Locked out of new network switches because the consultant left
When an external consultant configures network gear and leaves without handing over the login credentials, incoming administrators are completely locked out of the equipment. This prevents anyone from managing the infrastructure or performing basic upkeep until the original configurator returns.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1escalating the issue to managementDid this help you?
- 2waiting for the manager or absent consultant to respondDid this help you?
- 3performing endpoint troubleshooting without network accessDid this help you?
- 4Driving in late at night to plug a physical crash cart directly into the hostDid this help you?
- 5Moving credentials to a self-hosted password manager with offline caching enabledDid this help you?
- 6Using VCentre to identify which VMs are running on which hostDid this help you?
- 7Checking MAC address first few octets which are usually the same as the hostDid this help you?
- 8Factory resetting all hardware and building the entire network from scratchDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“he has the login info for the switch that hasn't been shared with me yet.”source ↗
“Getting to the boxes was my problem, no RDP means iLO, and I know where iLO lives and I know the credentials exist. They were in a runbook page on the internal wiki. Which is hosted on a VM. On a host I was trying to reach. I was a dog chasing its own tail for a good week.”source ↗
“Ultimately, if nobody has creds, and your guy is going to be away for an unknown time without a backup, it's not on you.”source ↗
“If you're unable to address it because you can't even log in to the new kit, then there's not much else you can do”source ↗
“I need to discover which services are running on our VMWare servers.”source ↗
“The last admin didn’t leave me with the vCenter credentials, so I’m not sure how to access.”source ↗
“I don’t want to restart or stop the servers to do the job.”source ↗
“Working with a network where the sole IT person vanished.”source ↗
“I've been asked to figure out how to get into the admin-side of things...which is borderline impossible for most modern hardware.”source ↗
“Worst case scenario I can factory reset everything but I'll have to build the entire network from scratch.”source ↗
“Same goes for their PBX, and barely anything is documented.”source ↗
Where this came up
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