The Platform Services Controller Administration documentation explains how the VMware® Platform Services Controller™ fits into your vSphere environment and helps you perform common tasks such as certificate management and vCenter Single Sign-On configuration.

Platform Services Controller Administration explains how you can set up authentication with vCenter Single Sign-On and how to manage certificates for vCenter Server and related services.

Table 1. Platform Services Controller Administration Highlights
Topics Content Highlights
Getting Started with Platform Services Controller
  • vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller deployment models. NOTE: This information changes with each release of the product.
  • Platform Services Controller services on Linux and Windows.
  • Managing Platform Services Controller services.
  • Managing the Platform Services Controller appliance using VAMI.
vSphere Authentication with vCenter Single Sign-On
  • Architecture of the authentication process.
  • How to add identity sources so users in your domain can authenticate.
  • Two-factor authentication.
  • Managing users, groups, and policies.
vSphere Security Certificates
  • Certificate model, and options for replacing certificates.
  • Replace certificates from the UI (simple cases).
  • Replace certificates using the Certificate Manager utility.
  • Replace certificates using the CLI (complex situations).
  • Certificate management CLI reference.

Related Documentation

A companion document, vSphere Security, describes available security features and the measures that you can take to safeguard your environment from attack. That document also explains how you can set up permissions, and includes a reference to privileges.

In addition to these documents, VMware publishes the vSphere Security Configuration Guide (formerly known as the Hardening Guide) for each release of vSphere, accessible at http://www.vmware.com/security/hardening-guides.html. The vSphere Security Configuration Guide contains guidelines on security settings that can or should be set by the customer, and security settings delivered by VMware that should be audited by the customer to ensure that they are still set to default.

Intended Audience

This information is intended for administrators who want to configure Platform Services Controller and associated services. The information is written for experienced Windows or Linux system administrators who are familiar with virtual machine technology and data center operations.

vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client

Instructions in this guide reflect the vSphere Client (an HTML5-based GUI). You can also use the instructions to perform the tasks by using the vSphere Web Client (a Flex-based GUI).

Tasks for which the workflow differs significantly between the vSphere Client and the vSphere Web Client have duplicate procedures that provide steps according to the respective client interface. The procedures that relate to the vSphere Web Client, contain vSphere Web Client in the title.

Note: In vSphere 6.7 Update 1, almost all of the vSphere Web Client functionality is implemented in the vSphere Client. For an up-to-date list of any remaining unsupported functionality, see Functionality Updates for the vSphere Client.