vMA Capabilities

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

■	As administrator, you can add vCenter Server systems and ESXi hosts as targets and run scripts and programs on these targets. Once you have authenticated while adding a target, you need not login again while running a vSphere CLI command or agent on any target.

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

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

■	vMA comes preconfigured with two user accounts, namely, vi-admin and vi-user.

■	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.

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

■	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 would be applicable.

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vMA can run agent code that make proprietary hardware or software components compatible with VMware ESX. These code currently run in the service console of existing ESX 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.