I found myself wanting to enable the SSH service on my ESXi hosts. I could use Host Profiles to enable it but I decided to PowerShell script it! To enable SSH there are three parts to it:
You will need to start the SSH service and set it to Start and Stop with Host:
And you will need to suppress the SSH is enabled warning message:
This script does all of the above to an entire cluster. Let’s see it in action!
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###################################################################### # Start SSH Service, change Startup Policy, and Suppress SSH Warning # ###################################################################### #Variables $vCenter = "LABVC01.virtuallyboring.com" $Cluster = "Nested ESXi Cluster" ### Start of Script # Load VMware Cmdlet and connect to vCenter Add-PSSnapin vmware.vimautomation.core connect-viserver -server $vCenter $VMHost = Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster | Get-VMhost # Start SSH Server on a Cluster ForEach ($VMhost in $Cluster){ Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN "Starting SSH Service on " -NoNewline Write-Host -ForegroundColor YELLOW "$VMhost" Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostService | ? {($_.Key -eq "TSM-ssh") -and ($_.Running -eq $False)} | Start-VMHostService } # Change Startup Policy ForEach ($VMhost in $Cluster){ Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN "Setting Startup Policy on " -NoNewline Write-Host -ForegroundColor YELLOW "$VMhost" Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostService | where { $_.key -eq "TSM-SSH" } | Set-VMHostService -Policy "On" -Confirm:$false -ea 1 } # Surpress SSH Warning ForEach ($VMhost in $Cluster){ Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN "Setting UserVar to supress Shell warning on " -NoNewline Write-Host -ForegroundColor YELLOW "$VMhost" Get-VMhost | Get-AdvancedSetting | Where {$_.Name -eq "UserVars.SuppressShellWarning"} | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value "1" -Confirm:$false } ### End of Script |
Paste the script in PowerShell ISE as we need to update a few variables:
- $vCenter: Enter your vCenter name of your vCenter name
- $Cluster: Enter the name of your Cluster
You are now ready to run the script!
This worked like a champ, however I’m using PowerCLI 6.5 and I got an error on this:
Add-PSSnapin vmware.vimautomation.core
you can comment that out and re-run it, i had the same issue.
There’s quite some redundancy and unnecessary stuff in your scipt. Basically you can compress lines 14-35 to this:
Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster | Get-VMhost | %{
Write-Host -ForegroundColor YELLOW “Proeccsing $_”
Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN “Starting SSH Service”
$_ | Get-VMHostService | ? {($_.Key -eq “TSM-ssh”) -and ($_.Running -eq $False)} | Start-VMHostService
Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN “Setting Startup Policy”
$_ | Get-VMHostService | where { $_.key -eq “TSM-SSH” } | Set-VMHostService -Policy “On” -Confirm:$false -ea 1
Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN “Setting UserVar to supress Shell warning”
$_ | Get-AdvancedSetting | Where {$_.Name -eq “UserVars.SuppressShellWarning”} | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value “1” -Confirm:$false
}
Worked awesome, thanks!!!
I would add a line at the bottom:
Disconnect-VIServer -Server $vCenter -Confirm:$false
This way you don’t end up with multi-sessions open.