Resetting Lost ESXi password

There's one blog post I've found about booting your ESXi host to a bootable Linux CD and hacking the root password, but VMware says the only supported solution is to do a recovery install.

The nice folks at VCE have suggested something else:

You need the full Enterprise license in order to use host profiles for this fix. We did this on ESXi 4.1 update 1 with Virtual Distributed switches and SAN.

1. Login to VC as Administrator and create a new host profile using another ESXi host.
2. Edit the Host profile and change the "Administrator password" to a fixed password.
3. Next "Attach" and "Apply" the modified profile to the host that you don’t know the password for.
4. You should now be able to login via the console or SSH however the change is only temporary.
5. From ESXi command line execute the backup script to make changes persistent - ~ # /sbin/auto-backup.sh
7. Finally put ESX into Maintenance mode, Reboot and verify new login credentials.

Thanks again to VCE!