psc – Page 6

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 9: Creating & managing SSO users using dir-cli

05.29.2015 by William Lam // 14 Comments

Automating vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) Users creation and management was not possible in prior releases of vSphere and this operation had to be performed manually using the vSphere Web Client.

With vSphere 6.0, you can now easily create and manage SSO Users using a new command-line utility that is included within the Platform Services Controller (PSC) called dir-cli. Below are the paths to the dir-cli utility on both Windows VC and VCSA.

Windows VC 6.0:

C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\vmafdd\dir-cli.exe

VCSA 6.0:

/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/dir-cli

Below are a few examples on using the dir-cli command and you can find more information in the vSphere 6.0 Documentation here. If you wish to automate the dir-cli operations without needing to specify an SSO Administrator password, just specify the --password option. You can also change the SSO Administrator username by specifying the --login option.

Creating a new SSO user:

/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/dir-cli user create --account william --first-name william --last-name lam --user-password 'VMware1!'

Adding new user to SSO group called "Administrators":

/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/dir-cli group modify --name Administrators --add william

List users in an SSO group:

/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/dir-cli group list --name Administrators

Reset the password for an SSO user:

/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/dir-cli password reset --account william --new 'VMware1!!'

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 8: Useful ldapsearch queries for vmdird

05.06.2015 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Last week I demonstrated how you can connect to the VMware Directory Service (vmdird) in vSphere 6.0 using JXPlorer, a graphical LDAP browser to extract useful information such as all the deployed vCenter Servers and Platform Services Controllers in your environment. I have also shown in past articles on how you can also retrieve this information programmatically which I have described here and here. Since vmdird is an LDAP-based system, we can also easily retrieve this information using simple LDAP commands that you may already be familiar with.

Disclaimer: Please take extreme caution when connecting to the vmdird database, this is primary for educational purposes. You should take extreme care in making changes while in the database else you can negatively impact your environment.

For performing search queries within an LDAP system, we can use the ldapsearch command which is available among other commands within the VCSA as well as other *NIX based system including Mac OS X. You can use this command to connect to both Windows and the VCSA running either an Embedded deployment or just the Platform Services Controller services.

Below are three useful ldapserach queries for identifying all deployed vCenter Servers and Platform Services Controllers including the SSO Site Name. The parameters highlighted below in blue will need to be modified based on your environment. The -h parameter specifies the Hostname/IP Address of your PSC, the -w parameter is the SSO Administrator password and the dc property is the name of SSO Domain.

Finding all deployed vCenter Servers:

/opt/likewise/bin/ldapsearch -h psc-01.primp-industries.com -w 'VMware1!' -x -D "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -b "ou=Computers,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -s one "objectclass=computer" cn

Finding all deployed Platform Service Controllers:

/opt/likewise/bin/ldapsearch -h psc-01.primp-industries.com -w 'VMware1!' -x -D "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -b "ou=domain controllers,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -s one "objectclass=computer" cn

Finding SSO Site Name:

/opt/likewise/bin/ldapsearch -h psc-01.primp-industries.com -w 'VMware1!' -x -D "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -b "cn=Sites,cn=Configuration,dc=vghetto,dc=local" "objectclass=container"

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 7: Connecting to SSO/PSC using JXplorer

05.01.2015 by William Lam // 7 Comments

I have written about using JXplorer before which is a free LDAP browser utility that can connect to vCenter SSO's vmdird (VMware Directory Service) which you can find more details here. In vSphere 6.0, there are a couple of minor changes you will need to be aware of if you need to connect to SSO which is now located in the Platform Services Controller. The first change is that port 11711 is no longer used and has now changed to 389 when performing a fresh install of vSphere 6.0, else the port will be preserved as noted in the comments section. The second change when using JXplorer to connect to the vmdird is that BaseDN property is no longer needed and if you try to specify it, you will not be able to connect.

Here are the updated instructions to connect to vmdird in vSphere 6.0 which is now located in the PSC or in an embedded deployment.

Host: Hostname/IP Address of PSC
Protocol: LDAPv3
Port: 389
Level: User + Password
User DN: cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vghetto,dc=local
User DN: SSO Admin Password

In addition, I also wanted to also mention a couple more tidbits that could come in handy when connecting directly to the vmdird, especially in a troubleshooting scenario. The first is finding the SSO Domain Name which is displayed by expanding the tree, in my environment it is called vghetto.local and the second is finding the SSO Site Name which is under "Configuration->Sites" which can be seen in the screenshot below.

On top of that, if you wish to find all deployed PSC's, you can do so by expanding "Configuration->Sites->Servers" and by expanding each of those sub-entries you can also see if they are replicating to other PSC's.

If you wish to find all deployed and connected vCenter Servers associated with the current PSC, you can expand "Computers".