

VMware-vSphere-Automation-SDK-Python-6.5.0/ client/ docs/ SDK EULA.txt vSphere-Automation-SDK-Python-README.html

What's New

This release of the vSphere Automation SDK for Python included the following new features:

SDK rename.
vCloud Suite SDK for Python is now renamed to vSphere Automation SDK for Python.
URI scheme changes.
Creating a content library backed by a file storage URI is not supported. When you create a content library and specify a Windows Shared Folder as a storage backing, note that the file URI format is not supported and you should use smb://unc-server/path instead of file://unc-server/path.

Creating a subscribed content library with a file subscription URL is not supported. When you create a subscribed library you can use an HTTP or HTTPS subscription URL. The new URI schemes supported for this release are NFS, SMB, and DS. For more information about the supported URI formats, see the API Reference documentation.
Virtual Machine Management APIs.
This release includes Virtual Machine Management APIs that enable developers to manage the lifecycle and configure the hardware of a virtual machine.
The Tagging API is more powerful, including improved search methods and bulk tagging capability.
Appliance Management API.
This release of the SDK includes bindings for vCenter Server Appliance Management interfaces that enable developers to create client applications to configure, monitor, and manage the vCenter Server Appliance.
Certificate support.
In this release of the SDK, the samples support certificate validation.

Known Issues

The samples fail to connect to a vCenter Server instance by using an IPv6 address
When you run the samples provided with the vSphere Automation SDK for Python by using an IPv6 address for connecting to a vCenter Server instance, the samples fail to connect to the service endpoints with an error similar to the following:
... File "C:\tmp\lib\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 357, in prepare_url raise InvalidURL(*e.args)requests.exceptions.InvalidURL: Failed to parse: fd01:0:101:2605:0:a:0:1a61
Workaround:

Use an FQDN (hostname) to access the service endpoints when running the SDK samples.
Internal Server Error if Tagging Description Field is Empty
The Tag Category Description field is optional in the vSphere Web Services API, but it is mandatory in the vSphere Automation SDK. Therefore, if the description field is empty, the vSphere Automation SDK can return an internal server error that states, "the ‘description’ field of the Category model is empty".
Workaround:
When creating tags, do not leave the description field empty. If you do not have any description, you may add a whitespace character (i.e. space).
Unauthenticated exception following long-running operation
After an API client completes a long-running operation, such as an upload to the content library, the next operation might fail with an "Unauthenticated exception" message. This happens if the long running operation did not complete within the lifetime of the authentication session.

Workarounds:
- Keep the session alive by issuing short operations on another thread until the long running operation completes.
- Increase the session length using the VMware vSphere Web Client. Select Administration > System Configuration > Services > vAPI Endpoint > Manage > General, and increase the value for the Maximum session idle time.