SolarWinds Knowledge Base

The following procedure enables both the system default SNMP daemon snmpd and the proprietary VMware SNMP daemon vmware-hostd on VMware ESX/ESXi Server version 4.

To enable SNMP on VMware ESX/ESXi Server 4:

1. Log in to your ESX Server using an account with administrative privileges.
2. Open snmp.xml in a text editor.
   Notes:
   
   • The default location for snmp.xml is root/etc/vmware/snmp.xml.
   • To use the default text editor, nano, in a default environment, enter nano /etc/vmware/snmp.xml at the prompt.
3. Locate the communities tag, and then replace the default community string public with an appropriate read-only community strings for your environment, separated by commas.
4. Locate the enable tag, and then confirm it is set to true.
5. Locate the port tag, and then confirm it is set to 161.
6. Locate the targets tag, and then confirm it is set to 127.0.0.1@161/cstring.
   Note: Replace cstring with the community string you provided in step 3, above.
7. Save snmp.xml, and then close your editor.
   Note: If you are using nano, press Ctrl+X to close nano, and then enter Y to save snmp.xml.
8. Enter service snmpd stop to confirm that the SNMP service is stopped.
9. Open snmpd.conf in a text editor.
   Notes:
   
   • The default location for snmpd.conf is root/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf.
   • To use the default text editor, nano, in a default environment, enter nano /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf at the prompt.
10. Edit snmpd.conf to include the following two lines:
    view systemview included .1.3.6.1.4.1.6876
proxy -v 1 -c cstring 127.0.0.1:171 .1.3.6.1.4.1.6876
    Note: Replace cstring with the community string you provided in step 3, above.
11. Save snmpd.conf, and then close your editor.
    Note: If you are using nano, press Ctrl+X to close nano, and then enter Y to save snmpd.conf.
12. Enter service mgmt-vmware restart to restart the mgmt-vmware service.
13. Enter service snmpd start to start the SNMP service.
14. Enter chkconfig snmpd on to enable SNMP when you reboot your ESX Server.
15. Enter esxcfg-firewall -e snmpd to allow SNMP through the ESX Server firewall.
16. Confirm that SNMP polling is enabled on your ESX Server by entering the following command:
    snmpwalk -v1 -c cstring localhost .1.3.6.1.4.1.6876 | grep 6876.1
    Note: Replace cstring with the community string you provided in step 3, above.

After entering the snmpwalk command, your ESX Server should return information similar to the following:
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.6876.1.1.0 = STRING: "VMware ESX"
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.6876.1.2.0 = STRING: "4.0.0"
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.6876.1.4.0 = STRING: "208167"
Note: The MIB OID SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.6876.1.4.0 returns the build number for your product, so it may not be the same as the build number displayed above.

For more information about ESX Server 4 and ESX Server MIBs, see vSphere Basic System Administration - Update 1, ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, vCenter Server 4.0 (pdf).