Targets and Protocols for vCLI Host Management Commands

Most vCLI commands are used to manage or retrieve information about one or more ESXi hosts. They can target an ESXi host or a vCenter Server system.

When you target a vCenter Server system, you can use --vihost to specify the ESXi host to run the command against. The only exception is svmotion, which you can run against vCenter Server systems, but not against ESXi systems.

The following commands must have an ESXi system, not a vCenter Server system as a target.

• vifs
• vicfg-user
• vicfg-cfgbackup
• vihostupdate
• vmkfstools

The resxtop command requires an HTTPS connection. All other commands support HTTP and HTTPS.