Nutanix IPMI ADMIN Account: New Default Password

This is a short post to raise awareness amongst my fellow Nutanix engineers & users regarding the changed policy on the default password for the ADMIN account to access the IPMI (out of band management) portal on new Nutanix NX nodes.

BMC 07.08

This policy change is part of the BMC v07.08, which is a factory-only update meaning that you are not able to update this version using Lifecycle Manager (LCM) or manually using IPMI. This means that this is applicable for new Nutanix nodes shipped from the factory with BMC v07.08.

The password policy change is the only difference with the previous between BMC v07.07. It goes without saying that this change is because of security reasons as many Nutanix customers/users are not changing the previously default “ADMIN/ADMIN” account/password combination after deployment and, subsequently, Production usage.

New ADMIN Password

So, what is the new default password for the ADMIN account? Well, there is no default value anymore because every node coming from the factory has a unique password for the ADMIN account. The password is set to the node-serial-number.

To find the node serial number, do one of the following:

• • Issue the command ipmitool fru print from the host and, in the resulting output, search for Board Serial. The Board Serial value is the IPMI ADMIN password.

• • Look for the sticker on the node that reads IPMI PW/SN. That string is the default IPMI ADMIN password.

Closing Notes

In case you have an existing Nutanix cluster (with BMC v07.07 nodes) and you receive new Nutanix nodes (with BMC v07.08) with Nutanix AHV already pre installed then you do not have to do anything. This is because Nutanix Foundation will take care of imaging the node(s) into your existing cluster.

In another case where you revert a Nutanix node (BMC v07.08) back to Factory Default settings then the ADMIN account password also reverts back to the default being the node-serial-number.

 

— I hope this helps you out with your new Nutanix deployments!