Configure SNMP Authentication and Privacy Protocols

SNMP v3 optionally supports authentication and privacy protocols.

Authentication is used to ensure the identity of users. Privacy allows for encryption of SNMP v3 messages to ensure confidentiality of data. The privacy protocols provide a higher level of security than is available in SNMP v1 and v2c, which use community strings for security.

Both authentication and privacy are optional. However, you must enable authentication if you plan to enable privacy.

The SNMP v3 authentication and privacy protocols are licensed vSphere features and might not be available in some vSphere editions.

Procedure

1. Access the appliance shell and log in as a user who has the administrator or super administrator role.
   The default user with super administrator role is root.
2. (Optional) Run the snmp.set --authentication command to configure authentication.
   For example, run the following command:

   snmp.set --authentication protocol

   Here, protocol must be either none, for no authentication, SHA1, or MD5.
3. (Optional) Run the snmp.set --privacy command to configure privacy protocol.
   For example, run the following command:

   snmp.set --privacy protocol

   Here, protocol must be either none, for no privacy, or AES128.