Starting or stopping the SSH service on multiple ESXi hosts can be a tedious job when having to do this via the vSphere (Web)Client. Fortunately, you can also use PowerCLI to start/stop services quickly. With a little scripting, you can expand this to start/stop services on a set of hosts, a cluster, or the entire vCenter.

First, start PowerCLI and make a connection to the vCenter. For automation, you can use something like this (note that you have to add code for credentials, if needed):

if (-not (Get-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) { Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core | Out-Null }Connect-VIServer vcenter.domain.local

Once that's done, you can ga  ...