Upcoming vSphere.Next Features Hinted in vSphere 4.1 APIs?

Back in December, I created a VTMN document - How to browse the internal vSphere APIs which shows you how to access some of the undocumented vSphere API properties and methods. This was done prior to vSphere 4.1 release, but by looking at the python SDK stubs located on an ESX or ESXi host, you can see some of the some of the upcoming features that would eventually be released in vSphere 4.1.

Here is a look at some of these features found in the vSphere 4.0 SDK stubs:

Features known:

API STRING	FEATURE
vim.version.drs	Distributed Resource Scheduler
vim.version.dvs	Distributed Virtual Switch
vim.version.ft	Fault Tolerance
vim.version.ipv6	IPv6

Features eventually known:

API STRING	FEATURE
vim.version.iorm	I/O Resource Management what is now known as Storage I/O Control or SIOC

Features unknown:

API STRING	FEATURE
vim.version.fed	Unknown - (Federation?)
vim.version.lc	Unknown - (Related properties in API referenced Linked Clones)
vim.version.logan	Unknown - (Related properties in API referenced MediaAnalysisManager
vim.version.policy	Unknown - (Rrelated properties in API referenced PolicyManager
vim.version.svm	Unknown - (Rrelated properties in API referenced svmVmxDiskCopy)
vim.version.uber	Unknown

Now, looking at vSphere 4.1 SDK stubs, I noticed a slew of new "potential" features that VMware is or maybe working on:

vim.version.cvp - ?unknown? (Client Virtualization Platform? below are properties and methods associated with this feature)

• SetDisplayTopologyModes
• VirtualMachinePowerPolicyPowerMode
• VirtualMachinePowerPolicyCpuMode
• requestedReplicationCanBeDeferred
• userAllowedToDeferReplication
• policyCacheLifetime

vim.version.dev - ?device? (below are properties and methods associated with this feature which seem to be related to FCoE support with vSphere)

• DiscoverFcoeHbas
• FcoeConfigFcoeSpecification
• removeFcoeHba
• userAllowedToDeferReplication

vim.version.h20 - (unknown, but related properties in API referenced PropertyProviderManager)

• InternalPropertyProviderManager

vim.version.hbr - ?unknown? (Host Based Replication? below are properties and methods associated with this feature)

• hostBasedReplicationSupported

vim.version.vcp - ?unknown? (VM Component Protection? below are properties and methods associated with this feature)

• ClusterVmComponentProtectionSettings
• ClusterVmComponentProtectionSettingsFtVmReaction

What you see here are not just string text found in the SDK stubs, these features are actually implemented in the current release of vSphere 4.1. Though undocumented, if you can reverse engineer where these methods and properties are located, you can actually execute them.

Here is an example of executing discoverFcoeHbas method via the MOB which is part of the Host's StorageSystem:

I am no fortune teller, but I suspect we may see some of these features much sooner than later ;)