As many VMware ESX monitoring tools are hitting the market place, and with the tend of these tools being dependent on SNMP (example: Starwind Free VM Monitor for VMware ESX), the more I am getting the question on how can I enable SNMP on my VMware ESX Server.. The instruction below will cover how to enable SNMP on VMware ESX (Note: VMware ESXi 3.5 does not support SNMP queries.).

To enable SNMP on VMware ESX Server 3.5:

1. Login to the console as root
2. Open snmpd.conf file with your favorite editor (Usually you can find snmpd.conf  in /etc/snmpd) and add “rocommunity xxxx” where xxxx is your read-only community string).

3. While you’re editing the snmpd.conf file, also add “dlmod SNMPESX /usr/lib/vmware/snmp/libSNMPESX.so”
4. Save & close snmpd.conf

5. Restart the SNMP daemon by executing:   /etc/init.d/snmpd restart

You will need to ensure that the firewall settings on the ESX server allow SNMP traffic using the below instructions:

1. Login as root and issue the following commands:
2. esxcfg-firewall -e snmpd            <== This will open the SNMP port in your ESX firewall.
3. chkconfig snmpd on                    <== This will ensure the SNMP Service will start automatically each time you start your ESX Server
4. service snmpd start                    <== It start the SNMP Service

I hope this help. If so please leave a comment if not please leave your question or concern in the comments below.