Create Local ESXi Account Using PowerCLI

In this post we will be going through creating local ESXi account using PowerCLI.

Recently I have had to create local account to allow a monitoring tool to pull information from all ESXi hosts.

We want to automate the user creation and assign the required permissions so that they only have the permission required for a limited time.

First we need to connect to the ESXi Host using PowerCLI

Connect-VIServer

To check what account already exist use the below.

Get-VMHostAccount

To create a new account we will use the New-VMHostAccount command

New-VMHostAccount -Id accountname -Password password -Description Account Description

Next we need to assign the required permissions. We can list the current roles using

Get-VIRole

We also need an entity to set the permission or the command will error out.

To list the entity use the

Get-Folder

Select the entity that will have the role applied. In this case we will be applying to the root object so it applies to all objects on the host and will assigning the admin role.

New-VIPermission -Entity (Get-Folder root) -Principal accountname -Role Admin

To remove the account use the below command.

Get-VMHostAccount -User account name | Remove-VMHostAccount -Confirm:$false

Once we have the commands, we can create the script to automate the account creation and role assignment to configure multiple hosts.

The scripts uses EsxiHost as the heading for the CSV if you want to use something different the script will need to be updated.

Below is the script running against my test hosts.

.\Create-LocalESXiUser.ps1 -ESXiHostList .\EsxiHosts.csv -ESXiUser useraccount -ESXipass password -ESXiNewUser accountname -ESXiUserPass accountpass -ESXiPermission Permission -ESXiUserdesc "Account Description"