The vSphere SDK for Perl includes utility applications and sample scripts for common administration tasks.

Table 1. Common Administrative Tasks and SDK Utilities
Task Script Location
Discovery (logging in) connect.pl /apps/general
Performance monitoring viperformance.pl (retrieves performance counters from host) /apps/performance
Virtual machine power operations vmcontrol.pl /apps/vm
Virtual machine snapshot and restore functionality vmsnapshot.pl, snapshotmanager.pl /apps/vm
Virtual machine migration vmmigrate.pl /apps/vm
Host operations, for example, adding a standalone host to a vCenter Server system, shutting down and rebooting a host, and so on hostops.pl /apps/host
Viewing or changing of CPU or memory share allocation on a virtual machine sharesmanager.pl /apps/vm

Some tasks require additional scripting. See Writing vSphere SDK for Perl Scripts.