In this article, I will guide you through who to change password length for local administrator when using Guest OS Customization.
The security team is not satisfied with the current 8-character password policy for local administrator accounts in VMware Cloud Director (vCD). They consider it inadequate for protecting against modern threats and recommend enforcing a longer, more complex password to improve security.
The default minimum password length for the local administrator account in VMware Cloud Director (vCD) when using Guest OS Customization is 8 characters. This cannot be changed through the vCD user interface. However, it is possible to modify this setting by directly adding a parameter to the Cell-Managment-tool.
- Default Length:The default password length for the Guest OS Customization local administrator is 8 characters.
- UI Limitation:This default length cannot be changed through the vCloud Director’s administrative interface.
Create a test VM (we’ll need this VM later for verification).
Run guest customization during creation.
Connect to the primary VCD cell as root.
Confirm that the parameter is not set before proceeding
Add the parameter to the manage-config
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool manage-config -n AdminPasswordLength -v 16
Reboot all VCD cells.
Verify the configurations.
Verify the administrator password for the test VM that was created before adding the parameter.
Power off the test VM and Power ON, Force Recustomization
Wait for guest customization to complete, then verify the auto-generated password again.
I hope this article has been informative. thank you for reading.