How to change the root password of ESXi hosts managed by VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)

Issue

I need to change manually the root password of the ESXi hosts managed by VMware Cloud Foundation.

Solution

It is possible to manually change the password for the ESXi host root account (unlike password rotation, which generates a randomized password) managed by the VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure, by logging in directly from the SDDC manager.

Log in to the SDDC Manager UI as a user with the ADMIN role.
From the navigation pane, select Administration (1) > Security (2) > Password Management (3), and be sure that ESXi (4) is selected.

Click on the ⋮ (5) > UPDATE (6)

Provide new password ...

... then Click UPDATE

Wait untill the credentioal are properly update on the host ...

... verify the Date in Last Modified field if properly reflect the changes

Repeat same procedure describe above for each host ESXi you want change the password.

Try logging into the host to verify the change.

Insert the new password.

Official documentation on how Manually Update Passwords on VCF is available at this link.

That's it.