6.0.1

Table Of Contents
Configure the SNMP Engine ID
Every SNMP v3 agent has an engine ID which serves as a unique identifier for the agent. The engine ID is
used with a hashing function to generate keys for authentication and encryption of SNMP v3 messages.
If you do not specify an engine ID, when you enable the SNMP agent, an engine ID is automatically
generated.
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 --engineid option to configure the SNMP engine
ID.
For example, run the following command:
esxcli system snmp set --engineid id
Here, id is the engine ID and it must be a hexadecimal string between 5 and 32 characters long.
Configure SNMP Authentication and Privacy Protocols
SNMP v3 optionally supports authentication and privacy protocols.
Authentication is used to ensure the identity of users. Privacy allows for encryption of SNMP v3 messages
to ensure confidentiality of data. These protocols provide a higher level of security than is available in
SNMP v1 and v2c, which use community strings for security.
Both authentication and privacy are optional. However, you must enable authentication in order to enable
privacy.
The SNMP v3 authentication and privacy protocols are licensed vSphere features and might not be available
in some vSphere editions.
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
1
(Optional) Run the esxcli system snmp set command with the --authentication option to configure
authentication.
For example, run the following command:
esxcli system snmp set --authentication protocol
Here, protocol must be either none (for no authentication), SHA1, or MD5.
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