Create the credential and service account that will access your VMware data

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read

    • To securely access data on your provider account, the Discovery process must present appropriate credentials. To make the credentials available to Discovery, you first create an account in the VMware Console. You then securely store the credentials in a service account in your instance.

    Before you begin

    Roles required:
    • VMware Console administrator
    • Cloud Provisioning and Governance: admin or sn_cmp.cloud_admin

    About this task

    Cloud providers often use different names for accounts, regions, and credential settings. Because the ServiceNow application supports several cloud providers, the app uses general-purpose names for the settings.

    Procedure

    1. In the Cloud Admin Portal, navigate to Manage > Credentials.
    2. On the Credentials tab, click New, select VMware Credentials, fill in the form, and then click Submit.
      Table 1. VMware Credentials form fields
      Field Input value
      Name Unique and meaningful name for the credentials (for example, Cloud Management VMware Credentials`).
      Active Select the check box to enable the credential for use.
      User name User name for access to your vSphere account.
      Password Password for access to your vSphere account.
    3. Navigate to Cloud Admin Portal > Manage > Service Accounts, click New, enter a unique and meaningful Name (for example, Cloud Provisioning Service Account), and then fill in the form.
      Table 2. Service Account for VMware form
      Account ID There are two methods for determining the value:
      • If you have access to the managed object browser for the vCenter (MOB): The Account ID is the instance UUID. Open the MOB and then click Content > About. Paste the value of the instanceUuid property in the Account ID field.
      • If you do not have access to the MOB, enter a temporary alphanumeric text such as 5ca3033a-1290-4a02-8221-2c5f2f29be8b in the Account ID field. In a step that follows this table, you create the actual value and then return to this form to replace the temporary text with the actual value.
      Discovery credentials Name of the credentials that you created in the preceding step. Cloud Provisioning VMware Credentials in the example.
      Datacenter URL Full URL of the vCenter, for example: https://<IP address>/sdk.
      Datacenter Type Select VMware vCenter datacenter [cmdb_ci_vcenter_datacenter].
      Datacenter discovery status Auto-generated value: Status and timestamp of the last execution of Discovery on the datacenter.
      Should pull events Enables Cloud Provisioning and Governance to collect events from resource types in VMware vCenter datacenter in the sn_cmp_cloud_event_list .
    4. Click the Discover Datacenters related link.
      Using the credential, Discovery accesses the vCenter at the specified URL to discover VMware datacenters.
    5. If you used the instance UUID value in the Account ID field, click Submit and skip the remaining steps in this procedure.
      The system creates the service account and displays the list of all service accounts.
    6. On the Cloud Admin Portal, navigate to Operate > Trails.
    7. On the Cloud API Trail tab, find the entry with the Method name value of ListDatacenters and Provider name value of vmware-compute (typically the most-recent entry).
      Open the entry.
    8. On the CAPI Trail Logs related list, open the route_result entry.
    9. In the Log value text box, copy the locationId value.
      This value is the Account ID that you will paste into the form in the next step.
      Copy the locationId so you can paste it into the form
    10. On the instance, navigate to Cloud Admin Portal > Manage > Service Accounts and then click the service account that you created earlier (Cloud Provisioning Service Account in the example).
    11. Paste the locationId value (that you copied from the CAPI Trail Log form) in the Account ID field on the form and then click Update.
    12. Click Submit.
      The system creates the service account and displays the list of all discovered datacenters.