Enabling SNMP in ESXi 4.1

I decided to gather some information about a server that was sitting in Morgantown, PA due to a couple of errors we were receiving.  I needed to get it pretty quick and so I decided to grab it through SNMP.  I had to enable it through the vMA since the host was running ESXi.  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
3. Set your target:  vifptarget -s vs-esxi.vsential.com
4. Configure SNMP Community:  vicfg-snmp -c vscomname
5. Configure SNMP Trap Host:  vicfg-snmp -t TrapHostIP@161/vscomname
6. Enable SNMP on the ESXi host:  vifcfg-snmp -E

You may need to restart the services on the ESXi host via services.sh on the host.  You can show the configuration by typing:  vicfg-snmp -s

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

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