VMware vCLI Instructions

The vSphere Command-Line Interface (vSphere CLI) command set allows you to run common system administration commands against ESX/ESXi systems from any machine with network access to those systems. You can also run most vSphere CLI commands against a vCenter Server system and target any ESX/ESXi system that vCenter Server system manages. vSphere CLI includes the ESXCLI command set, vicfg- commands, and some other commands.

• Download and Install vCLI
• http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/
• Right click on the vCLI icon and select Run as Administrator
• Navigate to c:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin
• You will see the below vCLI commands (Note the .pl extension on the end)

• An example of running a command would be as per below with vifs.pl
• Type vifs.pl –help to see the associated switches for this command

• Try typing vifs.pl –server esxihostserver –listdc

• Another example of this command as per below screenprints shows how you can create a folder on a Datstore
• vifs.pl –server esxiserver –mkdir “[Datastore] test”

Documentation

vSphere Command-Line Interface Documentation

Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces

vSphere Command‐Line Interface Concepts and Examples

vSphere Command‐Line Interface Reference

YouTube Video

You Tube Video

Running Commands on Windows.

In order to stop having to put in credentials everytime you run a command you can can the following

save_session.pl –server esxiserver01 –username usera –password passswordxyz –savesessionfile c:\temp\vclisessionfile

The next time you run a command you can type the following

esxcli –server MyESXiHost –sessionfile c:\temp\vclisessionfile storage core filesystem list

vCLI Poster

http://blogs.vmware.com/tp/files/vmware-management-with-vcli-5.0.pdf