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Quick Tip - New remote version of ESXCLI 8.x

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I was recently made aware of a nice update from our developers that we now have a new version of the remote ESXCLI utility that is much simpler to install across any operating system and is fully backwards compatibility with ESXi hosts running 6.7.x, 7.x and 8.x.

Many of you are probably familiar with the local version of ESXCLI which is available when connecting to ESXi whether that is over SSH or directly in the ESXi Console. However, a remote version of ESXCLI has been available since the introduction of ESXCLI back in vSphere 4.0, but surprisingly, I still come across users who never knew that this was possible!

In the past, the remote version of ESXCLI was platform specific and it was distributed in a number of diffrent ways from being bundled as part of the vSphere CLI (6.7) to being a standalone download (7.0) and this inconsistency brought many challenges, not just from an internal development standpoint but also operationally for users who needed to deploy this utility across their administrative systems.

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Extending ESXCLI commands

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Back on the first of April, I had shared the following video:


While many thought it was an April Fools's joke, that was certainly the original intention, but I also wanted the joke to be based on something realistic and not made up. Everything that you saw in that video is completely real, this was a real ESXCLI command that integrated with ChatGPT and was running on an ESXi 8.0 Update 1 release! 😊

So how did I do it?

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ESXi Advanced & Kernel Settings Reference

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Every time I need to recall or reference a specific ESXi Advanced or Kernel Setting for a customer or field inquiry, I typically need to look at a live ESXi host to see whether a given setting is defined for that version of ESXi and also how to access and/or update the settings. Depending on the interface (vSphere API, vSphere UI, ESXCLI, etc.) that you are using, you may only be able to see a subset of these properties.

For example, some ESXi Advanced Settings are only available using the vSphere API/UI while others are available in both the vSphere API/UI and ESXCLI, with the latter being a common utility for customers to view or update these settings. Similarly, for ESXi Kernel Settings, not only are there new options that are introduced with each ESXi release, but being able to easily check the default values and minimums and maximums can also be useful. I should also mention using the vSphere API/UI, you can also accessed the ESXi Kernel Settings which are prefixed with VMkernel.

As a huge VMware Automation person, I was surprised that I had not thought about creating a reference for the ESXi Advanced and Kernel Settings for recent ESXi releases? I figure this would benefit more than just myself and I have put together the following Github repo: https://github.com/lamw/esxi-advanced-and-kernel-settings where you can see all the default ESXi Advanced and Kernel Settings for ESXi releases across 6.0, 6.5, 7.0 and 8.0.


For those interested, this was generated using some PowerCLI automation and below are the two snippets for pulling the ESXi Advanced Settings (supported and runtime values) using the vSphere API and the ESXi Kernel Settings, which I used the ESXCLI interface that is exposed through the PowerCLI Get-EsxCli cmdlet.

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