This session will focus on how to leverage basic skills with PowerCLI to understand the vCenter API, which many VMware administrators have not interacted with directly, and we'll also learn how to interact with an API.

We will cover some core concepts about PowerShell and PowerCLI, then look at some side-by-side comparisons between native PowerCLI cmdlets, the .NET objects returned by Get-View cmdlet, and finally the vSphere API for automation. We'll also use the vCenter API for reporting and basic automation tasks, while comparing the performance to PowerCLI cmdlets. We'll wrap up with creating a VM from the API Explorer and Postman tso that everyone can see how simple it is to take the first step.

While this may be slightly more difficult to understand, the performance benefits at scale are dramatic, and learning how to interact with the vCenter API can translate to other platforms outside of PowerCLI for automation.