Connecting to a ESX or ESXi host with Putty on MacOS

Many necessary administrative functions on ESXi requires SSH access. For example, offline bundles, third party management utilities, backup utilities, and many other tasks require you to log in to the ESXi console, via SSH or physically. This post will guide you through the process of enabling the SSH service, and opening up the firewall to allow access. This process works on all versions of ESXi, including the newer versions such as 5, 5.5, and 6. Lets get started.

Enabling SSH on an ESXi host

There are two steps involved in getting SSH access set up on an ESXi host.

• Enabling the SSH service
• Opening port 22 (SSH port) on the firewall

First, log into the VMware vSphere Client. You can login directory to the host, or to a vSphere server, it doesn’t matter. Select the host, then navigate to Configuration > Security Profile, once you are there, click on the Properties option to the right of Services.

You can now open up Putty for Mac, and connect using the same credentials you use to connect to the vSphere Client.

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