I received Steve Jin’s book VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere two weeks ago. For those who don’t know Steve, he is the man behind the VI and vSphere Java API which can be found here. But that’s not the topic today, the topic is the book Steve recently published. The book is available via Amazon and most other large (online) bookstores.
VMware VI and vSphere SDK takes you on a tour through the SDK trenches. Knowing the SDK is essential when scripting or programming with for instance Powershell, Perl, Java and Python.
I am not a developer and always had a tough time understanding the structure and getting my head wrapped around the “managed objects” and “data objects” concepts. Steve managed to get me on the track. I’m half way through the book right now and can already highly recommend it to everyone who wants to know more about the SDK, everyone who recently started scripted and is running into limitations of provided examples, and everyone who wants to know more about the core of vSphere / VI3.
One of the Amazon reviews that stood out to me is the following by David Rousseau:
If like me you are tired of using vSphere or VI 2.5 official SDK, this book is for you.
Steve Jin has done a great job simplifying SDK access and improving performance drastically.
After using his VI Java API described in this book, you will no longer return to official VI Java SDK or other VI Toolkit.You can code in Java but also in Python using Jython or IronPython.
We’ve choosed Jython and coupled it with some great web frameworks in python like Django. We’ve built a powerful web app exposing a RESTful API.
Add to this a real talent in popularizing VI objects in the SDK, this book saved me lots of time.