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Managing ESXi Embedded Host Client settings

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There was a question the other day about managing ESXi Embedded Host Client (EHC) settings which you can find by click on the logged-in username and navigating to the "Settings" section as shown in the screenshot below. Customers can manage things like the default VM Console used whether that is the HTML5 VMRC or the Standalone VMRC to auto-refresh and even sharing usage information to help improve the product back to VMware.


In addition to configuring the EHC settings within UI, you can also manage them via automation using the vSphere API and any one of your favorite vSphere SDK/CLIs. The EHC settings are exposed as a set of ESXi Advanced Settings as shown in the screenshot below. These settings are applied on a per-ESXi basis and NOT on a per-user basis.


Below is a table that summarizes the 7 different EHC settings which you can programmatically query to retrieve their current value, default value and whether they have been overridden simliar to what the UI provides today.

Key Description Default Value
UserVars.HostClientCEIPOptIn  Whether or not to opt-in for CEIP in Host Client: 0 for ask 1 for yes 2 for no 0
UserVars.HostClientDefaultConsole  Default console type in Host Client webmks
UserVars.HostClientEnableMOTDNotification  Whether or not to enable MOTD notification on login for Host Client 1
UserVars.HostClientEnableVisualEffects  Whether or not to enable visual effects for Host Client 1
UserVars.HostClientSessionTimeout  Default timeout for Host Client sessions in seconds 900
UserVars.HostClientShowOnlyRecentObjects  Whether or not to show only recent objects in Host Client 1
UserVars.HostClientWelcomeMessage  Welcome message displayed on login in Host Client  Welcome to {{hostname}}

Note: The language settings is based on your browser settings which you can overridden, but it looks like we may not have exposed that as a configurable setting via automation.

Configure vRealize Automation to use Platform Services Controller as External Identity Provider

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I was doing some research on an inquiry that I had received from a customer who was interested in configuring their vRealize Automation (vRA) instance to use vCenter's Platform Services Controller (PSC) as an External Identity Provider (IDP) rather than the default VMware Identity Manager (vIDM) which vRA supports natively out of the box. vIDM already supports a large number of websso applications as seen here and it itself can also be used as an External IDP to integrate with things like Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) for example.

For some customers who are more familiar with the PSC, this is a convenient way to unify their authentication between the different vRealize products which support vIDM and integrating that directly with PSC. Since both solutions spoke SAML, it was merely figuring out process on setting up the External IDP using the PSC. In reading some of our internal Wikis and working with one of the vIDM Engineers, since I was stuck on a particular step, I was able to finally get this to work which I have outlined the steps below. I also learned that we had officially supported this since vRA 7.0 which was great to hear as well.

I know there are number of customers who would also like to see the reverse of this configuration, where PSC can use vIDM as an External IDP. I know this is something the PSC team is currently looking into for External IDP support. If this is something that you are interested in or would like to see specific External IDP setup/configuration, feel free to leave a comment.

Pre-Requisite: 

  • Join Platform Services Controller (PSC) to Active Directory (instructions here & here)
  • Join vRealize Automation (vRA) Appliance to Active Directory (instructions here)

In my lab environment, I have deployed an Embedded VCSA 6.5 (this also works with an External PSC) and vRealize Automation 7.2 (this was prior to 7.3 getting released but should work as well).

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Automating the new native VCSA bootstrap "Easy Install" in vSAN 6.6

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In case you missed the previous article, have a read here which goes into greater detail behind the new VCSA bootstrap installer (also known as vSAN Easy Install) which is part of the new vSAN 6.6 release. As I hinted at the end of the previous post, customers not only have a simplified way of bootstrapping the VCSA on vSAN from a UI standpoint but they can also completely automate this leveraging some of the new vSAN Management 6.6 APIs, which are the same APIs that the UI uses.

A new Managed Object called VsanVcsaDeployerSystem is now available when connecting to either a standalone ESXi host as well as a vCenter Server. It contains the following three methods:

Here is the workflow for automating the VCSA bootstrap installer:

Step 1 - Connect directly to the ESXi host which you wish to bootstrap vSAN. You will use the VsanPrepareVsanForVcsa() API which accepts a list of disks for either a Hybrid or All-Flash vSAN datastore.

Step 2 - Deploy the VCSA like you normally would using the CLI Installer. You will specify the ESXi host that you had just prepared in Step 1 which includes the vSAN Datastore that was setup as part of that process.

Step 3 - Once the VCSA has been successfully deployed, you will connect to the vCenter Server and use the VsanPostConfigForVcsa() API which will create a vSphere Datacenter, vSphere Cluster and enable it with vSAN (which can also include Dedupe/Compression if you are using an All-Flash setup) and then automatically add the ESXi host that you had just bootstrapped. If you have provisioned other ESXi hosts that have not been configured with vSAN, you can also include that into the API request. The really nice thing about this "post" API is that rather than having to call into several existing vSphere APIs to setup vCenter Server, you can do all of that just using this single API!

To help demonstrate the use of the these new vSAN Management APIs, I have created a simple Python script which exercises these new APIs called vsan-vcsa-deployer-sample.py The script supports three operations: listdisk, prepare and post.

Here is an example of running the listdisk operation which will list all available disks that are currently not in use and can be used by vSAN:

python vsan-vcsa-deployer-sample.py -s 192.168.1.100 -u root -p VMware1! --operation listdisk

Once you have the disks information, you can then use the prepare operation as shown below to bootstrap your ESXi host:

python vsan-vcsa-deployer-sample.py -s 192.168.1.100 -u root -p VMware1! --operation prepare --cache "SAMSUNG MZVPV128" --capacity "Samsung SSD 850"


At this point, you are now ready to deploy the VCSA using the CLI Installer. Once that has completed, you can complete the process by using the post operation and provide the required parameters to setup vCenter Server including the ESXi host that you had just bootstrapped so it can be added to the vCenter Server inventory as shown below:

python vsan-vcsa-deployer-sample.py -s 192.168.1.200 -u '*protected email*' -p VMware1! --operation post --datacenterName "VSAN-Datacenter" --clusterName "VSAN-Cluster" --esxName 192.168.1.100 --esxUsername root --esxPassword VMware1!


Once the post operation has completed, you will have a fully configured vCenter Server which you can check by logging into the vSphere Web Client. Pretty slick, if you ask me!