Warning for Shell and SSH being enabled appears on host summary page
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Warning for Shell and SSH being enabled appears on host summary page

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Article ID: 367599

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Updated On: 06-17-2025

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

  • Warning for ESXi Shell and SSH appears on an ESXi host summary page in Host UI or vCenter Server UI
  • ESXi host displays these errors:
     
    ESXi Shell for the Host has been enabled

    SSH for the host has been enabled

Environment

7.x
8.x

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

Additional Information

Please see Using ESXi Shell in ESXi for information on enabling or disabling the SSH and SHELL services on ESXi