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Quick Tip - Listing vSphere Global Permissions using PowerShell

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Parsing complex HTML is definitely challenging, even with PowerShell. I had hoped to use the free tier of ChatGPT and their latest 4o model to help build a PowerShell function for HTML parsing, but I kept running into system limits and the AI often misunderstood what I was asking for.

I finally gave in and purchased the $20 subscription so that I could expand on my 2017 blog post about automating vSphere Global Permissions and add support for listing global permissions, which came at a request from a recent user.

It turns out calling the private vSphere Global Permissions API via the vSphere MOB to show all current vSphere Global Permissions is extremely difficult due to the complex HTML that is rendered by the vSphere MOB. In fact, it took 25 iterations before I finally arrived at the solution using ChatGPT's 4o model. In several of the iterations, it ended up going backwards in progress, so that was pretty annoying!

Not sure if this is the new fancy "vibe coding" trend that I had experienced ... 😅

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vCenter Server Identity Federation with Pocket ID

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Having explored various OIDC identity providers, including Authentik, KeyCloak and Synology SSO, I recently came across Pocket ID, a super basic OIDC provider. Instead of using traditional username and passwords, Pocket ID only supports passkeys authentication based on the WebAuthn standard, which means you can login to your vCenter Server or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment using a physical device like a Yubico YubiKey or Apple Face ID.


Disclaimer: Pocket ID is not an officially supported vCenter Server IdP, please use at your own risk.

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vCenter Server Identity Federation with Synology SSO

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I recently found another cool use case for my Synology NAS, which is using the Synology SSO application to setup vCenter Server Identity Federation. I had not considered looking at Synology, but I was recently setting up some additional DNS entries and noticed there was SSO Server application, that supports both SAML2 and OIDC.


For those with a Synology, this is a super easy way to get hands on experience with configuring vCenter Server Identity Federation and this can all run locally within your environment, unlike some of the other external identity providers which typically will require direct/in-direction connection to your vCenter Server or require a SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) proxy server.

Disclaimer: Synology SSO is currently not an officially supported vCenter Server IdP, please use at your own risk.

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