Running DCLI Commands

You can display help information for DCLI commands, and run the commands from a system where vCLI is installed, from the vCenter Server Appliance shell, or from a vCenter Server on Windows command prompt.

Displaying Help Information for DCLI Commands

You can display help for each namespace and command by using the --help command-line option. Because the available commands depend entirely on the services that are available in the vCenter environment that you are targeting, you must include the server for accurate help information. Help returns the following information for a command:

■	Each input option

■	Whether the option is required

■	Input type

Example

dcli com vmware cis tagging tag create --help

usage: com vmware cis tagging tag create [-h] --create-spec-name CREATE_SPEC_NAME --create-spec-description CREATE_SPEC_DESCRIPTION --create-spec-category-id CREATE_SPEC_CATEGORY_ID

 

Creates a tag

 

Input Arguments:

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

  --create-spec-name CREATE_SPEC_NAME

                        The display name of the tag (required string)

  --create-spec-description CREATE_SPEC_DESCRIPTION

                        The description of the tag (required string)

  --create-spec-category-id CREATE_SPEC_CATEGORY_ID

                        The unique identifier of the parent category in which this tag will be

                        created (required string)

Running DCLI Commands Included in the vCLI Package

You run vCLI commands from an administration server on which you installed the vCLI package. After installation, open a command prompt in the VMware\VMware DCLI folder, which is at the same level as the VMware vSphere CLI folder.

You specify a server, user name, and password. If you specify credstore-add, DCLI creates a credential store file on the local machine and you are no longer required to specify the user name and password when you run DCLI commands again.

Running DCLI Commands on the vCenter Server Appliance

The root user on the vCenter Server Appliance can run DCLI commands from the appliance shell.

1	SSH into the shell or log in to the shell directly as the root user.

The [email protected] user does not have privileges to run DCLI commands.

2	You can run commands individually, or start the interactive DCLI shell. The interactive shell has several advantages including tab completion and a history file.

>dcli +interactive

3	You can list commands, display help for commands, and execute commands. In the example below, the interactive shell uses the dcli> prompt, the default.

dcli> com vmware vapi metadata cli command list

Using DCLI with a Credential Store File

To avoid typing in the user name and password each time you run a DCLI command, you can add the current user and the associated password and server IP address to a credential store file by using the credstore-add option on the command line.

Passwords are encrypted in the credential store file, but if you want to remove credential store information, you can use +credstore-remove to do so.

By default, the credential store file is located in <homedir>/.dcli/.dcli_credstore, but you can change the location with the +credstore-file option.

Examples

The following examples illustrate how you can interact with the credential store.

1	Add a new credential store entry.

dcli com vmware cis tagging tag list +credstore-add +username user1

2	Remove a credential store entry.

dcli +credstore-remove +server <server> +username user1

3	List all credential store entries.

dcli +credstore-list

Order of Precedence for DCLI Authentication

When you run a DCLI command, authentication happens in the order of precedence shown in DCLI Authentication Precedence. This order of precedence always applies. That means, for example, that you can override an environment variable setting from the command line.

If you are authenticating through vCenter Single Sign-On, the order of precedence is preserved.

DCLI Authentication Precedence 

Authentication	Description
Command line	User name and password, specified on the command line takes precedence, even if a credential store exists.
Environment variable	A user name specified in an environment variable takes precedence over user names in the credential store, but not over the command line.
Credential store	User name and password retrieved from the credential store. A custom credential store file at a non-default location has precedence over a file at the default location.