Vimsh

The VI metashell

The Virtual Infrastructure metashell is an undocumented and unsupported shell accessible from within the console on an ESX server. It can be invoked from the shell when logged in as root user as an interactive shell.

#vimsh
[/]$ ?
hostsvc/      vmsvc/        csinfo        help           puload        
internalsvc/  ?                csls           pinfo          puse          
proxysvc/    argtype       csuimport  pload         quit          
solo/           cls               echo         ploadpath   sleep         
vimsvc/       csimport      exit           pls             source

There's a separation between plugins and direct commands. The items from the list above that end in a "/" are plugins. (is this true or are they just idicating that there's a submenu?)

An advantage of vimsh over normal esx-cfg commands is that the changes are immediate, so you do not need to restart the vmware management services.

In recent versions of ESX, there's also a command line non interactive version of vimsh that can be used from within a script which is called vmware-vim-cmd

Following is a list of the availabled commands (the vimsh: prefix is only included as a namespace, so that it won't clash with other parts in the wiki, not sure if that's a smart thing to do...) vimsh: hostsvc/ vimsh: vmsvc/ vimsh: csinfo vimsh: help vimsh: puload vimsh: internalsvc/ vimsh: csls vimsh: pinfo vimsh: puse vimsh: proxysvc/ vimsh: argtype vimsh: csuimport vimsh: pload vimsh: quit vimsh: solo/ vimsh: cls vimsh: echo vimsh: ploadpath vimsh: sleep vimsh: vimsvc/ vimsh: csimport vimsh: exit vimsh: pls vimsh: source