ESXi Services

Manage ESXi services using PowerCLI

 Managing services on ESXi, is one task you’ll find yourself doing over and over again. In today’s post, I’ll focus on the SSH service this being from experience, one that is constantly enabled and disabled. It’s worth mentioning that disabling services that are seldom used is standard security practice as is enabling critical ones on a need-to-use only basis. The aim, here, is to reduce the attack surface of a system. Indeed, restricting SSH access on ESXi is one such example, which despite being a royal pain for many, is ultimately good practice. There are three main methods you could use to manage the SSH service on ESXi these being the DCUI, vSphere clients and PowerCLI. Let’s review them all.   Method 1: Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) For illustration purposes, I’m using a nested ESXi environment. In a production environment, you probably must walk or drive to where the server is located.… Read More»