Have you ever needed to pass an encrypted custom property to your vRealize Automation (previously known as vCloud Automation Center) gugent? I have been asked for this frequently by customers and below are just two of the most common use cases for this.

1- The customer wanted the Gugent to run a script that map a share drive to the deployed VM using the Net Use command where they need a different user credential to login to the map drive.

This is easy to do by letting the Gugent run a command similar to: “net use s: \\tower\movies /user HTG Pa$$word”. The challenge here is who wants to pass his password in clear text or store it in clear text in a script? Yop, I have deployed vRA for banks and government customers and none of them can accept that.

2- The customer want to be able to join the VM to one of many domains. They wants to achieve this without having to create tons of Custom Specifications in each vCenter they have as that will be a management nightmare in the long run.

This as well can be easily achievable by having a script as the following:

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REM JoinDomain.bat script start here

If %1==firstdomain Netdom Join %%computername%% /domain:firstdomain.COM /userd:%2 /passwordd:%3
If %1==2nddomain netdom join %%computername%% /domain:2nddomain.COM /userd:%4 /passwordd:%5
If %1==3rdomain netdom join %%computername%% /domain:3rddomain.COM /userd:%6 /passwordd:%7

REM JoinDomain.bat script End here

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You will then run the above script from vRA using a command like: JoinDomain.bat {domainname} {firstdomainUser} {firstdomainPassword} {2nddomainUser} {2nddomainPassword} {3rddomainUser} {3rddomainPassword}

Again the above resolve the problem, but you will need to pass the password in clear text.… Read More