Accessing the hidden & unsupported ESXi console so it can be accessed remotely is pretty easy to do, but there’s no easy way to find it without guidance.
1. First you must go to the console of the server as you cannot access this console remotely.
2. Once you are on the server’s console, press Alt-F1.
3. At that point you will see a console log of what has happened on the server, but there is no prompt. Anything you type will not appear on the screen.
Type the command unsupported and press enter (this will not appear on the screen).
4. This activates “Tech Support Mode”. As the warning says, this is unsupported unless you are using it with help from VMware Tech Support. VMware does not make any warranties if, by using this interface, something unexpected happens to your ESXi Server, so exercise caution.
5. Type your ESXi Server root password.
6. From the console you can do things like enable ssh access, etc.
las artes
May 21, 2012 at 10:42 pm
You may be reluctant to issue the restart command yet though, perhaps you aren’t sure that all the VMs have properly shut down, or even exactly what VMs are running on that host (if you are running a fully automated vSphere cluster with several ESXi hosts this can happen quite easily!). In this case there is another option available to you, the “unsupported” console.