Time for action – set up SNMP access on an ESX 3.5 server

1. Login to your ESX system and become the root user.

2. Edit the SNMP configuration file.

   vi /etc/snmp
   

3. Change the file to fit your settings:

   

4. Save the file.

5. Allow SNMP traffic to go through the firewall:

   esxcfg-firewall -e snmpd
   esxcfg-firewall –blockOutgoing
   

6. Enable the SNMP daemon on startup and restart the daemon:

   chkconfig snmpd on
   /etc/init.d/snmpd restart
   

What just happened?

You just enabled the SNMP daemon on your ESX 3.5 host and also opened the SNMP port in the ESX firewall. You can now add the ESX host to Cacti and perform SNMP-based polling.

Adding VMware ESX servers to Cacti

Now that you have enabled the SNMP agent on your ESX server, you can proceed with adding it to Cacti. There are some templates available on the Cacti website which work for version 3.5 of ESX, but they are only recommended if you are not using VMware's vMotion technology (as the virtual guest systems will move around without the SNMP agent realizing this)...