VMware vSphere

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  • 1.  SSH to ESXI host without using an administrator account?

    Posted Oct 01, 2018 06:59 PM

    Is it possible to SSH to a esxi host with a read only account? 

    Our security team wants to scan our ESXI hosts for vulnerabilities and their tool uses SSH.  I dont want to give them an administrator account to do this but everything I have found says SSH only works with administrator accounts.



  • 2.  RE: SSH to ESXI host without using an administrator account?

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 24, 2018 06:55 PM

    There's a similar thread that asked about this for ESXi 5 - General query:Need to give read only access to new user to access the esxi host through ssh(putty)

    I can't comment if vSphere 6 will allow this as well. Typically SSH is disabled, and recommended to be enabled temporarily to access as root for troubleshooting/command line operations.



  • 3.  RE: SSH to ESXI host without using an administrator account?

    Posted Oct 24, 2018 07:53 PM

    Thanks for the link, it doesn't work on 6.0 for SSH.

    being in /etc/security/access.conf isn't enough to give access.  I had created a domain account with read only access and got it added to /etc/security/access.conf but still can't get in.

    Again thanks for trying!

    Michael