Did you know that we can set a custom welcome message on the DCUI screen of our ESXi host? Yeps, it is possible, as you can see my custom DCUI screen to the left!
Up until ESXi 7.0, this could be done by editing the file /etc/vmware/welcome. This file, however, is not present in ESXi 7.0 and up (as of now).
The good news is you can still set the DCUI welcome screen message using PowerCLI, ESXCLI or even the vsphere web client. In this blog post, I will be showing an example of how to set the welcome message using PowerCLI. This is done using an advanced setting of the ESXi host. First, let us have a look at the advanced setting used for this.
Log in to your vCenter web client and select the host whose welcome message you would want to set. Go to Configuration > Advanced System Settings. You will find a key "Annotations.WelcomeMessage":
This is the key we will be using to set our DCUI screen message. The following colours are supported:
white
black
dark-grey
light-grey
yellowThe following variables can be used to display host information:
assettag
BIOSversion
BMCversion
CIM_Chassis
CPLDversion
esxproduct
esxversion
hostname
ip
license
memory
OMC_MCFirmwareIdentity
OMC_SMASHFirmwareIdentity
OtherIdentifyingInfo
PLSAversion
serial-number
servicetag
ssl-thumbprint
supportperiod
supportstart
VersionString
VMware_HHRCSoftwareIdentitySelect the variables that best suit your needs, for this example I am only using {hostname} and {memory}. Refer the sample script below:
$dcuimessage= @"
{align:center}{bgcolor:black}{color:yellow}{hostname}{/color}{/bgcolor}{/align}
{align:center}{bgcolor:black}{color:yellow}{memory} RAM{/color}{/bgcolor}{/align}
{align:center}{bgcolor:black}{color:white} {/color}{/bgcolor}{/align}
{align:center}{bgcolor:yellow}{color:black} www.VirtualMystery.info {/color}{/bgcolor}{/align}
"@
get-advancedsetting -entity $vmhost -Name Annotations.WelcomeMessage | Set-AdvancedSetting -value $dcuimessage -confirm:$false The following output is obtained on the DCUI splash screen:
This especially comes in handy when you do not want the end user/unauthorised persons to obtain sensitive information about the host from the DCUI screen.
To reset the DCUI message to default screen, we need to reset the message to null value. This can be done by using the following script:
get-advancedsetting -entity $vmhost -Name Annotations.WelcomeMessage | Set-AdvancedSetting -value "" -confirm:$false Feel free to test the script in your own lab environment!
Big thanks to William Lam https://williamlam.com/ !!!
References: