SolarWinds Knowledge Base

The following procedure enables SNMP on VMware ESXi.

Notes:

• The free version of VMware ESXi does not support SNMP.
• The following procedure to enable SNMP requires the vSphere command line interface (CLI). The vSphere CLI is not packaged with your ESXi Server by default, so you will need to download it from VMware, as indicated.

To enable SNMP on VMware ESXi:

1. Download and install the VMware vSphere command line interface from the VMware Download Center (http://downloads.vmware.com/d/).
2. Use the vSphere CLI to view your ESXi server SNMP settings, as indicated in the following procedure:
   
   1. In the Perl\bin directory of your vSphere installation, execute the following script:
      perl ..\..\bin\vicfg-snmp.pl --server ip_address –s
      Notes:
      
      • C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\bin is the default location of the vSphere Perl\bin directory.
      • Replace ip_address with the IP address of your ESXi server.
   2. Enter an appropriate user name at the prompt.
      Note: For most environments, root should be sufficient.
   3. Enter the associated password at the prompt.
3. Use the vSphere CLI to enable SNMP on your ESXi server, as indicated in the following procedure:
   
   1. In the Perl\bin directory of your vSphere installation, execute the following script to add an appropriate community string:
      perl ..\..\bin\vicfg-snmp.pl --server ip_address -c cstring
      Note: Replace ip_address with the IP address of your ESXi server, and replace cstring with the community string you are adding. For most environments, the community string public should be sufficient.
   2. Enter an appropriate user name at the prompt.
      Note: For most environments, root should be sufficient.
   3. Enter the associated password at the prompt.
   4. In the Perl\bin directory of your vSphere installation, execute the following script to enable SNMP:
      perl ..\..\bin\vicfg-snmp.pl --server ip_address –E
      Note: Replace ip_address with the IP address of your ESXi server.
   5. Enter an appropriate user name at the prompt.
      Note: For most environments, root should be sufficient.
   6. Enter the associated password at the prompt.
4. Reboot your ESXi server to allow settings to take effect.