How to check ESXi root password for all VMhost in the VCenter ?

[AlbertWT]

hi,

Can anyone please share he way or any script to check the VMware root credentials ?

rather than trying to login to each VMhost ESX(i) with vsphere client is too much of a work 

[LucD]

Try something like this

$user = "root"
$pswd = "lala"
foreach($esx in Get-VMHost){
    try {
        Connect-VIServer -Server $esx -User $user -Password $pswd -ErrorAction Stop | Out-Null
    }
    catch{
        "Logon failed on $($esx.Name)"
    }
}

[AlbertWT]

Thanks for the reply Luc,

However if it is just one line connect to the ESX host it works, somehow it doesn't work in the loop ?

Initially I have logged on to the VCenter server and then execute the script that you created but it is all returning failed, the credentials has always been right when I check manually.

[mattandes · Accepted solution]

The reason the script that LucD provided isn't working is because you need to change $_ to $esx (shown below). You use the $_ when your piping output from one command to another. Since we're using we're using a Foreach loop we access the individual items of the Get-VMHost command through the defined variable (the $esx in the 3rd line)

Connect-VIServer -Server $esx -User $user -Password $pswd -ErrorAction Stop | Out-Null

[AlbertWT]

thanks man it works now 🙂

[LucD]

I corrected the code

[jasmeetsinghsur]

Our ESXi hosts recently got locked out. Is there any powercli to know the current status of ROOT account if its locked or failed logon attempts.

[LucD]

You can query the events (provided you keep them for sufficiently long).

The event should say when it happened and for how long the account will be locked.

$esxName = 'MyEsx'

Get-VIEvent -Entity $esx -Start (Get-Date).AddMinutes(-15) -MaxSamples ([int]::MaxValue) |

where{$_ -is [VMware.Vim.EventEx] -and $_.EventTypeId -eq 'esx.audit.account.locked'}

[vmk2014]

LucD,

If i want to validate the root password for 140 standalone hosts, then in that case the below script will work ?

Thanks

V

[LucD]

You will need to have a list with the FQDN of the ESXi nodes and the root credentials to try.

Then a Connect-VIServer to the ESXi node with those credentials in a try-catch construct should do the trick.

It would be more like the script in Re: Validate ESXi root password against multiple passwords

With the exception that you would only test against 1 root credential