Have you ever tried to automate a specific vSphere operation but were sure which vSphere API to use or if known, how to actually use it? This is something I frequently see and get asked about quite often!
Did you know about this hidden little gem that has been available since vSphere 6.7, built right into the vSphere UI that can help with these questions!?
It is called vSphere Code Capture or what I typically refer to as your ChatGPT for vSphere Automation, but without the hallucinations 😀
Up until vSphere 8.0, there were two primary sets of vSphere APIs:
Note: Technically, there are other vCenter Server API endpoints including vSAN, Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM), etc. but for the purposes of this article, we are focusing on the core vCenter Server functionality.
The vSphere Web Services API was available starting with the Virtual Infrastructure (VI) 2.x release back in 2007. To date, the vSphere Web Services API supports the latest vSphere 8.x release and still also has full backwards compatibility going all the way back to Virtual Center 2.x!
As you can imagine, the vSphere Web Services API covers an extremely large amount of functionality over the past 16 years since its introduction and it continues to be widely used by almost all customers either directly or indirectly through the various vSphere SDKs including PowerCLI, pyvmomi (vSphere SDK for Python), govmomi (vSphere SDK for Go), Terraform Provider for vSphere to just name a few. In addition, we also have many 2nd party solutions from VMware and thousands of 3rd party offerings from our broader ecosystem of partners that provide integrations with the vSphere platform, all consuming the vSphere Web Services API!
Determining the minimum vSphere privileges that is required to perform a given vSphere operation (UI/API) has been a huge customer challenge to say the least. Strategies have included guessing along with trial and error by creating a custom vSphere Role and slowly removing privileges until you have identified the minimum required privileges. If you are familiar with the vSphere API and know exactly which API methods and properties are consumed, then you can use the vSphere API Reference since every method and property includes the specific privilege required in the documentation, but this method is pretty tedious and time consuming.
If only we had a way to record all the vSphere privilege that was used for a specific set of operation(s) in vCenter Server ... 🤔
Apparently I missed the initial news, but this was actually one of the new features that was introduced in vSphere 8.0 Update 1 called the vSphere Privilege Recorder! 😆
UPDATE (07/25/24) - Looks like the PowerCLI team has productized this capability with a new cmdlet introduced in PowerCLI 13.3 called Get-VIPrivilegeReport