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Exploring new VCSA VAMI API w/PowerCLI: Part 10

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In Part 10, we are going to take a look at local user management for the VAMI interface. By default, only the root local user exists but customers have the option of creating additional accounts. In vSphere 6.5, the VAMI has been enhanced to support different roles such as Admin, Operator and SuperAdmin. You can refer to the VAMI documentation on what each of the roles provides.

VAMI UI Area of Focus

There is not a VAMI UI for user management, this is currently only available using the VAMI REST APIs.

VAMI APIs Used

  • GET /appliance/techpreview/localaccounts/user
  • POST /appliance/techpreview/localaccounts/user
  • DELETE /appliance/techpreview/localaccounts/user/{user-id}

PowerCLI Function

Sample Output

To retrieve all VAMI users, use the Get-VAMIUser function. By default, your system will probably only have the root user unless you have already added additional VAMI users.


To create a new user, we will use the New-VAMIUser which requires a few input parameter that should be pretty self explanatory. The role parameter can be one of three values: admin, operator or superAdmin as defined in the VAMI documentation.

Here is an example of creating a new user called lamw:

New-VAMIUser -name lamw -fullname "William Lam" -role "operator" -email "*protected email*" -password "VMware1!"


If we now re-run our Get-VAMIUser command, we should see the new user that we had just created.


To remove a VAMI user, you simply use the Remove-VAMIUser and specify the name of the user you wish to remove. Below is an example of deleting the user we had just created.


One thing to note is that when using the Connect-CisServer cmdlet to interact with the VAMI REST API, it currently does not support connecting with local VAMI users, only SSO users. This is a limitation with the PowerCLI implementation and does not affect direct use of the VAMI REST API or using it through other SDKs. This is something that will be resolved in a future update of PowerCLI, so something to keep in mind as I was scratching my head when trying to use a local user to authenticate.

Installing the Horizon View Agent on a Domain Controller

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A couple of weeks back, a fellow colleague needed to install the Horizon View Agent on a Microsoft Windows Domain Controller to be able to take advantage of the Direct Connect feature to efficiently connect into a lab environment. In general, this is not a recommended practice. In fact, by default the Horizon View Agent includes several pre-checks, one of which that prevents the installation if it detects the underlining system is a Domain Controller.

In this particular scenario, the Domain Controller was not being used for a real production environment but rather as part of a vPod that is hosted in a Hands-On-Lab type of environment. I could also see another use case where this might occur in personal home labs where you might consolidate several types of roles on a single Windows system and wish to be able to use the Direct Connect feature of the Horizon View Client.

The individual had searched extensively online but all the suggested command-line flags were not applicable to the Horizon View Agent. After pinging me for ideas, I reached out to a few of our End-User Computing folks and thanks to them, we found a neat little work around by tweaking the MSI installer.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk. There are no guarantees that the behavior described here will continue to function going forward and it can change without notice.

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PowerCLI module for Proactive HA (including simulation)

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Proactive HA is a very cool new feature that was introduced in vSphere 6.5, which enables our hardware vendors to communicate their hardware specific health information directly into vSphere and specifically with vSphere DRS. This hardware health information can then be leveraged by vSphere DRS to take proactive actions to guard against potential hardware failures. Brian Graf, Product Manager for Proactive HA, DRS and overall vSphere Availability has a nice blog post here where he goes into more details on how Proactive HA works.

As Brian mentioned, a few of our select hardware vendors are already in the process of developing and certifying Proactive HA integrations for vSphere, so stay tuned for those announcements in the future by both VMware and our partners. In the meantime, there was an interesting comment from one of our field folks asking whether it would be possible to "simulate" the new Quarantine Mode operation for an ESXi host to be better understand how this feature might work?

Quarantine Mode is new mode for ESXi, which can only be triggered by Proactive HA. It functions similar to the Maintenance Mode operation, but instead of migrating all VMs off, it will allow existing VMs to continue to run but prevent additional new VMs to be placed on the host.

Proactive HA does provide a set of public vSphere APIs under the healthUpdateManager which is primarily targeted at our hardware vendors to consume. However, these APIs could also be used by our customers to get visibility into the current Proactive HA configuration as well as the health of the ESXi hosts from the Proactive HA provider standpoint. Going back to our initial question, it is possible to "register" a fake Proactive HA provider and manually generate health updates to simulate what a real Proactive HA solution could look like.

Disclaimer: This is for educational and lab purposes only. Creating a fake or simulated Proactive HA provider is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk. The creation of Proactive HA providers as well as publishing health updates is for our hardware vendors to consume which in turn will provide native integrations that include customer visible interfaces within the vSphere Web Client.

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