Resetting the Cloud Director System Administrator Password

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

This article provides a method to reset a Cloud Director local System Administrator user's password.

 

You may want to reset the password of a local System Administrator user if:

• You have forgotten or lost the Cloud Director System Administrator password for the default Administrator user which was created at installation time.
• You need access the Provider portal of Cloud Director using the default Administrator account.

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 10.x

Resolution

To reset a local System Administrator user's password for Cloud Director use the cell-management-tool recover-password subcommand.
Details on this command are available in the Cloud Director documentation on Recovering the System Administrator Password.

Example steps would be as follows:

1. Log in to one of the Cloud Director Cells as the root user.
2. Run the cell-management-tool recover-password subcommand:
   /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool recover-password -dbuser vcd_db_username

The vcd_db_username is the username for the Cloud Director database. For example in an Appliance install the default username would be vcloud:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool recover-password -dbuser vcloud
The username can also be checked by querying the Cloud Director Cell's config file:
grep database.username /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/global.properties
database.username=vcloud

3. Follow the prompts to change the password for the desired System Administrator user.The database user's password is the database password that was set during the original installation of Cloud Director:

Please enter the database user's password:
Please enter the system administrator username whose password is to be changed: administrator
Please enter the new password:
Reenter the password:
Successfully changed password

4. After resetting the System Administrator user's password attempt to log into the Cloud Director Provider portal again using the new password.

NOTE: If the database password has also been lost or forgotten this can be reset before running the cell-management-tool recover-password subcommand.
For an Appliance installation of Cloud Director these steps are outlined in the Cloud Director documentation to Change the PostgreSQL Database Password.