Enable SSH On ESXi 5

In this blog post I will outline steps you can follow to enable SSH on your ESXi host using VMWare VSphear client. One the SSH is enabled you can use any SSH client to connect to your VMWare ESXi host and from there you have complete support for ESXCLI commands and other troubleshooting you need to do on your ESXi host.

First of all open your VSphear client and connect it to your ESXi host.

Select your Host and navigate to the configuration tab on the right.At the bottom left corner of the window select Security Profile under Software.

Click on Properties link on the top right corner.

It will open a window listing all the services and statuses of each individual services.

See that the SSH service is Stopped. Select the service and click the Options button at the bottom.

Go ahead and set the Start Up policy as per you need and click ok. And That's it. Now your ESXi host is capable of making SSH connection. Download the SSH client appropriate to your operating system and connect to your Host.