Reinstalling Standalone ESXi

[Chriz1]

Hi,

I have forgotten the password for the root user on an STANDALONE ESXi host (ver 6.7) and don't have a have vSphere Enterprise Plus licensing. I read the post "Steps to reset a lost or forgotten root password of an ESX/ESXi host (1317898)" but it looks like the procedure mentioned is not suitable for my condition.

I understand that reinstalling the ESXi host is the only supported way to reset a password on ESXi. I want to keep my current setup by reinstalling the ESXi and mount it with my current disk space. Could you help to provide a procedure for the detials? 

Thank you.

[IRIX201110141]

Is the Host attached to a vCenter yes or now?

If so how do you access the Host right now?

1. Trough vCenter you can add the Host to a Windows AD and with AD Credentials you can log into the ESXi shell
2. You can boot a LinuxLive CD and mount the ESXi fat partition, unpack the zipped bootbank, edit the etc/shadow and zipped it again. I was able to set a new ESXi root Password of a DataDomain 3300 some time ago

If you have ESXi installed on a separate LUN/RAID or USB/SD Card than its easy to just install it again. If you have you a VMFS Datastore on the same medium that you please take care during the installation because there will be a question about. Use the same version as your current ESXi and not 7.0 or so where the partition layout have changed!

Regards,
Joerg

[kenobi79]

hi

the official way is indicated on this kb:

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1317898

(You must reinstall esxi 😞 )

But in this blog there are some "alternative" ways...

https://www.vmwareblog.org/forgot-esxi-root-password-no-problems-4-ways-reset/

[nachogonzalez]

Hi, the. linux boot CD is amazing, never thought of it.

Just one small thing on joining the ESXi host to AD:
For adding a standalone host to the domain you need the root password, you also need to have the user you are going to use to reset the password on the Config.HostAgent.plugins.hostsvc.esxAdminsGroup group. So without the root password I think that option would not be valid.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2075361

[basco2]

You don't have to reinstall ESXi, at the end of the day this is Linux, so follow these steps:

https://www.altaro.com/vmware/reset-esxi-root-password/

[Chriz1]

Thank you very much for all your help and the reference link. It really helped with clarifying the possible solutions with detail instruction.