vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 6: Customizing VCSA's DCUI

For those of you who have deployed the latest VCSA 6.0, you may have noticed that it now includes a DCUI interface similar to that of ESXi. Just like ESXi, it provides some basic functionality such as network configuration, restarting of the management interface, enabling SSH/Shell access and viewing support logs. For some customers, there is a mandatory requirement in terms of compliance to be able to display a security or warning banner prior to logging into a system which can also include interactive console UI's like the DCUI.

With ESXi, it was possible to customize the DCUI as seen in the screenshot below (more serious customizations are used in customer environments of course). For more details, please take a look at this blog post here.

Luckily, with the VCSA 6.0, it is also now possible to customize some of the text on the DCUI interface. However, you will not have complete free range like you did with the ESXi's DCUI interface but will be specific part of the screen. Here is an example of what can be added to the VCSA's DCUI screen:

There is a section before the IP Address and a section after the IP Address which you can append custom text. This is controlled by the following configuration file located in: /etc/vmware/appliance/dcui.cfg and specifically with the following two variables: CONNECTION_MESSAGE which is the message before the IP Address and CONNECTION_MESSAGE_AFTER_IP for the message after the IP Address.

Here is an example of what the above customization looks like:

{
    "PRODUCT_NAME": "VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0",
    "CONNECTION_MESSAGE_BEFORE_IP": "https://",
    "CONNECTION_PORT": "443",
    "CONNECTION_MESSAGE": "\n\t### Message BEFORE IP ###\n",
    "CONNECTION_MESSAGE_AFTER_IP": "\n\n\t### Message AFTER IP ###\n"
}

For the changes to take affect, you will need to reload the DCUI interface which you can do by running the following command:

kill $(ps -ef | grep dcui.py | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}')

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