vMA provides a flexible and authenticated platform for running scripts and programs.

Important

The vMA 6.5 release is the last release of vSphere Management Assistant. No future updates to vMA are expected. As alternatives to vMA, you can use PowerCLI or vCLI. For information, see vSphere Management Assistant Deprecation.

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As an administrator, you can add vCenter Server systems and ESXi hosts as targets and run scripts and programs on these targets. After you authenticate while adding a target, you need not log in again while running a vSphere CLI command or agent on any target.

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As a developer, you can use the APIs provided with the VmaTargetLib library to programmatically connect to vMA targets by using Perl or Java.

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vMA enables reuse of service console scripts that are currently used for ESXi administration, though minor modifications to the scripts are usually necessary.

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vMA comes pre-configured with two user accounts.

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As vi-admin, you can perform administrative operations such as addition and removal of targets. You can also run vSphere CLI commands and agents with administrative privileges on the added targets.

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As vi-user, you can run the vSphere CLI commands and agents with read-only privileges on the target.

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You can make vMA join an Active Directory domain and log in as an Active Directory user. When you run commands from such a user account, the appropriate privileges given to the user on the vCenter Server system or the ESXi host applicable.

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vMA can run agent code that make proprietary hardware or software components compatible with VMware ESXi. The code currently run in the service console of existing ESXi hosts. You can modify most of these agent code to run in vMA, by calling the vSphere API, if necessary. Developers must move any agent code that directly interfaces with hardware into a provider.