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PowerCLI Module for managing vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO)

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A few years back I had submitted a PowerCLI Feature Request (PCLI-44) via the public PowerCLI Ideas platform requesting for a PowerCLI module that would support vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) Administrative functionality such as managing SSO Users, Groups, Password, Lockout Policy and Identity Sources.


This was one of the most popular Idea voted by the PowerCLI community, which also stressed the need for such functionality which I came across on a regular basis on some of the Automation I was writing. In the past, I have written numerous blog articles in working around this limitation as the vCenter SSO Admin APIs were not and leveraging Guest Operations API, one could still automate various SSO operations using the various SSO CLIs that is included within the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).

Today, I received a notification from the PowerCLI Ideas platform that this feature as "Shipped" and it looks like the PowerCLI team has just released an Open Source Module called VMware.vSphere.SsoAdmin that includes the following 12 cmdlets:

  • Add-ActiveDirectoryIdentitySource
  • Add-GroupToSsoGroup
  • Add-LDAPIdentitySource
  • Add-UserToSsoGroup
  • Connect-SsoAdminServer
  • Disconnect-SsoAdminServer
  • Get-IdentitySource
  • Get-SsoAuthenticationPolicy
  • Get-SsoGroup
  • Get-SsoLockoutPolicy
  • Get-SsoPasswordPolicy
  • Get-SsoPersonUser
  • Get-SsoTokenLifetime
  • New-SsoGroup
  • New-SsoPersonUser
  • Remove-GroupFromSsoGroup
  • Remove-IdentitySource
  • Remove-SsoGroup
  • Remove-SsoPersonUser
  • Remove-UserFromSsoGroup
  • Set-LDAPIdentitySource
  • Set-SsoAuthenticationPolicy
  • Set-SsoGroup
  • Set-SsoLockoutPolicy
  • Set-SsoPasswordPolicy
  • Set-SsoPersonUser
  • Set-SsoSelfPersonUserPassword
  • Set-SsoTokenLifetime

To get started with the new PowerCLI SSO Module, take a look at the instructions below.

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Using PowerCLI to automate the retrieval of VCSA Identity Sources

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Similiar to automating the retrieval of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) password policies using PowerCLI, we can extend that example and leverage the Guest Operations API via Invoke-VMScript cmdlet to also retrieve the identity sources configured for a given VCSA without requiring SSH access.

I have created a new VCSA.psm1 PowerCLI Module which now includes the previous Get-VCSAPasswordPolicy function along with the new Get-VCSAIdentitySource function which accepts the name of the VCSA VM and root password to the VM as shown in the screenshot below.

If you need to add a specific Identity Source such as an Active Directory Domain which you have joined the VCSA, you can simply use Invoke-VMScript cmdlet and pass in the following command:

/opt/vmware/bin/sso-config.sh -add_identity_source -type nativead -domain vmware.corp

Using PowerCLI to automate the retrieval of VCSA Password Policies

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I hope that every vSphere administrator or operator by now is familiar with the extremely powerful vSphere Guest Operations API functionality (details here and here), which can easily be consumed using PowerCLI's Invoke-VMScript cmdlet. If not, highly recommend you check out the links referenced. I know the GuestOps API is certainly my top favorite with sending VM keystrokes capability a very close second!

Not only does the GuestOps API unlock functionality that simply may not be possible (e.g. there's no API or automation interface) but it also enables automation within a VM without requiring any type of remote management services enabled (e.g. SSH or WinRM) or even networking to the VM for that matter!

The reason I am bringing all this up is that although there is not an API for managing and retrieving vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) configurations which includes password policies, there is a way in which customers can still automate and retrieve this and other information by leveraging the GuestOps API. In fact, back in 2015 I demonstrated on how you can retrieve VCSA SSO password policy and configurations and we can simply apply the GuestOps API to help us automate this task. In addition, most customers do not enable SSH by default and we can still apply the GuestOps API technique and perform automation tasks to VSCSA without requiring SSH as described in this blog post back in 2016.

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