Specifying Options

You can specify the common options in several ways, discussed in this section.

When you run a vSphere CLI command, authentication happens in the following order of precedence.

vSphere CLI Authentication Precedence
Authentication	Description	See
Targeting vCenter Server and Using vCenter Single Sign-On	If you are working in an environment that is managed by vCenter Single Sign-On, you can specify the vCenter Single Sign-On server and a user name, password, and target host.	Use a Session File
Command line	Password (--password), session file (--sessionfile), or configuration file (--config) specified on the command line.	Use a Session File
Configuration file	Passwords specified in a .visdkrc configuration file.	Using a Configuration File
Environment variable	Password specified in an environment variable.	Setting Environment Variables
Credential store	Password retrieved from the credential store.	Credential Store Perl Library
Current account (Active Directory)	Current account information used to establish an SSPI connection. Windows only.	Using Microsoft Windows Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI)
Prompt the user for a password.

This order of precedence always applies. That means, for example, that you cannot override an environment variable setting in a configuration file.

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