ssh access with a service account defined in vcenter

[billdossett]

Hi, I need some help understanding something.

We have Rapid 7 and they are scanning our ESXi hosts with it.  We just got a whole new HCI setup and deployed it and they want to scan the ESXi nodes in it.  I wasn't involved in this in the old infra, so this is the first time I am configuring this.

What I don't understand is that we define a service account for R7 to use... but the scan will not work unless we have the SSH server started and open...  This doesn't make sense to me as I thought the only way to allow SSH access to a server is to go thru and add a user at the ESXi user level and allow them SSH access... but this service account is only defined at the host level GUI... so how can it use SSH?

thanks

Bill

[kenobi79]

Hi bill,

i had a similar issue in the past.

A customer had need a local ssh user on esxi hosts different from root

i resolved in this way:

• on every esxi (via https) with root credential, i created a user
• I have given to this user the administrator permissions 
• i started the ssh service
• the user entered on the esxi host via ssh

warning: with read-only permission, the ssh access don't work!

I hope this help you

Bye

Riccardo