Recently we acquired a new client, and I’m currently in the process of swapping credentials across the board for all their devices.

For context; While I’m versed in VMware, it’s been a hot minute, and mostly on 6.X configurations as we’re mostly a Hyper-V centric org. They also don’t have V-center (small company of like 10 people).

Now our password repository has a built in random password generator, which on paper is great, but it uses passphrase and not random characters. This is to say instead of

“:)/!/78)hkHhrl”

I’ll get

“tomato-christian-cucumber-jesus-confused”

Now by default (and I didn’t know this) ESXi 8.0 has password complexity AND max length. So the password generated was longer than the max (40 I think) and failed to update, of which it warned me as such.

APPARENTLY it did something, cause my OG password no longer works, the new password doesn’t work, so now I’m locked out of the root account until I go onsite and fix it tomorrow…

Can you blame me? Sure, but like jfc it was a simple password change, I didn’t mean to lock the hypervisor lol.

Anyways, I got got by VMware, and I feel like a moron, so here’s to my Wednesday afternoon onsite fixing my mistake 😑