ESX CLI Commands

Virtual Infrastructure ESX has a service console which can be used to management purposes. This is a light weight linux based (RHEL3) Virtual Machine which has special privileges that can be used in order to manage your host and Virtual Machines. Down here we will be trying to document the available commands that you can use on this service console from the so called Command Line Interface (CLI).

In ESXi (3.x) the service console has been removed from the host and there's only a remote alternative available, which is called the RCLI. The chapter here only contains the documentation for the full blown version not the RCLI.

Any changes made to the configuration of the host will not be seen by vCenter Server or the host itself until you restart the vmware-hostd daemon. By restarting this daemon, the configuration file /etc/vmware/esx.conf will be re-read.

service mgmt-vmware restart

will restart this daemon.

The available commands

dmidecode
esxcfg-advcfg      
esxcfg-auth        
esxcfg-boot        
esxcfg-configcheck
esxcfg-dumppart   
esxcfg-firewall   
esxcfg-hwiscsi    
esxcfg-info     
esxcfg-init
esxcfg-linuxnet
esxcfg-module
esxcfg-mpath
esxcfg-nas
esxcfg-nics
esxcfg-pciid
esxcfg-rescan
esxcfg-resgrp
esxcfg-route
esxcfg-swiscsi
esxcfg-upgrade
esxcfg-vmhbadevs
esxcfg-vmknic
esxcfg-vswif
esxcfg-vswitch
esxupdate
vcbExport
vcbMounter
vcbResAll
vcbRestore
vcbSnapAll
vcbSnapshot
vcbUtil
vcbVmName
vdf
vimsh
vmfsqhtool
vmfsqueuetool
vmkchdev
vmkdump
vmkerrcode
vmkfstools
vmkiscsid
vmkiscsi-device
vmkiscsi-ls
vmkiscsi-tool
vmkiscsi-util
vmkloader
vmkload_mod
vmklogger
vmkpcidivy
vmkping
vmkuptime.pl
vmres.pl
vmsnap_all
vmsnap.pl
vmstat
vm-support
vmware
vmware-authd
vmware-autopoweron.sh
vmware-cmd
vmware-configcheck
vmware-config.pl
vmware-hostd
vmware-hostd-support
vmware-mkinitrd
vmware-vim-cmd         
vmware-vimdump         
vmware-vimsh
vmware-watchdog
vmware-webAccess