Reset your password – for simplicity, I entered vmware123 Press F2 – this will allow you to reset the password. Once the VM has restarted.Īs you can see. Once done, reboot the server – just reset the VM. Once done, press Ctrl+X to exit and press Y to save the changes and press enter to write the shadow file. Look for the line that begins with root: and remove the 1st field and the 4th field so it looks like this: Once done, we will edit the shadow file sudo su We now need to assume the superuser role, mount the relevant partition and make a backup of the file we will be editing. I assume you have some basic ESXi / vSphere knowledge so I will not go in to how to do simple things like mount the ISO – I will continue from the boot process. The reason behind me doing this is due to the password expiring and someone resetting it and not recording it in our password management software.Ī Live boot ISO – I used this one: ADRIANE-KNOPPIX_V7.2.0gCD-ENĬonsole access to the VM you want to reset.īe sure to have ESXi host access to the host where these VMs reside as the VMs WILL require a reboot, meaning your entire vCenter will be offline for the during of this password reset. This works on the vCenter, an external Platform Service controller or an AIO system. So, lets kick it off with resetting the vSphere password. So, its been quite some time since my last post, dealing with personal issues and the festive season and and and, so, here I am, back in 2017 and hopefully bringing awesome content.

Reset vmware esxi 6 root password