Configuring VMware ESX server login

Before you use Double-Take Availability for VMware Infrastructure, you must configure your VMware ESX servers to enable the client port for SSH. You will need to do this on both the source and target servers.

Follow these steps to allow remote root login for SSH.

1. Log on to the ESX server through the console, using root credentials.
2. Use a text editor to open the SSH system configuration file /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
3. Change the line “PermitRootLogin no” to “PermitRootLogin yes”.
4. Save the configuration file.
5. From the command line, enter the following line to restart the SSH service.

service sshd restart

Double-Take Availability for VMware Infrastructure can use non-root accounts to set up and configure protection jobs. Double-Take Availability for VMware Infrastructure uses the sudo (super user do) program provided in ESX to set up a non-root account that can be used to setup and configure Double-Take Availability for VMware Infrastructure jobs.

Note:

VirtualCenter is required when configuring protections using non-root credentials. If VirtualCenter is not being used, then you must enter the root account credentials of the source and target ESX servers.

Before sudo can be used, it needs to be configured on any ESX server that is using a non-root account. Each host should have a non-privileged account configured. It does not have to be the same account.

To add a new user, perform the following steps on each host to be used as source or target.

1. Log in as root, or login with a non-root account and use the sudo command to transition to the root.
2. Execute adduser <username> to create a user.
3. Set a password for the newly created user: passwd <username>

Configure sudo access for the newly-created user.

1. Execute visudo. This should bring up the sudo configuration file (/etc/sudoers). Note that you should not edit that file directly.
2. Add the following line to the sudo configuration file:

username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

3. Save the file and exit (:w!).

Verify that the sudo account has been configured correctly.

1. Log out and re-login as a sudo account.
2. Execute the following command to make sure you can access VMWare datastores on /vmfs/volumes/.../.... If the command succeeds (prints the contents of the root home folder), then sudo is configured correctly. If it fails with a “permission denied” error or prompts for a password, then sudo is misconfigured.

sudo ls ~root