I am using the free version of vmWares vSphere Hypervision 6. The problem I have is that I want to use the Management API.
I want to start and stop vm's and also take and reset to snapshots via scripts but the API is read-only for the free version. I used the sample scripts from https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi The scripts with write access are failing with
Caught vmodl fault : Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation.
Is there a way to enable this or another way to access this api or do I have to buy the Standard license?
You must pay to use any write mode operations in the vSphere API. If you run the HostSystem in demo mode which works for 60 days you can use the full API, the same goes for vCenter, but after those 60 days are up you will loose the write mode API features.
Edit Here is a KB article. Its old but still valid and this part applies today:http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1023990
Notes:
vCLI, PowerCLI, and vSphere SDK for Perl are limited to read-only access for the free vSphere Hypervisor edition. To enable full functionality of vCLI on a VMware ESXi host, the host must be licensed with vSphere Essentials, vSphere Essential Plus, vSphere Standard, vSphere Advanced, vSphere Enterprise, or vSphere Enterprise Plus.
Where it says for Perl should just be vSphere SDK.