VMWare VI3 - How to Configure Active Directory Authentication at the Console

It's important to have a unique admin account for your administrators. Not only is it part of the mysterious SOX legislation (that was never really meant for an IT application) but it's important to have unique names in the event log to see who is wreaking havoc on your enviornment.

Prerequisites
1) Working DNS Resolution.
2) Working NTP.

Setting up AD Authentication
Domain = Thira.Greece.Net
Domain Controller = ThiraDC2

esxcfg-auth --enablead --addomain thira.greece.net --addc thiradc2.greece.net --enableldapauth --ldapserver=thiradc2.thira.greece.net --ldapbasedn=DC=thira,DC=greece,DC=net

Creating the User Account
After you run the above, you need to create a local user account for any domain account you wish to use. Here we will create a group called VIAdmins and then add the user account Apollo to have access to the COS.

groupadd –g 1000 VIAdmins
useradd –o –u 0 –g VIAdmins apollo

Now Apollo can login locally using his name (apollo) and his DOMAIN password.

- Jason Langone