Configure SNMP Communities

To enable the ESXi SNMP agent to send and receive SNMP v1 and v2c messages, you must configure at least one community for the agent.

An SNMP community defines a group of devices and management systems. Only devices and management systems that are members of the same community can exchange SNMP messages. A device or management system can be a member of multiple communities.

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

• ♦ Run the esxcli system snmp set command with the --communities option to configure an SNMP community.
  For example, to configure public, East, and West network operation centers communities, run the following command:

  esxcli system snmp set --communities public,eastnoc,westnoc

  Each time you specify a community with this command, the settings you specify overwrite the previous configuration. To specify multiple communities, separate the community names with a comma.