Too many authentication failures - vCenter SSH Error

📜 Intro #

Recently, when I have tried to SSH to vCenter I have been getting the following:

ssh root@10.108.98.70

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.3.00800

Type: vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller

Received disconnect from 10.108.98.70 port 22:2: Too many authentication failures
Disconnected from 10.108.98.70 port 22

This happens if you have SSH keys installed on your system which are not valid and vCSA nope’s out instead of just asking for the password.

🔧 Fix #

There are several fixes.

Add your SSH key: #

Add your id_* to vCenter’s .ssh/authorized_keys file.

Connect with the following argument: #

ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no root@fqdn/IP

Add the following override in your .ssh/config: #

PubkeyAuthentication no

Like so:

Host fqdn/IP
  Hostname fqdn/IP
  PubkeyAuthentication no

You should now be able to connect using username and password to vCSA without getting the “Too many authentication failures” error.

❯ ssh root@10.108.98.70

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.3.00800

Type: vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller

root@10.108.98.70's password:
Connected to service

    * List APIs: "help api list"
    * List Plugins: "help pi list"
    * Launch BASH: "shell"

Command>

Hope this helped ~~muffn.