ESXi Command Line Access (Unsupported Mode)

ESXi is great. Which is fortunate as it is also the way that VMware is going in the long run. There will be no service console before too much longer (although I can't get a fixed date on when out of my insiders within VMware). When you need to drop away from the vSphere client and interact with the vmkernel through commands and scripts, it can be a bit limiting. The VMware management Appliance (vMA) is very handy in most cases. But there are some times when you really do need to run commands on the ESXi server itself. Without a service console how do you do this? Read on.

To enable unsupported technical mode - and I really do mean unsupported, so don't tell VMware I told you this! - you need to connect to the console of your ESXi server. This can be via iLO, DRAC, RSA or whatever.

At the ESXi console, hit Alt-F1. Then, carefully, type 'unsupported' without the quotes. You shouldn't expect to see anything written on the screen. Hit return. You'll be presented with a login prompt. Login as root using your normal password and away you go.