You can install a vCLI package on a supported platform or deploy the vMA virtual machine on an ESXi host.

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Installable Package - Install a vCLI package on a physical or virtual machine. See Installing the vCLI Package on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Installing vCLI on Linux Systems with Internet Access, and Installing and Uninstalling vCLI on Windows.

The vCLI installer installs both vSphere SDK for Perl and vCLI because many vCLI commands run on top of the vSphere SDK for Perl. The content of the installer package differs for different platforms.

Platform

Installation Process

Windows

You must install required software. The installation package includes vCLI and vSphere SDK for Perl.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

You must install required software. See Installing Required Prerequisite Software for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The installer for RHEL prompts you to choose whether you want to install additional modules from the Internet or from the package.

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If you have Internet access, you can configure the installer to download Perl modules from CPAN.

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The installer can instead install Perl modules that it does not find on your system from the installer package.

SLES and Ubuntu

You must install required software and you must have Internet access. See Installing Prerequisite Software for Linux Systems with Internet Access.

The installer downloads other Perl modules from CPAN.

After installation, you can run vCLI commands and vSphere SDK for Perl utility applications from the operating system command line. Each time you run a command, you can specify the target server connection options directly or indirectly. You can also write scripts and manage your vSphere environment using those scripts.

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vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) - Deploy vMA, a virtual machine that administrators can use to run scripts that manage vSphere, on an ESXi host. vMA includes vCLI, vSphere SDK for Perl, and other prepackaged software in a Linux environment.

vMA supports noninteractive login. If you establish an ESXi host as a target server, you can run vCLI host management commands and vSphere SDK for Perl commands against that server without additional authentication. If you establish a vCenter Server system as a target server, you can run most vCLI commands against all ESXi systems that server manages without additional authentication. See Deploying vMA.