DCUI from ssh for vSphere 6 — so awesome!
This is one of those great command line items to put in your toolkit that will impress your co-workers. I think this command is one of the least known commands but could have a huge impact on an admins ability to manage their environment. The vSphere command is simply ‘dcui’ and it is a very simple way to access the DCUI without having to go into your remote IPMI tools (ilo, iDRAC, KVM over IP, etc). The only down side compared to IPMI tools is it doesn’t work when you reboot your system as you’ll lose your ssh session.
How to use it:
- After your server is fully booted, start an ssh session to your target server and logon
- From the command prompt type in dcui and press enter
- From there you can use the dcui remotely.
- Press CTRL + C to exit
Tips:
- Have your ssh screen size where you want it prior to going into the dcui. If you resize after connecting it will exit out of the DCUI
- The DCUI command worked great in putty but it did not work with the MAC Terminal program. Not sure why, but if you got this working on a MAC then post up!
If you like my ‘no-nonsense’ blog articles that get straight to the point… then post a comment or let me know… Else, I’ll start writing boring blog content.
vmexplorer 
February 17, 2017 at 9:51 am
[…] Have you ever connected to an ESXi host with SSH and felt lost? (it’s okay to admit you don’t know the command-line). Do you remember the yellow and black character-based GUI that you use when at the host console? That’s the DCUI. If you are running vSphere 6 or later – you can run the DCUI from SSH! […]
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June 26, 2020 at 3:56 am
ON MAC OS – Terminal, do the following:
Terminal -> Preferences -> Profiles -> Basic -> Advanced -> Declare Terminal As: VT102
Reload Terminal to be sure it is working, and then ssh -l
Command: dcui
Enjoy!
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June 26, 2020 at 7:22 am
Thanks Bill!
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