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Although the esxcli command is unified for both local and remote administration, the syntax does vary slightly,
depending upon if you are running commands locally from the ESXi Shell or remotely through the vCLI.
• When running esxcli commands locally from the ESXi Shell, the target host is always the local host on which
the command is run. In addition, the login credentials are always assumed to be those of the logged-in user.
• When running the esxcli commands remotely, you must specify the target ESXi host (or VMware vCenter
Server™), along with the user credentials used to execute the command.
Remote esxcli Command Authentication
When running esxcli commands remotely, you must specify a target ESXi host or vCenter server and provide the
user credentials for the command. The following are methods available to perform user authentication:
• Using command-line options
• Using a session file
• Using environment variables
• Using a configuration file
• Using Microsoft Windows --passthroughauth
• Using VMware vSphere® Management Assistant (vMA) vi-fastpass
Details for each method are documented in the Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces guide.
The following examples illustrate the different syntax required when running the esxcli hardware
platform get command from the local ESXi Shell, compared to running it remotely from the vCLI. You must
add the --server and --user options when running the command remotely, in addition to being prompted to
enter the password.
Figure 53. Sample esxcli Command Run from ESXi Shell
Figure 54. Sample esxcli Command Run Remotely from vMA
VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –
T E C H N I C A L W H I T E P A P E R / 4 9
Volume One
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