VSphere client on Linux

[tmclaugh-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Tom McLaughlin)]

On 4/23/11 8:42 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>> From: discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org [mailto:discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org] On Behalf
>> Of Jerry Feldman
>>
>> One of our requirements is that everyone in our office be able to start
>> up their VMs. The IT guy in New York told me that he would give me what
>> I need,, but at the present time, Toronto is in charge. I've got about
>> 10 more VMs that need to be migrated, and I'll let the Toronto people
>> move them since I have a couple of development projects.
>
> Ah yes.  That can be done via command line or ssh.  You don' t need the
> vsphere client for that.  But I think all commands run as root, so if
> somebody has the ability to start their own machine, it implicitly means
> they also have the ability to shutdown everyone else's machines.  And
> snapshot, and clone, and copy.  Which means security is nonexistent.  (Duh,
> you needed to give root to the users.)
>
> So it's probably best for you to write some sort of wrapper script that
> obfuscates that ability.  Don't tempt users to be bad, in fact, maybe even
> prevent them.  ;-)

You can also try out the vMA appliance or install the vSphere CLI
tools on your Linux box.  This way users don't need command line
access to the ESX/ESXi host.

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/vma41/vma_41_relnotes.html

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/

tom

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