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Export VC Permissions

Should you ever need to rebuild your vCenter server... perhaps you want to go with a clean install vs. an upgrade for vSphere 4.0, there are a couple of bits of information that you'll want to keep. Namely: your DRS rules; the permissions that you've set up; cluster properties such as DRS automation level, HA, advanced prperties etc; and any custom attributes that you've populated. VMTN forum member LucD has shown us how to export all of our DRS rules, and now LucD has created a powershell script to export all of your vCenter permissions into a plain text document. I should also note that if you choose to do a clean install, you will also lose your performance data that you've been gathering. This can also be useful if you reach the limitations of a single vCenter server and need to replicate permissions to a second ( or third, or fouth ) vCenter.


[permission-export.ps1]

filter Get-Permissions{
    $object = Get-View -Id $_.ID
    if($object.Name -ne "vm" -and $object.Name -ne "host"){
        $perms = $authMgr.RetrieveEntityPermissions($object.MoRef, $false)

        if($perms.Count -gt 0){
            $path = get-path $object
            foreach($perm in $perms){
                foreach($role in $authMgr.RoleList){
                                   if($role.RoleId -eq $perm.RoleId){
                                      $row = "" | select roleName, objName, principalName
                    $row.roleName = $role.Name
                    $row.objName = $path
                    $row.principalName = $perm.Principal
                    $row
                  }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

function get-path($entity){
    $path = $entity.Name
    while($entity.Parent -ne $null){
        $entity = Get-View -Id $entity.Parent
        if($entity.Name -ne "vm" -and $entity.Name -ne "host"){
            $path = $entity.Name + "\" + $path
        }
    }
    return $path
}

$authMgr = Get-View AuthorizationManager

Get-Inventory | Get-Permissions | Export-Csv -Path "C:\permissions.csv" -NoTypeInformation

Labels: vCenter permission export

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Thursday, June 11, 2009.