You can access the VMware Storage Policy Server by connecting to a vCenter Server system and obtaining a vCenter session cookie.

The Storage Policy client API is described in the pbmService.wsdl file that is included in the VMware Storage Policy SDK. The API defines a set of request operations that you use to manipulate storage profiles. The VMware Storage Policy SDK includes Java bindings for the SPBM service WSDL.

To gain access to the Storage Policy Server, your client connects to a vCenter Server system and obtains the vCenter session cookie. Then you can use the vCenter session cookie to establish the connection with the Storage Policy Server. See Establish a Connection with the VMware Storage Policy Server.

After you establish a Storage Policy Server connection, your client uses language-specific Web Services access objects and the PbmServiceInstance and PbmServiceInstanceContent objects to access the Storage Policy managed objects and their methods.

The Storage Policy Web Services access objects are language-specific API binding objects that are generated from the Storage Policy WSDL. The VMware Storage Policy SDK contains JAXWS bindings to the Storage Policy API. The JAXWS bindings include the PbmService and PbmPortType Web Services access objects.

  • PbmService – Provides access to the PbmPortType object and support for the Storage Policy Service connection.
  • PbmPortType – Provides access to Storage Policy methods.

The following code fragment shows the sequence of calls that you use to obtain access to the Storage Policy API methods.

Access to Storage Policy API Methods

import com.vmware.pbm.PbmService;
import com.vmware.pbm.PbmPortType;
import com.vmware.pbm.PbmServiceInstanceContent;
[...]
PbmService = new PbmService()
PbmPortType pbmPort = PbmService.getPbmPort()
PbmServiceInstanceContent pbmServiceContent = pbmPort.pbmRetrieveServiceContent

The following figure shows the resulting PbmServiceInstanceContent data object and the Storage Policy managed objects that provide access to Storage Policy services.


Figure 1. Storage Policy Service Instance Content
Diagram shows relationships of managed objects and data objects in the Service Content.

The PbmServiceInstanceContent object contains managed object references to the Storage Policy services. The set of Storage Policy services include the profile manager, placement solver, and compliance manager.

Service Managed Object Description
Profile Manager PbmProfileProfileManager Create and update VMware storage profiles to define storage requirements.
Placement Solver PbmPlacementSolver Identify candidate datastores for storage locations.
Compliance Manager PbmComplianceManager Check compliance between storage requirements and capabilities.