vCenter appliance SSH version is not fully displayed in the compatibility banner.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

When querying the vCenter appliance SSH version using the ssh -v command, the full patch version of the openSSH service is not displayed.

The output only displays the major version:
>[ ~ ]# ssh -v [email protected]
>OpenSSH_8.9p1, OpenSSL 3.0.14 4 Jun 2024

Environment

vCenter Server Appliance 8.x

Cause

The compatibility banner field of the OpenSSH RPM that is used on ESXi hosts does not contain the full OpenSSH version.

Resolution

This is expected behavior.  To pull the full version of OpenSSH installed on the vCenter appliance, please use one of the alternative queries:

rpm -qa

or

ssh -V