Support host agnostic VM deployment and retrieval as well as templates

[t-ambur]

4.0.0

• Changes the default method of retrieving VirtualMachine objects from their list

  • From: Being scoped just to the 'child' server in a vCenter
  • To: All available virtual machines as visible via the vCenter inventory
  • The old method of getting a list of virtual machines is available by specifying legacy_list=True to the ESXiClient object when creating it

• Adds support for Virtual Machine 'Templates' in vCenter arrangements

  • vm.is_template() for determining if a VM has been converted to a template
  • vm.to_template() to convert a VM to a clonable template (THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE)
  • vm.deploy_from_template(...) to create a new VM from a VM template

• Adds a new client.is_vcenter() method to the ESXi client object

• Adds new properties to VirtualMachine object for determining their runtime (child) ESXi host:

  • vm.host_system reveals the vim.HostSystem
  • vm.esxi_host_name reveals the 'hostname' of the ESXi (child) server owning this VM's resources

• Adds new parameters (host and resource_pool) to vm.create and vm.upload to control which ESXi (child) host and resource pool is deployed to (default is still the legacy operation of 'the currently connected host')

• VirtualMachine to 'str' now attempts to show the runtime host instead of the connected child server in vCenter

• Fix several regex warnings from this library in Python version 3.12+ by adding the 'raw string' character in front of the regex strings

• Silences the deprecation warning coming from this library about the pinning of setuptools pkg_resources API