active directory

Easily automate ESXi 6.0 Active Directory join using domainjoin-cli

04.06.2015 by William Lam // 9 Comments

A nice little enhancement that I recently came across in ESXi 6.0 is the inclusion of the Likewise utility called domainjoin-cli which allows you to join a system to an Active Directory Domain. Previously, if you wanted to automate the process of joining an ESXi host to an Active Directory Domain, you had to either manually configure it using the vSphere Web/Client, using Host Profiles or creating an external script using the vSphere APIs.

All of these options were mostly executed during the post-provisioning process and if you wanted to include Active Directory configuration as part of the provisioning process, you may have had to resort to something like calling into the vSphere MOB within a Kickstart script as I had shown back in 2011 in this article here. The solution I came up with was not ideal but it worked for those that did not want to have additional steps after initial provisioning.

With the domainjoin-cli utility now included in the ESXi Shell of ESXi 6.0, you easily automate the joining an Active Directory Domain with just a couple of lines added to your Kickstart or provisioning scripts. Before you can use the command-line utility, you will need to ensure the Likewise Service Manager Daemon is running by running the following two commands which will start the service and also ensure the service automatically starts up:

/etc/init.d/lwsmd start
chkconfig lwsmd on

Next, to join to your Active Directory Domain, you will need to specify the following 3 parameters:

join - Specifying the operation is a join versus a leave
AD Domain Name - Active Directory Domain to join
AD Username - Active Directory username to join to the domain
AD Password - Active Directory password to join to the domain (optional as you will be prompted if it is not specified)

Here is an example of what the command looks like joining my Active Directory Domain in my lab:

/usr/lib/vmware/likewise/bin/domainjoin-cli join primp-industries.com administrator [PASSWORD]

You should see a success message if the ESXi host was successfully joined to the Active Directory Domain and you will want to reboot your ESXi host for the changes to take full effect. This is definitely a simpler method to include into an ESXi Kickstart script to automate the joining of an Active Directory Domain and hopefully you will find this handy when using ESXi 6.0.

Automating Active Directory Identity Source & Default Domain in vSphere Web Client

01.05.2015 by William Lam // 4 Comments

Over the holiday break I learned about two awesome tidbits from my buddies Blair Fritz and Frank Buechsel who both work over in our GSS Organization. The first tidbit came from Blair who recently shared a newly published VMware KB 2063424 that provides both a Windows and Linux script to automate the setup of your Active Directory as an Identity Source within vSphere SSO. The reason this is so cool is that you no longer have to perform this additional manual step using the vSphere Web Client just to be able to start using your Active Directory as a source for authorization within your vSphere environment. In my opinion, this step should just happen automatically if your vCenter Server (applies to both VC for Windows and VCSA) is already joined to an Active Directory Domain.

UPDATE (01/15/19) - For vSphere 6.5 and 6.7, please refer to VMware KB 67304 for the updated package required to automate this configuration

Looking at the contents of the script, I have extracted the main parts of the script to create a quick snippet that can easily be integrated into my existing VCSA 5.5 Configuration script if you are interested in automating this particular configuration.

AD_DOMAIN=primp-industries.com
EXPORTED_SSO_PROPERTIES=/usr/lib/vmware-upgrade/sso/exported_sso.properties

if [ -e ${EXPORTED_SSO_PROPERTIES} ] ;then
	rm -f  ${EXPORTED_SSO_PROPERTIES}
fi

cat > ${EXPORTED_SSO_PROPERTIES} << __SSO_EXPORT_CONF__
ExternalIdentitySource.${AD_DOMAIN}.name=${AD_DOMAIN}
ExternalIdentitySource.${AD_DOMAIN}.type=0
ExternalIdentitySourcesDomainNames=${AD_DOMAIN}
__SSO_EXPORT_CONF__

/usr/lib/vmware-upgrade/sso/sso_import.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
rm -rf ${EXPORTED_SSO_PROPERTIES}

The next tidbit that I learned the same day came from Frank. It was in regards to configuring the default Identity Source for vSphere SSO which includes localos, vsphere.local and if you have Active Directory configure, your AD Domain is an option as seen in the screenshot below. For a fresh installation, the "localos" Domain is always the default and I was interested in configuring my AD Domain as the default. It turns out this is also possible to automate and more details can be found in this handy VMware KB 2070433.

Similar to the other KB, I have created a quick snippet which can be integrated into my existing VCSA 5.5 Configuration script if you are also interested in automating this configuration.

AD_DOMAIN=primp-industries.com
SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD=vmware
SSO_LDIF_CONF=/tmp/defaultdomain.ldif
                
cat > ${SSO_LDIF_CONF} << __DEFAULT_SSO_DOMAIN__
dn: cn=vsphere.local,cn=Tenants,cn=IdentityManager,cn=Services,dc=vsphere,dc=local
changetype: modify
replace: vmwSTSDefaultIdentityProvider
vmwSTSDefaultIdentityProvider: ${AD_DOMAIN}
__DEFAULT_SSO_DOMAIN__

ldapmodify -f ${SSO_LDIF_CONF} -h localhost -p 11711 -D "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vsphere,dc=local" -w ${SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD}

I was quite happy to learn about these two tips as these are literally the two last configurations that I have not been able to automate since the vSphere SSO Admins APIs are currently private. I will be updating my VCSA Configuration Script in the next few days to include these additional configurations and will publish an updated script once it is complete. A big thanks goes to both Blair and Frank for sharing this awesome information!

How to Add/Remove vCenter SSO Identity Sources Using the Command-Line for Windows vCenter Server & VCSA

10.03.2012 by William Lam // 16 Comments

The new vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On) in vSphere 5.1 can support multiple Identity Sources (Active Directory, OpenLDAP and Local OS) and these configurations can all be managed by using the vSphere Web Client. Here are some additional documentation as well as a video on how to managing Identity Sources using the vSphere Web Client.

However, if you wish to manage the Identity Sources through the command-line for automated deployments, you probably do not want to use the GUI. Luckily, there is a vCenter SSO CLI that you can use on both a Windows deployment as well as on the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance).

In the examples below, I will show you how to add an Active Directory Identity Source to both a Windows deployment as well as a VCSA deployment using the command-line.

Adding Active Directory Identity Source to Windows vCenter SSO Server

Before getting started, you will need to know the vCenter SSO Administrator password. This is the password that you had configure during the installation of vCenter SSO for the admin@System-Domain account.

Step 1: Change into the C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\SSOServer\utils directory and you will be using the rsautil command-line tool. To get a list of help options for managing Identity Sources, run the following command:

rsautil manage-identity-sources

Step 2: Run the following command (substitute the values for your own enviornment) :

rsautil manage-identity-sources -a create -u admin -p !VMware123! -r ldap://fullerene.primp-industries.com --ldap-port 3268 -d primp-industries.com -l PRIMP-IND --principal-base-dn DC=primp-industries,DC=com --group-base-dn DC=primp-industries,DC=com -f "" -L *protected email*

Note: When you login into the vSphere Web Client, the username for the vCenter SSO account is "admin@system-domain" but for the CLI, it is just "admin". If you do not have a failover LDAP Server, specify "" for -f flag.

Here is a screenshot of adding the Active Directory Identity Source:

Step 3: You can also confirm the configurations by performing the "list" operation by running the following command:

rsautil manage-identity-sources -a list -u admin -p !VMware123!

Adding Active Directory Identity Source to VCSA

For the VCSA, there are few additional steps as the vCenter SSO Administrator account "admin" does not contain a default password as noted in this article. You can either follow the instructions in that article to set a password for the "admin" user and then jump to Step 3 OR you can perform all required steps using the command-line.

Step 1: We first need to set the vCenter SSO Master Password as it is required to change the "admin" user account. Since the vCenter SSO Master Password is auto-generated during installation, we will recover the account which will then allow us to set a password of our own choosing. Run the following two commands and in the second command, you will specify the vCenter SSO Master Password of your choice.

source /etc/vmware-sso/keys/recovery.cfg
/usr/lib/vmware-sso/utils/ssowrench manage-secrets -a change -u "$SSO_RECOVERY_USERNAME" -p "$SSO_RECOVERY_PASSWORD" -N vmware123

Note: Do not forget the vCenter SSO Master Password that you have selected, as there is no way to recover the account after this.

Step 2: Now that we have the vCenter SSO Master Password, we can now set a password for the "admin" user. Run the following command and specify the Master Password (-m flag) as well as a new password (-p flag) for the admin (-u flag) user.

/usr/lib/vmware-sso/utils/ssowrench reset-admin-password -u admin -p '!VMware123!' -m vmware123

Step 3: Once we have a password set for the "admin" user, we will be using the same vCenter SSO CLI utility as we did in the Windows vCenter Server deployment but in the VCSA it is called ssowrench and it is located under /usr/lib/vmware-sso/utils

Run the following command which accepts the same set of options as the Windows version (substitute the values for your own enviornment).

/usr/lib/vmware-sso/utils/ssowrench manage-identity-sources -a create -u admin -p '!VMware123!' -r "ldap://fullerene.primp-industries.com" --ldap-port 3268 -d primp-industries.com -l PRIMP-IND --principal-base-dn "DC=primp-industries,DC=com" --group-base-dn "DC=primp-industries,DC=com" -f "" -L *protected email*

Here is a screenshot of adding the Active Directory Identity Source:

Step 4: To view all Identity Sources, you can run the following command (as seen in the screenshot above):

/usr/lib/vmware-sso/utils/ssowrench manage-identity-sources -a list -u admin -p '!VMware123!'

Note: If you do not wish to specify any of the credentials on the command-line, the utility in both Windows and VCSA will automatically prompt for input.