Enabling SNMP on ESXi 5

Some people have asked how to enable SNMP on ESXi 5.  The process is identical to how you would on ESXi 4.x.  Here’s how:

1. Connect to your vMA instance through Putty, SecureCRT or whatever app you use.
2. Add the server:  vifp addserver vs-esxi.vsential.com (This is only needed if you haven’t already added the target!)
3. Set your target:  vifptarget -s vs-esxi.vsential.com
4. Configure SNMP Community:  vicfg-snmp --communities vscomname
5. Configure SNMP Trap Host:  vicfg-snmp --targets TrapHostIP@161/vscomname
6. Enable SNMP on the ESXi host:  vicfg-snmp --enable

You can show the configuration by typing:  vicfg-snmp --show

That’s it…now you can snmpwalk the host from the Trap host you configured earlier by typing:  snmpwalk -v2c -cvscomname vs-esxi.vsential.com

You can check out VMware KB Article 1008065 for information on how to configure this as well which uses VMware vSphere RCLI instead of the vMA.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions then please sound off in the comments!