Accessing the vSphere Server from a Web Services Client

The steps that use the vSphere Web Services API to create the connection are:

Procedure

Create a managed object reference for the ServiceInstance object on the server.

ManagedObjectReference SVC_INST_REF = new ManagedObjectReference();
SVC_INST_REF.setType("ServiceInstance");
SVC_INST_REF.setValue("ServiceInstance");

Create a VimService object to obtain a VimPort binding provider. The BindingProvider object provides access to the protocol fields in request/response messages. Retrieve the request context which will be used for processing message requests.
The VimServiceLocator and VimPortType objects provide access to vSphere servers. The getVimPort method returns a VimPortType object that provides access to the vSphere API methods.
```
vimService = new VimService();
vimPort = vimService.getVimPort();
Map<String, Object> ctxt = ((BindingProvider) vimPort).getRequestContext();
```
Store the Server URL in the request context and specify true to maintain the connection between the client and server. The client API will include the server's HTTP cookie in its requests to maintain the session. If you do not set this to true, the server will start a new session with each request.
```
ctxt.put(BindingProvider.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY, url);
ctxt.put(BindingProvider.SESSION_MAINTAIN_PROPERTY, true);
```

Retrieve the ServiceInstance content (the ServiceContent data object) and log in to the server.

serviceContent = vimPort.retrieveServiceContent(SVC_INST_REF);
vimPort.login(serviceContent.getSessionManager(),
              userName,
              password,
              null);
isConnected = true;