Changing Password Expiration days on ESXi hosts causes hosts to become disconnected in SDDC Manager

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

After changing the password expiration days from 180 to 90 without rotating the password for longer that the 90 day period you are setting will cause the root and service account to become disconnected in password manager in SDDC Manager.

Environment

VCF 5.x

Cause

Passwords had not been rotated on ESXi hosts in 90+ days so when lowering the expiration days from 180 where they were still valid to 90 where they are expired caused the accounts to disconnect on SDDC Manager.

Resolution

The resolution would be to Rotate ALL ESXi passwords before changing the password expiration value.

Workaround:

1. Reset the expiration to 180 days
2. Reconnection the root & svc accounts in SDDC Manager by remediating the accounts with the passwords
3. Once connected, rotate all passwords via SDDC Manager for the hosts
4. Change the expiration days to the X day required value (e.g 90)