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Quick Tip - Audit vCenter Server Role & Permission Usage

02.26.2025 by William Lam // 2 Comments

vCenter Server ships out of the box a number of system and custom roles, which can be used or users can create their own custom roles containing the required privileges. If you wanted to understand which roles are actively being used, the following PowerCLI snippet can help provide insights to roles that have been assigned. Furthermore, the script will also output to a file, that contains all he privileges defined for the vCenter Roles that are in active use.

$roles = Get-VIRole
$permissions = Get-VIPermission

$results = @{}
foreach ($permission in $permissions) {
    $role = $permission.Role
    if($results.ContainsKey($role)) {
        $results[$role]+=1
    } else {
        $results[$role]=1
    }
}

Write-Host "`nTotal Roles: $($roles.count)"
Write-Host "Total Roles Used: $($results.count)"
Write-Host "Role Usage:"

$results.GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object -Property Value -Descending

$outfile = "used-roles.txt"
foreach ($key in $results.keys) {
    $role = Get-VIRole $key
    if(!$role.IsSystem) {
        $key | Out-File -Append -LiteralPath $outfile
        "=========================================================" | Out-File -Append -FilePath $outfile
        $role.ExtensionData.Privilege | Out-File -Append -LiteralPath $outfile
        "" | Out-File -Append -LiteralPath $outfile
    }
}

Here is an example output of running the script:


Here is an example output from used-roles.txt file that is generated, which contains the list of privileges for each role that is in use:

Categories // Automation, PowerCLI, vSphere Tags // permission, vCenter Server

Quick Tip - Auditing ESXi boot firmware type

02.10.2025 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

I had a customer that recently reached out asking how they could easily audit their entire ESXi infrastructure to determine which hosts was still booting using the legacy BIOS firmware, which has been deprecated and will be removed in a future vSphere release, in favor of the industry standard UEFI firmware type.

In vSphere 8.0 Update 2, a new vSphere API property called firmwareType was introduced and added to the ESXi Hardware BIOS info object that makes it very simple to retrieve with the following PowerCLI 1-Liner:

(Get-VMHost).ExtensionData.Hardware.BiosInfo

Here is an example output for an ESXi host booting with UEFI firmware:


Here is an example output for an ESXi host booting with BIOS firmware:


Since this vSphere API property was recently introduced in vSphere 8.0 Update 2, if you attempt to use this on an ESXi host that is not running 8.0 Update 2, then you will see the field being blank if you are using a newer release of PowerCLI that understands this new property or it will simply not show if you are using an older version of PowerCLI.


Alternatively, if you still need to retrieve this information, you can go directly to ESXi host via SSH, not ideal but you can use the following VSISH command to retrieve this exact information:

vsish -e get /hardware/firmwareType

Categories // Automation, ESXi, PowerCLI Tags // bios, ESXi, firmware, UEFI

Quick Tip - Retrieving vSAN usage & overhead information using vSAN API

12.10.2024 by William Lam // 2 Comments

Within the vSphere UI, you can view a detailed breakdown of your vSAN storage utilization including various system overhead by selecting a specific vSAN Cluster and then navigating to Monitor->vSAN->Capacity as shown in the screenshot below.


Different vSAN configuration such using vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA) or vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) and whether capabilities like vSAN Deduplication and Compression is enabled will yield different utilization metrics that are displayed.

I recently had an inquiry asking how to retrieve the vSAN Deduplication and Compression overhead information using PowerCLI?

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, PowerCLI, VSAN Tags // VSAN

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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