I’ve posted a number of articles on vMA administration in the course of writing about the VCAP5-DCA objectives, including information on configuring fast path authentication, however I didn’t spend a lot of time talking about session files. Session files can be used to store ESXi host user credentials, and can be called when running commands against ESXi hosts, removing the need to include a username and password when executing a command.
To create session file, we need to use the save_session.pl script which can be found in /usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/session on the vMA. The script has a useful help file, accessed in the usual way:
./save_session.pl --help
The required parameters for creating a session file are the target host, the username and password, and the location to save the session file to. For example:
./save_session.pl --server 192.168.88.134 --user name -root -password Pa55w0rd -savesessionfile /home/vi-admin/esx1-session
I now have a file called ‘esx1-session’. This can be called when running, for example, a vicfg-* command against a host:
vi-admin@vma:/usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/session> vicfg-nics -l --sessionfile ~/esx1-session Name PCI Driver Link Speed Duplex MAC Address MTU Description vmnic0 02:00.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:9c 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic1 02:01.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:a6 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic2 02:03.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:b0 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic3 02:04.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:ba 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic4 02:05.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:c4 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic5 02:06.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:ce 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic6 02:07.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:d8 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic7 02:08.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:e2 1500 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic8 02:09.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:ec Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) vmnic9 02:0a.0 e1000 Up 1000Mbps Full 00:0c:29:6f:56:f6 Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)
Though the examples I’ve shown in this article are from a vMA, you will likely get most use from session files when using vCLI installed on a Windows system, where fast pass isn’t an option. On windows the save_session script can be found in C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\apps\session, and works in the same way as shown above.