We recently performed a cluster shutdown with hardware power off of an AHV cluster running AOS 5.15.5.1.

We powered on all the nodes, and waited 10 minutes for the AHV hypervisor to boot and the CVMs to boot and get ready.

Even after 30 minutes the CVMs did not recognise the confirmed correct password for the “nutanix” userID during ssh login attempt to any CVM.

Fortunately one SSH key had previously been registered into Prism Element, which allowed SSH via this key.  The cluster was NOT configured to be locked down.

The key owner successfully connected to a CVM via SSH and performed sudo passwd set of the “nutanix” userID to a confirmed password.

Despite setting this password, the same CVM still refused to accept the “nutanix” userID and confirmed correct password during SSH password login. 

I am suspecting that with the cluster service stopped, but with one SSH key present, that the CVMs operate as if lockdown were enabled.

Can someone please confirm for this?
This prevented the password holder from being able to ssh to a CVM to start the cluster, requiring instead the SSH key holder to perform cluster start.