Calling Methods

After you have retrieved the view object that corresponds to a managed object, you can run methods on that view to make use of the managed object’s services.

You can run a method by specifying the method's name parameter, like in the following example.

$vm->MigrateVM (name => 'productionVM');

The type of parameter required by the method depends on the operation defined in the vSphere API. It might be a simple type, data object, or managed object reference. For information about specific parameters and data types, see the vSphere API Reference Guide.

Blocking operations are run as methods on a view object. For example, to suspend a virtual machine, make the following call.

$vm_view->SuspendVM();

You can execute any operation that is defined for a managed object as a method on a corresponding view object. Because the vSphere SDK for Perl creates an accessor and a mutator method (getter and setter method) for each property defined in the managed object, you can reference the name of any property as a method call of the view, like in the following example.

my $network_name = $network_view->name

The vSphere SDK for Perl allows you to pass a view object to a method that requires a ManagedObjectReference. For example, if you have the view that represents a host ($host), you can pass the view to the powerOn() method as follows.

my $host = Vim::find_entity_view (view_type => 'HostSystem', name => 'my host');
my $vm = Vim::find_entity_view (view_type => 'VirtualMachine', name => 'my virtual machine');
$vm->powerOn (host => $host)

Note:

Specifying Untyped Arguments in Scheduled Tasks and Callbacks discusses using the vSphere SDK for Perl PrimType structure in some calls.