ESXi Commands Part-1: Basic Commands

VMware ESXi is hypervisor which enables the virtualization on the physical server. In this series we will see on how you can easily get information using commands in ESXi. This is the first part where we will see some of the basic commands only where you can find the ESXi version details, Networking details & you can do the basic operations in ESXi. This will not be the complete list of commands but i will share the list as much as i can. There are multiple variety of commands are there in ESXi but we will look one after one. Commands are good to know who are new to the VMware vSphere ESXi.

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First you will need to enable the SSH on the ESXi to get the access to the ESXi. By default SSH Access is disabled for the security purpose. For enabling SSH on ESXi follow the steps:
Choose the Host > Configuration > Software Section > Security Profile > Services
Click on Properties.
Find SSH & click on Options here you can start, stop or restart the Service.

For vSphere Web Client Check Below link:
Enable SSH using vSphere Web Client.

For Accessing the ESXi console you will require Putty. You can download it from the Putty.org website.

Now Let’s start with some of basic commands.

Basic commands for ESXi :
Basic commands includes the basic operations which you can do in the ESXi console such as listing the directories, changing the directory, checking the date etc etc.
Commands:

ls  >listing the directory.

ls -l  >to check the directories with details.

pwd   >finding the present working directory.

cd   >change the working directory.

date  >finding the date & time.

Finding the ESXi version & updates:
This will help you to find the ESXi version with build numbers & the installed VIB’s.

vmware -l   >For ESXi version

vmware -v  >For ESXi version with build

esxcli software vib list   >For checking installed VIB.

Finding the Hostname & IP address:
Basic command to find the ESXi host name & IP address.

hostname    >For finding the hostname

hostname -i    >For finding IP address.

Monitoring the ESXi load:
This will help you to find the load of the ESXi Sever. Here you can find the services running with their process ID & Name. It will also display the average CPU load.

esxtop

Start or Stop the services:
Using this command you can start or stop the services in the ESXi.

services.sh

Checkout our Posts on ESXi Command Line Series:-

ESXi Commands Part-2: Finding Hardware information using esxcli

ESXi Commands Part-3 : Managing ESXi using esxcli commands

ESXi Commands Part-4 : Managing ESXi Networking using esxcli commands

ESXi Commands Part-5 : Finding VM information using esxcli

ESXi Commands Part-6 : Managing Storage using esxcli

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