vSphere Client – SSH AutoConnect plugin for avoiding entering root password every time.
This plugin is for vSphere client and its provided and maintained by a french collegue blogger VMDude.fr and enables you to connect to your ESXi hosts without leaving your vSphere client (the Windows one). There is also the possibility to setup per-host password, in case you're using different root password for each of your hosts. It
The plugin has the ability to get configured for SSH auto-connection without the need of entering the root password of your ESXi host every time. This is something which might be handy for home labbing or for administration of small environments where you're the only one who is in charge of VMware vSphere infrastructure. Saves time.
The plugin is easy to configure and I can show you the steps to do a configuration with the auto-connection feature (which is optional) as well.
vSphere Client and SSH Auto Connect to ESXi – Here are the steps:
01. The Plugin is called SSH AutoConnect and can be downloaded from this page. (Also the Visual Studio 2010 sources are there…). Once done, uncompress and copy paste the whole folder to the system where you managing the vSphere infrastructure from. In my case:
02. Launch PowerCli window and copy-paste the following code with your root password.
[System.Convert]::ToBase64String( [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes(“YOUR_ROOT_PASS”))
You'll get the password encoded to Base64 which needs to be done for the autoconnect feature to work. You can click to enlarge
03. Paste the encoded characters into the sshAutoConnect.xml file which is present in the same folder as the DLL.
Mine looks like this. Note, that there is a possibility to use different passwords for other servers, than the default connection……
04. You're done. Just restart the vSphere client, and to test the SSh connection just right click the ESXi host and choose from the menu to launch the SSH client.
Please note that you have to enable the SSH connections to you ESXi host for this feature to work. You can do it by using the GUI of the vSphere client by selecting your ESXi host and going to Configuration > Security Profile > SSH.
The SSH client will connect to the ESXi host without asking you for the root password now.
The whole credit goes to author… -:)
Source: VMdude.fr
