VMware ESXi esxcli Command: A Quick Tutorial. The esxcli is a command tool that is available on VMware ESXi for managing ESXi. Unlike the vim- cmd command, it focuses on underlying infrastructure and touches lower level of controls of the ESXi hypervisor itself. Although it’s just one command, it packs a lot of functionalities with different namespaces/sub- namespaces, and sub- commands. Because they are organized in nice tree hierarchy, it’s actually quite easy to use most times. You can run the esxcli command directly in ESXi Busy. Box Shell. For that you will need to have either direct access to the ESXi console, or SSH to the ESXi (you need to turn on the SSH Shell access). Should you have multiple ESXi servers to run the commands simultaneously, try the free Double. Cloud ICE I developed. Time to learn how to "Google" and manage your VMware and clouds in a fast and secure. HTML5 App. Alternatively, you can install v. CLI on Windows or Linux from where you want to remotely manage ESXi servers. If you don’t want to install the package by yourself, you can download the v. MA virtual appliance which has everything pre- installed and pre- configured. When you run the command this way, there is additional parameters for remote ESXi server address and credential. Other than that, the command syntax should be the same as native esxcli command. There is actually another choice which is not documented but I digged it out anyway – You can run esxcli command in a browser. If you are interested, you can check out this post. Note that this is not supported by VMware. This tutorial will guide you through all functionalities with samples and tips/tricks assuming we are using the native esxcli command. Esxi Install Error Syslog Not Configured To ListenEsxi Install Error Syslog Not Configured For Rpc![]() A couple of things to note: If you install VMware Tools on Nested ESXi VM, you will NOT be able to just right click in the UI and say install/upgrade. ESXi 6.5 Update 1 | 27 JULY 2017 | ISO Build 5969303. Check for additions and updates to these release notes. Using vSphere 6.5 REST APIs with Ansibles URI Module. Sep 13, 2017 • Jonathan Frappier. This year at VMworld I presnted a vBrownBag Tech Talk on using the vSphere 6. ![]() Given the complexity of the command, I cannot run all the combinations of parameters, please feel free to use the help and try by yourself when you cannot find exact sample. Should you find something worth sharing, please feel free to post them in the comments. Where Is It Installed? The esxcli command utility comes with the ESXi installation. If you type in the following commands you will find where it’s installed. Even more is that you will uncover the a little secret of esxcli – it’s essentially a Python script. If you are interested in what is in the script, you can simply check it out with vi command. We’ll not dig deeper there, but focus on the usage of the command as a user.~ # which esxcli/sbin/esxcli. Aug 2. 20. 12/sbin/esxcli - & gt; /sbin/esxcli. Aug 2 2. 01. 2 /sbin/esxcli - & gt; /sbin/esxcli. What You Can Do With It? Unlike the vim- cmd command which mainly focuses on the virtual machine related management, the esxcli focuses on the infrastructure like hardware, storage, networking, esxi software, etc. Typing the esxcli command without any argument will displays the command usage. With the options, you can control the format of the output to be xml, csv, key/value pair, or json. The esxcli command is a very complex command that achieve a lot given it’s a single command. To help user to use the command without getting confused, the namespaces are used to group the commands. The namespaces can be further divided into sub- namespaces depending the complexity. The following command shows the top level namespaces, each of which can be nicely mapped to a group of functionality. Just reading description of these commands should give you an idea on what esxcli can do for you. We’ll dig deeper into each of them in the following sections.~ # esxcli. Usage: esxcli [options]{namespace}+ {cmd}[cmd options]. FORMATTER. Override the formatter to use for a given command. Available formatter: xml, csv, keyvalue. Enable debug or internal use options. Display version information for the script. Display usage information for the script. Available Namespaces. Commands that operate on the esxcli system itself. VMware FCOE commands. VMKernel hardware properties and commands for. VMware i. SCSI commands. Operations that pertain to the maintenance of. ESX host. This includes a wide. IP, DNS and general host networking settings. VMKernel system properties and commands for. Manage the ESXi software image and packages. VMware storage commands. VMKernel system properties and commands for. A small number of operations that allow a user to. Control Virtual Machine operations.~ # esxcli. Usage: esxcli [options] {namespace}+ {cmd} [cmd options]. FORMATTER. Override the formatter to use for a given command. Available formatter: xml, csv, keyvalue. Enable debug or internal use options. Display version information for the script. Display usage information for the script. Available Namespaces. Commands that operate on the esxcli system itself. VMware FCOE commands. VMKernel hardware properties and commands for. VMware i. SCSI commands. Operations that pertain to the maintenance of. ESX host. This includes a wide. IP, DNS and general host networking settings. VMKernel system properties and commands for. Manage the ESXi software image and packages. VMware storage commands. VMKernel system properties and commands for. A small number of operations that allow a user to. Control Virtual Machine operations. A bit more on the format. In the interactive mode, the default format of output is perfect. If you use the esxcli command for automation, other formats may be preferred. For example, the CSV can be easily imported into Excel or other spreadsheet for reporting and analytics. The XML is very good for data exchange. The key and value pairs are good shell script to consume. There are actually undocumented formats as I blogged about a while back. High Level Conventions. In some way, the esxcli namespaces are like Java packages. At certain points down the namespace hierarchy, you can find available commands (think of them as methods on a class). One big difference is that there can be commands on a non- leaf namespace. Simply entering the full esxcli and namespace path will show both available namespaces and available commands. The commands are mostly verbs as follows: * list – retrieve a list of the objects that are represented by the namespace* get – get information like property* set – set a value* load/unload – load/unload configuration. Note that they are not necessarily available in all the namespaces. When in double, always checkout the command line. Depending on the command, there may be additional options specific to the command. These options are different from the general options which are always available for all commands. Without further due, let’s jump to the sub- commands one by one. Listing All esxcli Namespaces and Commands. Interestingly, the esxcli can also be a sub command to the esxcli command itself. What it does is very simple — list all the available namespaces and their commands. Because there are so many lines in the output, I will just show you the first few lines. You can easily find out in your SSH to ESXi.~ # esxcli esxcli command. Usage: esxcli esxcli command{cmd}[cmd options]. Available Commands. This command will list all of the esxcli commands with their namespace. Namespace Command. Usage: esxcli esxcli command {cmd} [cmd options]. Available Commands. This command will list all of the esxcli commands with their namespace. Namespace Command. Now, let’s take a look how to interpret the output. For each line, there is a corresponding esxcli command. Let’s pick up the second line “fcoe. The related command is like the following: $ esxcli fcoe adapter list$ esxcli fcoe adapter list. The rule of thumb is to replace the dot with space and combine string together with top esxcli command and last command. For some commands, there are additional parameters, you may need to add there. For the list command, it’s mostly fine without additional parameters except the format as we discussed earlier. Managing Fiber Channel Over Ethernet (FCOE)We will not cover FCOE here as there are many good introduction already. Check out Cormac’s blog. The following command shows it has two name spaces: adapter and nic.~ # esxcli fcoe. Usage: esxcli fcoe {cmd}[cmd options]. Available Namespaces. Operations that can be performed on FCOE- type storage HBAs. Operations that can be performed on FCOE- capable CNA devices~ # esxcli fcoe. Usage: esxcli fcoe {cmd} [cmd options]. Available Namespaces. Operations that can be performed on FCOE- type storage HBAs. Operations that can be performed on FCOE- capable CNA devices. To list adapters, you can use the following command: # esxcli fcoe adapter list# esxcli fcoe adapter list.
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