6.0.1

Table Of Contents
Configure ESXi for SNMP v1 and v2c
When you configure the ESXi SNMP agent for SNMP v1 and v2c, the agent supports sending notifications
and receiving GET requests.
In SNMP v1 and v2c authentication is performed by using community strings. Community strings are
namespaces which contain one or more managed objects. This form of authentication does not secure the
communication between the SNMP agent and the management system. To secure the SNMP
communication in your environment, use SNMP v3.
Procedure
1 Configure SNMP Communities on page 152
To enable the ESXi SNMP agent to send and receive SNMP v1 and v2c messages, you must configure
at least one community for the agent.
2 Configure the SNMP Agent to Send SNMP v1 or v2c Notifications on page 152
You can use the ESXi SNMP agent to send virtual machine and environmental notifications to
management systems.
Configure SNMP Communities
To enable the ESXi SNMP agent to send and receive SNMP v1 and v2c messages, you must configure at
least one community for the agent.
An SNMP community defines a group of devices and management systems. Only devices and management
systems that are members of the same community can exchange SNMP messages. A device or management
system can be a member of multiple communities.
If you run ESXCLI commands through vCLI, you must supply connection options that specify the target
host and login credentials. If you use ESXCLI commands directly on a host using the ESXi Shell, you can use
the commands as given without specifying connection options. For more information on connection options
see vSphere Command-Line Interface Concepts and Examples.
Prerequisites
Configure the ESXi SNMP agent by using the ESXCLI commands. See Getting Started with vSphere Command-
Line Interfaces for more information on how to use ESXCLI.
Procedure
u
Run the esxcli system snmp set command with the --communities option to configure an SNMP
community.
For example, to configure public, East, and West network operation centers communities, run the
following command:
esxcli system snmp set --communities public,eastnoc,westnoc
Each time you specify a community with this command, the settings you specify overwrite the previous
configuration. To specify multiple communities, separate the community names with a comma.
Configure the SNMP Agent to Send SNMP v1 or v2c Notifications
You can use the ESXi SNMP agent to send virtual machine and environmental notifications to management
systems.
To send SNMP v1/v2c notifications with the SNMP agent, you must configure the target (receiver) unicast
address, community, and an optional port. If you do not specify a port, the SNMP agent sends traps to UDP
port 162 on the target management system by default.
vSphere Monitoring and Performance
152 VMware, Inc.