HOWTO: ESXi and SSH

VMware ESXi is a bare metal hypervisor.

One of the most asked questions is how can I SSH to an ESXi host?

By default this isn’t possible. But there’s a way to get this working, just do the following:

1. Go to the ESXi console and press alt+F1
2. Type: unsupported
3. Enter the root password(No prompt, typing is blindly)
4. At the prompt type “vi /etc/inetd.conf”
5. Look for the line that starts with “#ssh” (you can search with pressing “/”)
6. Remove the “#” (press the “x” if the cursor is on the character)
7. Save “/etc/inetd.conf” by typing “:wq!”
8. Restart the management service “/sbin/services.sh restart”

Done!

Update for ESXi 3.5 Update 2 - With Update 2 the service.sh command no longer restarts the inetd process which enables SSH access. You can either restart your host or run ps | grep inetd to determine the process ID for the inetd process. The output of the command will be something like 1299 1299 busybox      inetd, and the process ID is 1299. Then run kill -HUP <process_id> (kill -HUP 1299 in this example) and you'll then be able to access the host via SSH.

Source: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/08/10/howto-esxi-and-ssh/