Generate Tags Automatically by Using a Script

You can use a script to generate tags automatically. For example, you can create a virtual machine owner tag for each user account in a domain.

You must use the Get-VIAccount cmdlet to retrieve user accounts. For more information, see the documentation of the cmdlet.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you are connected to a vCenter Server system.
• Verify that the user accounts and the vCenter Server system are in the same domain.

Procedure

1. Create a new tag category and specify that tags in this category can only be assigned to entities of type VirtualMachine.

   $ownerTagCategory = New-TagCategory -Name Owner -EntityType VirtualMachine

   Note: If you do not specify an entity type, tags from this category can be assigned to all entity types.
2. Retrieve all domain user accounts and save them in a variable.
   Note: You This cmdlet works only with the vCenter Server built-in identity provider that supports local accounts, Active Directory or OpenLDAP, Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA), and miscellaneous authentication mechanisms (smart card and RSA SecurID).You cannot retrieve user accounts for users who use external identity providers to authenticate with vCenter Server.

   $accounts = Get-VIAccount -User -Domain 'DomainName' -Category | select -ExpandProperty Id

3. Create a tag for each user account.

   $accounts | foreach { New-Tag -Category $ownerTagCategory -Name $_ }

4. Retrieve a specific tag from the Owner category, so that you can later assign it to a specific virtual machine.

   $ownerTag = Get-Tag -Category $ownerTagCategory -Name 'John_Smith'