My-Technet

Back Up the ESX Host Configuration

Back up the files in the /etc/passwd, /etc/groups, /etc/shadow, and /etc/gshadow directories.
The /etc/shadow and /etc/gshadow files might not be present on all installations.
Back up .vmx files.

Back Up the ESXi Host Configuration

Install the vSphere CLI. 
In the vSphere CLI, run the vicfg-cfgbackup command with the -s flag to save the host configuration to
a specified backup filename.

vicfg-cfgbackup –server <ESXi-host-ip> –portnumber <port_number> –protocol
<protocol_type> –username username –password <password> -s <backup-filename>

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Original Post – Here

How To Change Lost Password on Your ESX Server

You will need to have access to the serial console of the server which has your ESX installation, or access to keyboard and display attached directly to the same box.

To change the password, we’ll follow this procedure:

1) Reboot ESX server.

Unfortunately, if you don’t remember your root password, there won’t be a clean way to reboot your server. Try to shutdown all the VMs running on it, and then power-cycle the box running ESX.

2) Boot ESX server in single user mode

In this mode, you won’t be asked for a root password. When you see the following screen, press the "a" key:

… to change ESX kernel boot parameters. Your screen will look like this:

Now, simply type a space and "single" word, then press Enter:

Eventually, your ESX server will boot and give you a root command line prompt, which means you can do what you want from this moment on:

Assuming you want to change your root password, move on to the next step.

3) Change ESX root password to a new one

Simply type "passwd" and give your new password twice:

sh-2.05b# passwd
Changing password for user root.
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

That’s it! You have changed the ESX password! Now it’s time to reboot the system and allow ESX server to come back up online.

4) Reboot ESX server once again

Type "reboot" and wait for the ESX server to come back online in a few minutes:

sh-2.05# reboot

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1013109

Symptoms

• Upgrading virtual hardware in ESX 4 may cause Windows 2008 disks to go offline.
• Upgrading virtual hardware from version 4 to version 7 may cause Windows 2008 disks to go offline.
• Creating a new virtual machine on hardware version 7 may cause Windows 2008 disks to go offline.

Note: The first disk (C: drive) is not affected. Any additional disks may be affected and show marked as Offline within Disk Management.

Resolution

The default SAN Policy on Windows Enterprise is to not automount SAN disks, resulting in the disks being shown as offline. In comparison for Windows Standard Edition, the SAN Policy is online.

This can be resolved by changing the SAN Automount Policy on the system. See the Microsoft article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973834 to change the SAN Policy to online.

The SAN policy is defined within the VDS environment of the system and is represented by the following values:

• VDS_SP_UNKNOWN = 0×0
• VDS_SP_ONLINE = 0×1
• VDS_SP_OFFLINE_SHARED = 0×2
• VDS_SP_OFFLINE = 0×3

For more information, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb525577(VS.85).aspx.

On Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, the default SAN policy is VDS_SP_OFFLINE_SHARED. On all other Windows Server 2008 editions, the default SAN policy is VDS_SP_ONLINE.

To query current SAN policy from the command line, start DISKPART and issue a SAN command:

C:\>DISKPART.EXE
DISKPART> san
SAN Policy : Offline Shared
DISKPART> exit

Alternatively, you can set the disk to Online after the hardware version upgrade.

To set the disk to Online:

1. Log in to your system as an Administrator.
2. Click Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management.
3. Right-click the disk and choose Online.