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vSphere Minimum User Permissions

When a user needs permissions less than Admin, a role must be created with those permissions.

In small vSphere environments, with just a few hosts, assigning the role/user at the top level and propagating to child resources could be appropriate as shown on this page in the permissions tree below.

However, in the majority of cases this is not possible as security teams will enforce strict restrictions of who should have access to specific resources. 

The process for configuring a vSphere role with the permissions for provisioning nodes and installing includes the following steps:

  1. Open a vSphere Client connection to the vCenter Server, described in the Prerequisites.

  2. Select Home > Administration > Roles > Add Role.

  3. Give the new role a name, then select these Privileges:

Cns

  •  

Searchable

Datastore

  •  

Allocate space

  •  

Low level file operations

Host

  • Configuration

  •  

Storage partition configuration

Profile-driven storage

  •  

Profile-driven storage view

Network

  •  

Assign network

Resource

  •  

Assign virtual machine to resource pool

Virtual machine

  • Change Configuration - from the list in that section, select these permissions below:

  •  

Add new disk

  •  

Add existing disk

  •  

Add or remove device

  •  

Advanced configuration

  •  

Change CPU count

  •  

Change Memory

  •  

Change Settings

  •  

Reload from path

Edit inventory

  •  

Create from existing

  •  

Remove

Interaction

  •  

Power off

  •  

Power on

Provisioning

  •  

Clone template

  •  

Deploy template

Session

  •  

ValidateSession

In the table below we describe the level at which these permissions should get assigned to.

Level

Required

Propagate to Child

vCenter Server (Top Level)

No

No

Data Center

Yes

No

Resource Pool

 Yes

No

Folder

 Yes

Yes

Template

 Yes

No

Next Step

vSphere Roles

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