Enabling SNMP on ESXi 5

If you want to enable SNMP on ESXi 5 or ESXi 4, follow these steps:

1. Connect to your vMA instance through Putty, SecureCRT or whatever app you use.
2. Add the server:  vifp addserver vs-esxi.yourdomain.com (This is only needed if you haven’t already added the target!)
   
3. Set your target:  vifptarget -s vs-esxi.yourdomain.com
4. Configure SNMP Community:  vicfg-snmp –communities vscomname
5. Configure SNMP Trap Host:  vicfg-snmp –targets TrapHostIP@161/vscomname
6. Enable SNMP on the ESXi host:  vicfg-snmp –enable

You can show the configuration by typing:  vicfg-snmp –show

You can snmpwalk the host from the Trap host you configured by typing:  snmpwalk -v2c -cvscomname vs-esxi.yourdomain.com

For information on how to configure this, check out VMware KB Article 1008065.