Last week, I was installing some of the vRealize Suite components and was creating accounts for each component using the Principle of Least Privilege. I was sometimes able to find vendor documentation on the required permissions, sometimes I found a few blog posts where people guessed at the required permissions, but in almost no cases was I able to find automated role creation. Perhaps my google-fu is poor! Regardless, I thought it would be nice to have documented and automated role creation in a single place.

To that end, I created a repo on GitHub called vCenter-roles. I use PowerCLI to create a role with the correct permissions, and only the correct permissions. Each cmdlet will allow you to specify the role name or it will use a default. For instance, to create a role for Log Insight, just run the attached ps1 script followed by the command:

New-LogInsightRole

It’s that easy!

I will be adding some other vRealize Suite roles as I work my way through the installation, but there are tons of other common applications out there that require their own role, and not just VMware’s own applications! I encourage you to open an issue or submit a Pull Request (PR) for any applications you use. The more roles we can collect in one place, the more helpful it is for the greater community. Thanks!