What is the difference between esxcli and vmware-cmd?

[sirus569]

Hi,

I am new to VMWare's command line options.

I just installed VMware-vSphere-CLI-5.1.0-780721.x86_64.tar.gz and I see options for both esxcli and vmware-cmd.

I tried to remotely shut-off a VM and while I can do it from "esxcli" to start it up, I had to use "vmware-cmd". Even the documentation/examples change half way through to using vmware-cmd instead of esxcli. This is very confusing to me.

Am I doing it right? I can get everything working, but I also want to make sure I'm doing it the right way...

[abhilashhb]

esxcli is the native comman dline that is used in the ESXi Shell. It is available directly on the ESXi Host and also as part of the VMware vSphere CLI 5.0.

vmware-cmd was included in earlier version of the ESX Service Console. A vmware-cmd command has been available in the vCLI package since ESXi version 3.0. vmware-cmd is not available in the ESXi Shell. Run the vmware-cmd vCLI command instead.

To sum up,

vCLi has both vmware-cmd and esxi cli.

ESXi shell had just esxcli. If you are using vCli you will see both esxcli and vmware-cmd.

[TronAr]

I guess there is not one right way of doing it...


My view is that commands and options have been evolving and we have what we have because of that evolution and not because some thought of API design.


Esxcli seems a new structured way of accessing all host management functions, vmware-cmd seems related to vm management.

[vesej]

Hi, all

How about vi-cmd and esxcli? What is the difference between them? Is it a replacement to vmware-cmd?

Regards.

Valter Junior

[vesej]

Another question is: how can I list all services running in a ESXi host, but filtering by their status (started or stopped)? 

Regards.