How to change your forgotten vRealize Operations 6.x root password

Today I wanted to access my vRealize Operations (vROps) appliance through the console, but… oh cr*p what did I use as the root password of the appliance again…

After some research it appears to be quite easy to change your forgotten root password.
 

Reset vRealize Operations root password

Open the console of the vRealize Operations appliance through the vSphere Web Client or the old trusted vSphere Client. Then reboot the vRealize Operations appliance and when the bootloader appears just append init=/bin/bash to the boot options.

Proceed with booting the appliance and when the appliance is done booting type passwd
It will ask you to fill in your new password twice and then you can reboot the appliance again by typing reboot

That’s it! Let the vRealize Operations appliance fully boot and you can log in again as root with your new password.

And now because you’re already logged in to the vRealize Operations console, maybe it is a good idea to enable SSH. Type in the following 2 lines

The first line service sshd start is to start the SSH service and the second line chkconfig sshd on to start the SSH service automatically during the boot process.

Enjoy! 🙂