6.5

Table Of Contents
You can manage users dened on the vCenter Server system and users dened on individual hosts
separately.
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Manage users dened on ESXi with the vSphere Web Services SDK or vicfg-user.
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Manage vCenter Server users with the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Web Services SDK.
I You cannot use the vicfg-user command to modify users created with the vSphere Client in
vSphere 6.0 or earlier.
Even if the user lists of a host and a vCenter Server system appear to have common users, for example, a
user called devuser, these users are separate users with the same name. The aributes of devuser in
vCenter Server, including permissions, passwords, and so forth, are separate from the aributes of devuser
on the ESXi host. If you log in to vCenter Server as devuser, you might have permission to view and delete
les from a datastore. If you log in to an ESXi host as devuser, you might not have these permissions.
Users authorized to work directly on an ESXi host are added to the internal user list when ESXi is installed
or can be added by a system administrator after installation. You can use vicfg-user to add users, remove
users, change passwords, and congure permissions.
C See the Authentication and User Management chapter of vSphere Security for information about
root users before you make any changes to the default users. Mistakes regarding root users can have serious
access consequences.
Each ESXi host has several default users.
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The root user has full administrative privileges. Root users can control all aspects of the host that they
are logged on to. Root users can manipulate permissions, create users on ESXi hosts, work with events,
and so on.
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The vpxuser user is a vCenter Server entity with root rights on the ESXi host, allowing it to manage
activities for that host. The system creates vpxuser when an ESXi host is aached to vCenter Server.
vpxuser is not present on the ESXi host unless the host is being managed through vCenter Server.
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Other users might be dened by the system, depending on the networking setup and other factors.
Example: Create, Modify, and Delete Users
The following example scenario illustrates some of the tasks that you can perform. Specify one of the
options listed in “Connection Options for vCLI Host Management Commands,” on page 19 in place of
<conn_options>.
1 List the existing users.
vicfg-user <conn_options> -e user -o list
The list displays all users that are predened by the system and all users that were added later.
I The command lists a maximum of 100 users.
2 Add a new user, specifying a login ID and password.
vicfg-user <conn_options> -e user -o add -l user27 -p 27_password
The command creates the user. By default, the command autogenerates a UID for the user.
3 List the users again to verify that the new user was added and a UID was generated.
vicfg-user <conn_options> -e user -o list
USERS
-------------------
Principal -: root
Chapter 7 Managing Users
VMware, Inc. 119