VMware discovery over Rest API instead of current API/SDK flow

[JohnCI]

Currently we rely on the old VMware API which was documented at https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.wssdk.apiref.doc_50/index.html&single=true
Was documented as the VMware documentation changed recently and the above URL is no longer available. The old/legacy API documentation was moved to https://code.vmware.com/apis/197/vsphere (version 5.5, the oldest version available online).

This shows the age of the underlaying API technology on which we rely on, the legacy SDK API.

As the current IT world is changing we see more vendors moving to Rest API, even UCMDB is slowly moving to Rest API.
This urges the need to provide the ability to perform VMware disocvery using Rest API instead of the legacy API that we use now. Most probably we can reuse a lot of the current scripts as most of the queries will provide the same output in a similar format.

Advantages:
no need for VIM credentials. We can use generic Rest API credentials as we do for other disocvery jobs.
some discovery performance improvement due to the Rest API advanteges
new options available only in the VMware Rest API
Rest API is a 6.x feature so it's supported for almost all of the versions used today. Very few Prod instances are still on VMware 5.x versions.

Documentation for Rest API can be found at https://code.vmware.com/web/sdk/6.5/vsphere-automation-rest

[Bill_Dyck]

Thank you for sharing your idea! It’s open for comments and kudos, and we’re looking forward to input from the community. Once there is enough community traction, it will be further reviewed by the product team