vSphere SDK for Perl Programming Guide - Documentation - VMware

vSphere SDK for Perl Programming Guide
Using Filters on the Utility Application Command Line
When you run a utility application that takes arguments specifying names for virtual machines, host systems,
and so on, you must supply the exact name on the command line. Regular expressions are not accepted.
When you run a utility application, there are some restrictions on special characters:
In virtual machine names, you must represent the character forward slash (/) as %2f, backward slash (\)
as %5c, and percent (%) as %25 when they appear in virtual machine names.
On UNIX‐like command lines, surround names that contain special characters with single‐quotes, and use
percent (%) as the escape character.
For example, to search for the virtual machine San Jose, run this command:
perl vminfo.pl --username Administrator --password 'secret' --server myserver --vmname 'San Jose'
To search for the virtual machine San-Jose/5, run this command:
perl vminfo.pl --username Administrator --password 'secret' --server myserver --vmname
'San-Jose%2f5'
Retrieving the ServiceInstance Object on a vSphere Host
You can retrieve the ServiceInstance object to access the ServiceContent or to retrieve the current time on
an ESX/ESXi or vCenter Server system.
If you want to retrieve the current time, you must retrieve a ServiceInstance object and call its
CurrentTime() method. You can use the Vim::get_service_instance() subroutine to retrieve the object.
To retrieve the current VMware host time
1 Connect to the VMware host:
Util::connect();
2 Retrieve the ServiceInstance object:
my $service_instance = Vim::get_service_instance();
3 Retrieve the current host time:
$service_instance->CurrentTime();
Saving and Using Sessions
The vSphere SDK for Perl library includes several subroutines that save and reuse sessions, so you can
maintain sessions across scripts. Using sessions can enhance security: Instead of storing passwords in scripts,
you can run the Vim::login() subroutine in your script using the name of the session file. The session file
does not expose password information.
Saving Sessions
You can save a session using the subroutine call syntax as follows:
Vim::save_session():
...
# usual login procedure with connect()
Util::connect();
...
# save the global session in file .mysession
Vim::save_session(session_file => '.mysession');
36 VMware, Inc.