How to enable SS and SNMP on ESXi 5.1

This is a short tutorial on how to enable SNMP om your ESXi (v5.1) box the easy way, so you can add it in your favorite monitoring tools like Zabbix, Observium, PRTG, etc. You can do this on the console, but if your server is located in the data center and you don’t have KVM-access this will help you. First of all enable SSH on your box.

Enabling SSH on ESXi

• Connect with the vSphere client to your node
• Go to the configuration tab, then select Security Profile
• Select Properties with Services, then select SSH Server
• Click Options and select Start and Stop with host
• Click the Start button once to start the service for now

Opening the firewall to allow SSH connections

• Connect with the vSphere client to your node
• Go to the configuration tab, then select Security Profile
• Select Properties with Firewall, then select SSH Server
• Click SSH Server, select Firewall and allow an IP-range

You’ll get an annoying alert on the Summary tab of the vSphere client. To suppress this warning, go back to the Configuration tab and select Advanced Settings. Select UserVars and findUserVars.SuppressShellWarning. Set this value to 1. You’re done enabling SSH remotely. Now let’s configure SNMP.

To enable SNMP, SSH to your ESXi box. Windows users can use PuttY, Linux and Mac users the native Terminal. Log in as root@your.hostname.tld and enter the password. Paste these commands to the command-line of your ESXi box:

1. esxcli system snmp set -c public
2. esxcli system snmp set -l warning
3. esxcli system snmp set -e yes