vCloud Director 5.1 RDP as local administrator

Question

I'm trying to programmatically generate a *.rdp file to connect to a VM provisioned via the vCloud Director 5.1 API. Using Remote Desktop Connection on Mac OSX Mavericks to open the RDP. I provision the machine with the following settings (Ruby, using the fog gem v1.20.0):

customization = @vm.customization
customization.enabled = true
customization.admin_password_enabled = true
customization.admin_password_auto = false
customization.script = "foo"
customization.admin_password = "bar"
customization.use_org_settings = true
customization.join_domain_enabled = true
customization.change_sid = true

Link to the vCloud Director API call I'm making

In the vCloud Director console, I can verify that the VM has guest customization enabled, is allowing a local administrator password, and has that password specified as bar. The VM is also enabled to join a domain, and is set to use the organization's domain. Right-clicking on the VM, I can download a *.rdp file.

When I open the RDP file, I notice a few things: The User name field defaults to Administrator. The Password and Domain fields are blank.

I can get the Domain info from Administration > Guest Personalization in the vCloud Director console, since use_org_settings and join_domain_enabled are true.

So should the User name field be left as is, with the Password field set to bar? That seems like it should be the case, but each time I try I receive an error The credentials that were used to connect to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx are incorrect. Please enter your credentials again. I'm not familiar enough with Windows server administration to know what I might be missing--it seems like I should be using another user, but vCloud doesn't give any indication of what the local administrator user name might be.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 23 '14 at 15:45

vCloud doesn't give any indication of what the local administrator user name might be.

vCloud may not know. There are default GPO options to change the name of the local Administrator account, and a lot of SAs consider it best practice to do so, due to the existence of bots that run brute force attacks against default user names.

So, you need to:

Ask someone who does know what the local administrator account is named,
Use a domain account with Remote Desktop User privileges,
Check the group policy that applies to the computer to determine what the local administrator account is named.

This assumes, of course, that the built-in local administrator account exists and is enabled. Neither is necessarily true.

vCloud Director 5.1 RDP as local administrator

1 Answers1