Cluster warning for ESXi Shell and SSH appear on an ESXi host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Cluster warning for ESXi Shell and SSH appears on an ESXi host.
• ESXi host displays these errors:
   
• ESXi Shell for the Host has been enabled
• SSH for the host has been enabled

Cause

In vSphere, you can enable both Remote SSH and the ESXi Shell for management of hosts from the vSphere Client, vSphere Web Client and from the Direct Console User Interface.

These messages that appear with a yellow exclamation mark is a proactive security measure and inform administrators that remote access is enabled for the server.

Disabling Remote SSH and ESXi Shell removes the messages from the host.

Resolution

To disable these warnings using vSphere Client:

1. Select the ESXi host from the Inventory.
2. Click the Configuration tab.
3. Click Advanced Settings in the Software menu.
4. Navigate to UserVars > UserVars.SuppressShellWarning.
5. Set the value from 0 to 1.
6. Click OK.

To disable these warnings using esxcli:

1. Connect to the ESXi host through SSH using root credentials.
2. Run this command:
   
   vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update UserVars.SuppressShellWarning long 1
    

To enable these warnings using esxcli:

1. Connect to the ESXi host through SSH using root credentials.
2. Run this command:
   
   vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update UserVars.SuppressShellWarning long 0
    

To disable SSH and warning using vSphere Web Client:

• Disable remote access to the ESXi 5.x host:
1. From the vSphere Web Client, select vCenter from the Home menu.
2. Select Hosts and Clusters under the Inventory Trees.
3. Expand the tree in the left pane of the vSphere Web Client.
4. Click the ESXi host with the yellow exclamation and click the Manage tab.
5. Click Settings and highlight Security Profile.
6. Scroll to Services and click Edit.
7. Highlight ESXi Shell and click Stop.
8. Repeat for SSH, then press OK.
    
• Disable the Warning message:
1. From the vSphere Web Client, select vCenter from the Home menu.
2. Select Hosts and Clusters under the Inventory Trees.
3. Expand the tree in the left pane of the vSphere Web Client.
4. Click the ESXi host with the yellow exclamation and click the Manage tab.
5. Click Settings and highlight Advanced System Settings.
6. Locate the parameter UserVars.SuppressShellWarning and click the pencil icon to edit.
7. Change the value to 1 and press OK.