vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) is a Linux appliance that enables remote management of your vSphere environment via its command-line interface. The tool does not offer a graphical user interface. It was originally developed to replace the service console to run scripts or agents that are programmed to interact with the vSphere hosts. It comes packaged with vSphere CLI and the Perl SDK. vSphere CLI shouldn't be confused with vSphere PowerCLI. While vSphere CLI is a bundle of Linux commands that can interact with the vSphere hosts, the latter is a Windows PowerShell plugin and executes PowerShell cmdlets.

It's also important to note that 6.5 is the last release of vSphere Management Assistant, since it's being deprecated. In this chapter, we will learn how to deploy and configure the appliance for use with vSphere environments.