PowerCLI on ESXi 6 (free) enabled?

[mjay88]

Hi,

for my home lab I would like to use PowerCLI to script shutdown of VMs etc.

In version 5.5 this wasn't prohibited for the free version.

Has this changed for version 6? Would be very beneficial and another reason to update from 5.5 to 6

Best regards

[npadmani]

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=21095...https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=21095...‌

as you see on above KB, vSphere API access is not available in free hypervisor of vSphere 6.

I was under the impression that in previous release also it was the same, but if you have already managed your free ESXi 5.5 host with powerCLI then I might have been missing something.

[mjay88]

It is not possible on 5.5 neither, unfortunately.

So I will go for HyperV in my homelab though I was really satisfied with ESXi :S but as I need to automate things, I do not see a different option. I tried using autoit but it is only working when a user is authenticated properly.

Would be great if the CLI/API access would be allowed in the free version as well...