I found myself wanting to enable the SSH service on my ESXi hosts. I could use Host Profiles to enable it but I decided to PowerShell script it! To enable SSH there are three parts to it:
You will need to start the SSH service and set it to Start and Stop with Host:

And you will need to suppress the SSH is enabled warning message:

This script does all of the above to an entire cluster. Let’s see it in action!
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# Start SSH Service, change Startup Policy, and Suppress SSH Warning #
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#Variables
$vCenter = "LABVC01.virtuallyboring.com"
$Cluster = "Nested ESXi Cluster"
### Start of Script
# Load VMware Cmdlet and connect to vCenter
Add-PSSnapin vmware.vimautomation.core
connect-viserver -server $vCenter
$VMHost = Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster | Get-VMhost
# Start SSH Server on a Cluster
ForEach ($VMhost in $Cluster){
Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN "Starting SSH Service on " -NoNewline
Write-Host -ForegroundColor YELLOW "$VMhost"
Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostService | ? {($_.Key -eq "TSM-ssh") -and ($_.Running -eq $False)} | Start-VMHostService
}
# Change Startup Policy
ForEach ($VMhost in $Cluster){
Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN "Setting Startup Policy on " -NoNewline
Write-Host -ForegroundColor YELLOW "$VMhost"
Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostService | where { $_.key -eq "TSM-SSH" } | Set-VMHostService -Policy "On" -Confirm:$false -ea 1
}
# Surpress SSH Warning
ForEach ($VMhost in $Cluster){
Write-Host -ForegroundColor GREEN "Setting UserVar to supress Shell warning on " -NoNewline
Write-Host -ForegroundColor YELLOW "$VMhost"
Get-VMhost | Get-AdvancedSetting | Where {$_.Name -eq "UserVars.SuppressShellWarning"} | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value "1" -Confirm:$false
}
### End of Script
Read more…Enable SSH Service on ESXi hosts using PowerShell
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