The root password is locking out frequently on VMware Cloud Director Availability

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

• When attempting to access the user interface for VMware Cloud Director Availability, the root credentials fail even though they are confirmed to be correct.
• Attempting to log into the command line of the appliance, either from the console or SSH, fails due to too many failed login attempts.
• In the systemd journal on the appliance, frequent entries similar to the following are observed:
  
  May 15 16:34:22 vcf-cm-vcda-cloudmgt sshd[643585]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=###.###.###.###  user=root
May 15 16:34:24 vcf-cm-vcda-cloudmgt sshd[643585]: Failed password for root from ###.###.###.### port ##### ssh2
May 15 16:34:27 vcf-cm-vcda-cloudmgt sshd[643585]: Failed password for root from ###.###.###.### port ##### ssh2

Environment

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.x

Cause

There are multiple attempts to connect to the appliance via SSH with the incorrect credentials. As a security precaution, the authentication system is configured to lock the account automatically after too many failed attempts.

Resolution

Identify the addresses in the logs from the failed attempts (i.e., ###.###.###.### in the example above) to determine the source of the activity.

Additional Information

The following command can be used to review the journal for these symptoms:

journalctl | grep -i sshd | less

The account will unlock automatically after a period of time if there are no additional failures in the meantime. If the account needs to be unlocked manually or the password needs to be reset, please refer to the following:

How to reset the root password for a Cloud Director Availability PhotonOS appliance