Find MoRef ID using powercli

From time to time you need to find the moref of an object in vCenter. This is a quick powercli one liner to get the name and ID of an object type (VM, Datastore etc)

This assumes you are already connected to vCenter using Connect-VIServer

# Datastores

Get-Datastore | Select Name,ID

This command returns output like below. In this example i have 1 datastore

Get-Datastore

#VMs

Get-VM | Select Name,ID

This command returns output like below

Get-VM

Reset VMware appliance root password

Use the following procedure to change the root password for a VMware appliance. This process uses single user mode so it allow you to change the root password if you have forgotten it!

Open the VM console and reboot the appliance

 

Select the line that starts with kernel and type e to edit the line

At the end of the line, press the spacebar and type init=/bin/sh

Press Enter to exit edit mode.

On the GRUB screen, type b to boot into single-user mode.
The virtual appliance boots in single-user mode.

To change the root user password, type passwd root and follow the on-screen prompts to enter a new password for the root user

To restart the virtual appliance, type reboot and press Enter.

When the virtual appliance restarts, you can log in using the new password.