9/4/2019 Top 20 Essential ESXCLI Commands You Need to Know

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VMware » Automation and Management » Top 20 Essential

ESXCLI Commands You Need to Know

Top 20 Essential ESXCLI

Commands You Need to Know
28 Aug 2017 by Jason Fenech

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If command lines are your bread and butter, you probably

already know about esxcli commands and how they are
used to perform management and con guration tasks on
ESXi. If on the other hand, this is all new to you, this post
will hopefully give you a head start. For the time being,
you just need to know that esxcli commands are run from
the ESXi shell. If the command line is something you want
to delve into, consider having a look at the PowerCLI

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Primer series. With that out the way, let’s get on with the
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show.

ESXi Shell and ESXCLI

If it is not already, the rst thing you need to do is enable

shell on ESXi, something that is generally disabled for
security reasons. To enable Shell, follow the steps
provided in KB 2004746. Once you enable it, you can use
a tool like putty to access Shell via an SSH session.
Alternatively, pressing ALT-F1 while in DCUI is one other
way of accessing Shell. To run commands in shell, log in
as root or with an account having similar privileges.

Accessing ESXi shell using an SSH client or directly from console

The esxcli command exposes a number of namespaces

against which you can run queries to retrieve information
about ESXi as well as con gure it. The following table
lists the available namespaces on ESXi 6.5 along with a
description for each (source: VMware). For earlier ESXi
releases, consult the relevant online documentation or
run esxcli with no parameters to see which namespaces
are available.

Command Description

esxcli device Lists descriptions of device commands.

esxcli elxnet Lists descriptions for commands that manage

Emulex elxnet drivers.

esxcli esxcli Lists descriptions of esxcli commands.

esxcli fcoe FCOE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet)

commands

esxcli Graphics commands

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graphics
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esxcli Hardware namespace. Used primarily for
hardware extracting information about the current
system setup.

esxcli iscsi iSCSI namespace for monitoring and managing

hardware and software iSCSI.

esxcli Network namespace for managing virtual

network networking including virtual switches and
VMkernel network interfaces.

esxcli nvme Commands for managing NVMe devices.

esxcli rdma Commands for monitoring RDMA devices.

esxcli sched Manage the shared system-wide swap space.

esxcli Software namespace. Includes commands for

software managing and installing image pro les and
VIBs.

esxcli Includes core storage commands and other

storage storage management commands.

esxcli System monitoring and management

system command.

esxcli vm Namespace for listing virtual machines and

shutting them down forcefully.

esxcli vsan Namespace for Virtual SAN management

commands. See the vSphere
Storage publication for details.

The Top 20 ESXCLI Commands

The following is a compilation of esxcli commands, sorted

by namespace, I tend to use on a regular basis. It is by no
means exhaustive as there are too many examples to
mention. If you want the whole shebang, have a look at
VMware’s documentation site.

System related commands

#1: esxcli system version get

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Description: Returns the ESXi build and version numbers.

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#2: esxcli system hostname get

Description: Returns the hostname, domain and FQDN

for the host.

#3: esxcli system stats installtime get

Description: Returns the date and time of when ESXi was

installed.

#4: esxcli system account list

Description: Lists the local users created on the ESXi

host.

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#5: esxcli system account add -d=”Altaro Guest” -
i=”altaro” -p=”dsfewfewf*3!4404″ -
c=”dsfewfewf*3!4404″

Description: This command allows you to create local

ESXi users. All the parameters used in the example are
mandatory.

#6: esxcli system maintenanceMode set –enable true

Description: Use this command to put ESXi in

maintenance mode or take it out.

#7: esxcli system shutdown reboot -d 10 -r “Patch

Updates”

Description: Use this command to reboot or shutdown

ESXi. The -d parameter is a countdown timer; minimum
10 seconds. ESXi must be in maintenance mode before
you can use the command.

Network related commands

#8: esxcli network rewall get

Description: Returns the status of the ESXi rewall. The

default action is to drop traf c unless allowed through by
a speci c rewall rule. The Enabled eld indicates

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whether the rewall is enabled. The Loaded  eld shows

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whether the rewall module is active or not (see esxcli
rewall load | unload commands).

#9: esxcli network rewall set –enabled true | false

Description: Use this command to disable the ESXi

rewall for troubleshooting purposes. Note that disabling
the rewall on ESXi is highly discouraged.

#10: esxcli network rewall ruleset list | awk ‘$2 ==”true”‘

Description: Generates a list of all enabled rewall rules

on ESXi. The command is piped to awk which will
matches the value from the second column to “true” so
only enabled rules are displayed.

#11: esxcli network ip interface ipv4 get

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Description: Displays the IPv4 con guration for all the

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interfaces present on ESXi.

Software related commands

#12: esxcli software vib list

Description: Lists all the currently installed VIBs on ESXi.

A VIB is a le packaging format used to distribute
software on ESXi.

#13: esxcli software vib update -d “/tmp/update.zip”

Description: Use this command to update an installed VIB

on ESXi. Note that the command does not install any new
software. Instead it only updates what’s currently
installed. Use esxcli software vib install instead when
installing new software. The -d parameter speci es the
full path to the package being used for the update. As
per the next screenshot, I speci ed a non-existing patch
hence the error message.

Virtual Machine related commands

#14: esxcli vm process list

Description: Lists all the running VMs on the hosts. The

World ID can be used with other commands to carry out
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various tasks related to VMs.

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#15: esxcli vm process kill -w 69237 -t soft

Description: Use this command to kill a running VM such

as one that fails to respond to commands. You must rst
retrieve the VM’s World ID (see command #14) and pass
it on using the -w parameter. The -t <soft | hard | force>
mandatory parameter sets the type of kill operation. Start
with soft so you allow the VM to shut down cleanly. If this
does not work, try the hard option which will kill the VM
processes immediately as in kill -9. The Force type should
only be used as a last resort. If none work, your only
option is to reboot ESXi.

Storage related commands

#16: esxcli storage vmfs extent list

Description: The command generates a list of extents for

each volume as well as the corresponding device name to
UUID mapping.

#17: esxcli storage lesystem list

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Description: The command lists of all the volumes or

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datastores accessible by the ESXi host. The output
includes the le system type, disk info along with the
volume name, path and UUID.

iSCSI related commands

#18: esxcli iscsi software set –enabled true && esxcli iscsi

software get

Description: The above command actually consists of two

concatenated commands, which is what && does. The
rst command enables the iSCSI software adapter and
the second veri es that the iSCSI adapter is enabled.

#19: esxcli iscsi adapter param get -A vmhba65

Description: The command returns metrics for the

speci ed iSCSI adapter. These include the current,
minimum and maximum values and whether the listed
parameters may be con gured or not. The name of the
iSCSI adapter you want to be queried is speci ed via the
-A parameter. The adapter name is retrieved using esxcli
iscsi adapter list or from the vSphere Web client.

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Available ESXCLI commands

#20: esxcli esxcli command list

Description: Lists all the available namespaces and

corresponding commands.

Wrap Up

We’ve seen how you can use esxcli to query ESXi as well
as it for con guration tasks. It is a great command to
master, so make sure you familiarize yourself with it.
Hopefully, this post has given you a taste of what it can
do and how command line is sometimes better suited at
accomplishing a given task such as upgrading ESXi from
the command line, something I explain in Patching and
Upgrading ESXi using ESXCLI commands.

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Jason Fenech
An IT veteran for over 23 years, I
covered various roles throughout
my career. Prior to joining Altaro as
a blog writer and QA tester, I was
employed as an infrastructure
engineer at a cloud services
provider working exclusively with
VMware products. The Altaro
VMware blog enables me to share
the experience and knowledge
gained and, much to my surprise, is
what got me the vExpert 2017
award. Besides being a techie and
a science buff, I like to travel and

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play guitars. I also do some

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photography and love having a go
at playing the occasional XBOX
game, Halo being my absolute
favourite. I am also a proud father
of two and parent to a crazy
Dachshund called Larry.

18 thoughts on "Top 20 Essential

ESXCLI Commands You Need to Know"

David Hesse
on September 1, 2017 at 6:19 pm

Hi Jason, you need to tell people the version of

ESXi-Hosts from which you are running those
esxcli commands.
Many of those namespaces won’t exist on EXi
5.5 U3 Hosts for example.
The list of available name spaces is much
shorter on my servers

In any case, regardless of the ESXi-Host-Version,

typing “esxcli” and hitting enter will show you
the avaiable namespaces.

00
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Jason Fenech
on September 4, 2017 at 10:21
am
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Hey David,
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Yes, good idea. The commands apply to

ESXi 6.5 so a few namespaces will not be
available on older releases. Will update.

Thanks for the tip.

regards

Jason
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Paul
on September 27, 2017 at 3:26 am

Very useful article. Thank you for sharing this

information.
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evilmarci
on April 27, 2018 at 2:05 pm

Hi Jason,

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9/4/2019 Top 20 Essential ESXCLI Commands You Need to Know

thanks for the useful article. Im wonder at

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command #10:

esxcli network rewall ruleset list | awk ‘$2

==”true”‘

Why you dont use grep true instaed ?

esxcli network rewall ruleset list | grep true

But anyway interesting usecase for awk

Thx from ger

10
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Jason Fenech
on June 5, 2018 at 5:00 pm

Hi. One could use grep but awk looks

cooler
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Travis
on May 1, 2018 at 8:55 pm

It would be nice if vmware included the simple

top command. Nothing equivalent exists
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apparently.
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Travis
on May 1, 2018 at 8:58 pm

I meant to say that it still includes

esxtop however it is now very messed
up, and nothing like the original tree
view like we’re used to.
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Leandro Berisso
on September 15, 2018 at 4:08 pm

Thanks a lot, Jason. Very useful!

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Justin Joseph
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on November 30, 2018 at 10:27 pm

Hi Jason,

The blog is really great for people like me who

have just entered into the world esxcli
command lines and thanks a lot for that.
I’ve been roaming around few issues with my
VMs and I’ve to discover the actual .VMDKs that
are being used by the VM (as I can see several
.vmdk les inside the datastore, many of them
might be obsolete ones and can be deleted)
Could you tell me the esxcli command to get
the details of vmdks that are being used by
certain VM. I couldn’t the right one anywhere
else until now.
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Ryan Birk
on January 22, 2019 at 9:55 pm

I think you might be looking for the

vmkfstools command. It’s not esxcli, but
will give you various details that you
might be looking for.
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JUSTIN JOSEPH
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on January 25, 2019 at
8:12 pm

Thanks, I got it.

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David Hesse
on January 22, 2019 at 10:45 pm

you could run a quick PowerCLI one

liner to see that VMDK les your VM is
actually using.

open up a PowerShell session, connect

to your vCenter-Sercer and run the
following command:
Get-VM | Get-Harddisk | Select Name,
Disktype, StorageFormat, Persistence,
CapacityGB, Filename | FT -Autosize
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Justin Joseph

J 25 2019 t 8 12
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9/4/2019 Top 20 Essential ESXCLI Commands You Need to Know
on January 25, 2019 at 8:12 pm
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Great, it works. Thanks a lot.

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