How to uniquely identifying a ESXi Host under vCenter Server

[atoka]

What is the correct way to uniquely identifying a ESXi Host under vCenter Server?

Each ESXi Host has a Hardware BIOS identification(UUID) assigned to it but for ESXi running on White box hardware(VMware KB:    ESX host's UUID is not unique) this UUID is not unique. MoRef id is another option but I am looking for some id which will not change even when the ESXi Host is removed and added back to vCenter Server.

Is there anything on ESXi Host similar to UUID which will be unique under vCenter even if the Host is White box hardware or is removed and added back to vCenter Server?

Thanks.

[stumpr]

Universally unique, probably not.  The BIOS UUID is usually sufficient, except when the vendor doesn't provide enough dmidecode data as specified.  But even then, it is possible to change the BIOS values through various hardware vendor tools, so you could get mistaken UUIDs in very rare cases (not likely to happen so I wouldn't bother trying to code for it except to detect a duplicate UUID).

You could look at using the SSL thumbprints of the ESXi hosts.  These will be unique per install, but could also be changed if someone where to change the certificate or reinstall the ESXi OS.

The only other idea I would have be to generate your own UUID, then transport that into the ESXi file system, then use some host access such as SSH to get the value.  I would probably use UUID before this however.  Maybe use UUID + another value for the whitebox values.