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How to check the number of days before ESXi password expires?

08.08.2023 by William Lam // 4 Comments

Local user accounts created in ESXi including the root user has a default password expiration of 99999 days before administrators need to change the password. Users can control the password expiry by modifying the following ESXi Advanced Setting called Security.PasswordMaxDays which is also referenced in the ESXi Security Documentation along with other advanced configurations.

Password rotation or updates are typically managed by an organizations password management solution which is responsible keeping track and notifying when local passwords are about to expire. With that said, not everyone has a password management solution and how do you quickly check how many days left before an account password expires on an ESXi host? I initially thought this should be pretty simple to figure out, especially with utilities like chage but the version that ESXi ships is a stripped down version via Busybox and it did not provide any expiry details like the typical chage version might.

This meant, that the password expiry would need to be calculated manually and luckily, this is not a new concept. The answer lies in the /etc/shadow file which contains a number of fields that can then be used to figure out the number of days left before an account expires or if has already expired. I will not bore you with the details, but you can create the following shell script which can run in the ESXi Shell to provide you with the answer.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, Security Tags // ESXi, expiry, password

Changing the default HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports on ESXi 8.0 Update 1

07.31.2023 by William Lam // 6 Comments

Pre-ESXi 8.0 Update 1, if you needed to modify the default ESXi HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports, you would simply edit the HTTP reverse proxy configuration file, which I have previously blogged about HERE (pre-ESXi 8.0) and HERE (ESXi 8.0).

For ESXi 8.0 Update 1, the process is slightly diffrent as all ESXi configurations including configuration files have been completely migrated to the new ESXi Configuration Store, which was initially introduced back in vSphere 7.0 Update 1, which you can learn more about it HERE and HERE.

While most users stick with the system defaults with port 80 (HTTP) and port 443 (HTTPS), I know there are some organizations that require these ports to be changed to meet certain internal compliance requirements. Below are the updated instructions for modifying the ESXi HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports when using ESXi 8.0 Update 1 or later.

Disclaimer: VMware does not officially support modifying the default HTTP/HTTPS ports on an ESXi host.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, vSphere 8.0 Tags // envoy, ESXi 8.0 Update 1, rhttpproxy

Creating a custom VIB for ESXi 8.x

07.25.2023 by William Lam // 21 Comments

Back in 2012, a VMware Fling was released called VIB Author, which allowed users to create their own custom vSphere Infrastructure Bundles (VIB) that typically would include configuration changes that was not possible when using the vSphere API such as enabling custom ESXi firewall ports or even bundling up custom utilities that could run within the ESXi Shell.

The VIB Author tool was eventually deprecated and removed due to the lack of support from Engineering, after all, it was released as a Fling. While the need for opening non-standard ESXi firewall port has greatly improved over the years, with the majority of 2nd and 3rd party solutions simply incorporating that into their solution offering, there are still use cases for requiring a custom VIB.

Even with the VIB Author Fling being deprecated, many in the community was still able to construct custom VIBs which were still compatible with later ESXi 5.x to 7.x releases. In fact, I even use the VIB Author to make it easier to distribute and install the popular ghettoVCB solution which can be installed using either a VIB or an Offline Bundle, another format the VIB Author tool supports creating.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, vSphere 8.0 Tags // ESXi 8.0, vib

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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