Every SNMP v3 agent has an engine ID which serves as a unique identifier for the agent. The engine ID is used with a hashing function to generate keys for authentication and encryption of SNMP v3 messages.

If you do not specify an engine ID, when you enable the SNMP agent, an engine ID is automatically generated.

If you run ESXCLI commands through ESXCLI, 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 ESXCLI Concepts and Examples.

Prerequisites

Configure the ESXi SNMP agent by using the ESXCLI commands. See Getting Started with ESXCLI for more information on how to use ESXCLI.

Procedure

  • Run the esxcli system snmp set command with the --engineid option to configure the SNMP engine ID.
    For example, run the following command:
    esxcli system snmp set --engineid id
    Here, id is the engine ID and it must be a hexadecimal string between 5 and 32 characters long.