Recover ESXi Root Password using AD Authentication
Written by
Sam McGeown
Sam McGeownThis article is now 9 years old! It is highly likely that this information is out of date and the author will have completely forgotten about it. Please take care when following any guidance to ensure you have up-to-date recommendations.
Losing a root password isn’t something that happens often, but when it does it’s normally a really irritating time. I have to rotate the password of all hosts once a month for compliance, but sometimes a host drops out of the loop and the root password gets lost. Fortunately, as the vpxuser is still valid I can manage the host via vCenter - this lends itself to this little recovery process:
- Join the host to the domain (I’ve got a handy post for that here)
- Create the “ESX Admins” group in your AD and ensure that you are a member. The AD group will be given full administrator rights on the host automatically.
- Wait for replication, and the host to pick up the group and membership – it took about 15 minutes for me.
- You can now connect directly to the host using the vSphere Client – head on to the “Local Users & Groups” page and edit “root”:
- You should now be able to connect to the host using your new root password.