Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces gives an overview of command-line interfaces in vSphere and gets you started with ESXi Shell commands and vCLI (VMware® vSphere Command-Line Interface) commands. This book also includes instructions for installing vCLI and a reference to connection parameters.

Intended Audience

This book is for experienced Windows or Linux system administrators who are familiar with vSphere administration tasks and data center operations.

VMware Technical Publications Glossary

VMware Technical Publications provides a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to you. For definitions of terms as they are used in VMware technical documentation, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

Related Documentation

The documentation for vCLI is available on the VMware {code} vSphere CLI page. Go to https://code.vmware.com/web/dp/tool/vsphere-cli.

  • vSphere Command-Line Interface Concepts and Examples presents usage examples for many host management commands, and explains how to set up software and hardware iSCSI, add virtual switches, place hosts in maintenance mode, and so on. The document includes the same example with the ESXCLI command and with the vicfg- command.
  • vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference is a reference to both ESXCLI commands and vicfg- commands. The vicfg- command help is generated from the POD available for each command, run pod2html for any vicfg- command to generate individual HTML files interactively. The ESXCLI reference information is generated from the ESXCLI help.
  • DCLI Reference is a reference to DCLI commands for managing vCenter services.

The documentation for PowerCLI is available on the VMware {code} PowerCLI page.

The vSphere SDK for Perl documentation explains how you can use the vSphere SDK for Perl and related utility applications to manage your vSphere environment.

Background information for the tasks discussed in this book is available in the vSphere documentation set. The vSphere documentation consists of the combined VMware vCenter Server and ESXi documentation.