Explore Co-Development Opportunities

More information about VMware APIs and interfaces can be found at the VMware Developer Center and the Standard and Interfaces Technology section of vmware.com

VMware Academic Program provides variety of co-development benefits to the academic market. Faculty members can apply to the program to get free licenses of selected products for use within classroom, lab or research. Students can get access to limited duration license via their faculty members for use in their coursework. Qualified faculty members can also request source code request for use in their research. Finally, academic institutions can also purchase discounted licenses for use within their infrastructure.

No. SDK is available for download to anyone. Only R&D access or other trouble-shooting help require a certain level of TAP program membership. Please refer to the “Requirements” section under the SDK tab.

SDK Support Incidents enable developers to get email based support when integrating their products with VMware platform via SDK. Examples of the type of support provided are – general programming advice for using SDK and toolkits, pointers to documentation, API usage guidance, software and documentation bug validation and work-arounds.

TAP members at Select and levels are eligible at this point.

At this point, only email based support is available.

No. A partner gets a limited number of Free Incident Supports. Select, Premier and Global partners get 3, 5 and 7 incidents/year.

In near future, we will have an option for Select and above level partners to purchase additional SDK Incident Support.

Typical response time is 2 business days, and based on best-effort. This is not mission critical support.

VMware Infrastructure API, VI Toolkit for Windows, VI Perl Toolkit, Virtual Disk Development Kit and Guest SDK are eligible for SDK Incident Support. This list can change, so check here frequently.

During the TAP on-boarding process for your company, we send out an email with various licenses available to you, along with the SDK Incident Support Code. The code needs to be registered at https://www.vmware.com/account/index.do. Note that you may need to create a VMware Account (free) to complete this registration. Once the code is registered, you can go to www.vmware.com/support to file a Support Request (SR). Visit our 'how to' page for more information on how to file a support request.

In addition to the problem description, we need very clear information on your development environment, including code samples and log files, when applicable.

We have developed Knowledge Base Articles to help our developers collect SDK related diagnostic information.

• For VI SDK, Perl and PowerShell (SDK Support Form attached at the bottom of the Article - .RTF)
• For Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) (SDK Support Form attached at the bottom of the Article - .RTF)

We encourage our developers to visit the VMware Developer Center at http://vmware.com/developer where they can download documentation, sample code and SDKs. They can also view developer FAQs and participate in Forums

No. Access to VMware R&D is available via SDK Co-Development Project. Only Premier and Global partners are eligible for this benefit. R&D access is applicable when developers have questions regarding the design / architecture of their integration with VMware. A separate project proposal, submitted via the partner’s alliance manager, is required to get this process started.

IHVs who are TAP members at Select or above levels can apply for the IOVP program in order to certify their devices and/or drivers for use on VMware Infrastructure.

At the end of the qualification project, you can request the logo through your project manager.

Use the “Apply Now” button located on the specific page to apply. Note that additional due diligence may be required to gain access to these programs. The programs may also have restrictions in terms of the number and type of partners it can accommodate.

The best approach is to work through your TAP contact and make a request. Make sure to provide details on what you are looking for, your TAP membership level, whether you have looked at SDK and found something similar, and the business justification about what customer issues / use cases will these APIs address. You can also use the “suggestions” link on the Co-Development page to provide this info to us.

VMware is sharing control of its market leading ESX platform by empowering partners to access the source. Source access may be used by partners to make shared source contributions to the ESX or used to build interoperable, 'black box' functionality, i.e., partner proprietary software that interoperates with ESX source code. Partners will be able to use the source access to build differentiated, proprietary solutions or contribute code that provides greater interoperability or deeper integration between their products and VMware ESX.

The Community Source initiative will accelerate the creation of a rich variety of products that are aware of and exploit a virtualization platform in new ways. Secondly, customers can expect to see enhanced interoperability across VMware and 3rd party vendor solutions. Third, customers can expect to see new virtualization technologies come to market sooner as a result of this new collaborative approach.

The virtualization industry is expected to benefit greatly from this initiative. Creating a network of companies that have access to a common virtualization code base will enable the broader adoption of virtualization technology through more integrated, interoperable solutions. The collaborative approach will help foster and establish common interfaces for virtualization. Industry participants can bring new products that take advantage of the market momentum and acceptance of VMware solutions to gain immediate commercial acceptance and a faster return on investment.

Any partner of VMware can participate. The community source initiative is about building interoperable or joint solutions through open partnering and deep technology integration.

Participants will be able to contribute code for inclusion into ESX. Initially the maintainers will be from VMware but subsequently that can change. An Architecture Board comprised of partners and VMware will guide the creation of new interfaces for ESX. Partners can either contribute code or use the source access to create binary modules that interoperate with ESX. Alternatively, partners can choose to access only the APIs and not the source.

This is a tremendous opportunity for partners to not only drive interoperability, but also influence the evolution of VMware's products. By enhancing interoperability or building joint solutions, partners can capitalize on one of the fastest growing infrastructure technologies in the enterprise to grow their revenues. Partners can also use the source access to create 'black box' modules that preserve their unique proprietary innovations and competitive differentiation.

VMware consulted with several partners to design this program. Partners have expressed an interest in utilizing this program to provide, in source or binary form the following:

• Optimization of ESX to take advantage of unique virtualization hardware provided as part of server platforms
• Interoperability for new hardware component technologies like Infiniband for fast VMotion or universal I/O or I/O virtualization technologies
• Integration with proactive hardware monitoring technologies as well as diagnostic technologies to improve overall server availability
• Integration with enterprise network switching and management technologies for end-to-end network management
• New storage and data protection solutions that lower costs of system recovery through deep integration of storage hardware and virtualization software
• Management applications that provide end-end management from virtual machine to hardware elements

VMware provides a royalty-free license to its source code for creating contributions or black box modules that interoperate with ESX. The partners that contribute code provide, likewise, a royalty-free license and rights to, among other things, include the code with VMware products. Partners continue to own the patents, if any, that may be associated with their contributions or black-box modules. If partners create black box modules, VMware is neither obligated nor has a license to distribute the black-box module unless VMware contracts separately with a partner to do so.

The Community Source Program document will provide the definitive and binding version of the terms of the program. Participating partners will need to abide by the provisions of this document.

No. However, partners have to contribute only original works. Also partners may not contribute source code available under open source licenses since VMware may not be able to abide by the viral nature of such licenses.

The Community Source Program document will provide the definitive and binding version of the requirements on contributed code. Participating partners will need to abide by the provisions of this document.

Yes. However, access to ESX source code and other confidential information or intellectual property under the Community Source initiative is provided only for the explicit purpose of contributing to the Community Source initiative.

The Community Source Program document will provide the definitive and binding version of the use rights granted to individuals. Participating partners will need to abide by the provisions of this document.

Partners may sign a separate commercial, distribution agreement with VMware to gain the rights to redistribute VMware ESX. Current partners' redistribution rights remain unchanged by this program.

VMware is collaborating with a group of leading technology vendors to define virtualization industry interfaces. VMware will contribute its existing framework of interfaces based on its successful virtualization products to facilitate the development of these standards in an industry neutral manner. For more information, visit Open Interfaces and Formats.