Recently I was given a requirement to enhance a vRO workflow which added a VM to disaster Recovery policy in SRM. The existing workflow by default added all VMs added to Priority 3 (normal) start up order. My requirement was to allow the user to specify the start up order.

Having a quick look at the environment, I could see that the SRM plugin was used so felt this was a good start – however it soon became apparent that it wasn’t ideal for me given that the information we can get out of the plugin is limited never mind having to manipulate that data. Looking online , it seemed that using PowerShell was the common answer to automating this, but I also had a constraint of not introducing any new plugins. During my online hunt I found the SRM 6.5 API guide and this became a nice resource. By browsing this API guide it became apparent that SOAP API was my only option and I continued to refer to this guide in order to find a solution – https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/srm-api/site-recovery-manager-65-api.pdf.

I decided to write this blog because there seemed a sever lack of info on using SOAP for SRM. Continue reading →