In one of our projects we use VMware Server 2 and ESXi for automatic deployment of our nightly builds. There are some approaches which can be used:

VIX API

The easiest way is to use the VIX API which has to be installed (!!) in conjunction with VMware Tasks.

The big plus of this method is that it works even for the VMware Workstation and VMware Server v1.

VI API/vSphere Web Services

You might soon find out that the VIX API might not be sufficient for you. The next step is to use the VI web services:

https://vmserver/sdk/vimService?wsdl

Attention: You cannot simply add this as service reference to a C# project. VMware added some functions to generate a valid client: DOWNLOAD.

There is a SDK available for this contains the documentation (and some samples) but the really cool thing here is that the service can be evaluated live using any browser:

https://vmserver/mob

BTW: Not all functions are implemented on the VMware Server. Invoking the RetrieveServiceContent function will show you all available services (and their instances).

Simple Storage Access

If you need to access files from one of the datastores, there is no need for big API. The following URL format provides access to all files:

https://vmserver/folder/<filepath on datastore>?dsName=<datastore name>&dcPath=<datacenter path>

Since this feels a little bit odd, here is an example: To access the file [standard] ff_int\ff_dev.vmx on VMware Server use the following URL:

https://vmserver/folder/ff_int/ff_dev.vmx?dsName=standard

BTW: As you can see, the dcPath has not to be specified for VMware Server, only for ESXi.

UPDATE: If you specify a directory and not a file, you’ll get a list of all files in that folder.