Cached Credentials? Unattended VI Tool Kit Automation?

[Schorschi]

Cached Credentials? Unattended VI Tool Kit Automation? For communicating directly with ESX hosts, there has to be a way to do it, no? For communicating with VC servers, figure the pass-through authentication to an assigned role would get the job done, no? Setting VI_ environment is not all that secure but maybe the only way to do it?

[halr9000]

There will be built-in support for this using the save/load-session cmdlets, or perhaps folded into other cmdlets. Right now I believe this functionality does not work in the current beta.

In the meantime, you can actually do this fairly easily, here's a powershell-specific way to do it which applies perfectly to vmware toolkit:

http://geekswithblogs.net/Lance/archive/2007/02/16/106518.aspx

Hal Rottenberg

Co-Host, PowerScripting Podcast (http://powerscripting.net)

[hugopeeters]

If you launch a PowerShell script using an user account that has permissions in your VirtualCenter, the command Get-VIServer "server name" will not request any credentials. So yeah, that works. For connecting to an ESX host: that will not work as your (windows) credentials are unknown to the ESX host.

[Schorschi]

VMware, have your ears on? Customer feedback... Going to VC for EVERYTHING is bad karama. Please design VI ToolKit to support direct ESX query and interaction as well. Use the above thread as reference. For us, my organization, we ALWAYS prefer to talk to the ESX host before going to VC. VC does not scale well, and does not always respond as expected, these are known issues, so we have to go to the ESX host consistently. Not to rehash VC issues, which are well known, but to point out that even with ESXi, we expect to always have the option to go the the ESX host, and not be locked into using VC. This includes a better way to cache credentials when talking to ESX hosts via VI ToolKit.