Recently I needed to make some edits on vmdk files in order to get rid of a reference to the change tracking files, as mentioned in Gabrie’s post: Cannot open the disk and could not open change tracking file. An SSH connection to a VMware ESXi host was required. SHH was disabled and I needed to enable it temporarily.

How to enable SSH on an ESXi host using the vSphere client

In vSphere, select the host you want to enable SSH on.

Select the “Configuration” TAB, then “Security Profile”. In the upper right select “Properties.

A new window opens, now select SSH (you may need to scroll down a bit) and in the lower right select “Options”.

Again a new window opens and here you can either “Start” or “Stop” the SSH daemon.