Introduction

The commands in the vSphere CLI package allow you to perform vSphere configuration tasks using commands from vCLI package installed on supported platforms, or using commands from vMA. The package consists of several command sets.

Components of the vSphere CLI Command Set

vCLI Commands	Description
ESXCLI commands	Manage many aspects of an ESXi host. You can run ESXCLI commands remotely or in the ESXi Shell. You can also run ESXCLI commands from the vSphere PowerCLI prompt by using the Get-EsxCli cmdlet.
vicfg- commands	Set of commands for many aspects of host management Eventually, these commands will be replaced by ESXCLI commands. A set of esxcfg- commands that precisely mirrors the vicfg- commands is also included in the vCLI package. f
Other commands (vmware-cmd, vifs, vmkfstools)	Commands implemented in Perl that do not have a vicfg- prefix. These commands are scheduled to be deprecated or replaced by ESXCLI commands.
DCLI commands	Manage VMware SDDC services. DCLI is a CLI client to the vCloud Suite SDK interface for managing VMware SDDC services. A DCLI command talks to a vCloud Suite API endpoint to locate relevant information, and then executes the command and displays result to the user.

You can install the vSphere CLI command set on a supported Linux or Windows system. See Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces. You can also deploy the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) to an ESXi system of your choice.

After installation, run vCLI commands from the Linux or Windows system or from vMA.

■	Manage ESXi hosts with other vCLI commands by specifying connection options such as the target host, user, and password or a configuration file. See Connection Options for vCLI Host Management Commands.

■	Manage vCenter services with DCLI commands by specifying a target vCenter Server system and authentication options. See Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces for a list of connection options.

Documentation

Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces includes information about available CLIs, enabling the ESXi Shell, and installing and running vCLI commands. An appendix supplies the namespace and command hierarchies for ESXCLI.

Reference information for vCLI and DCLI commands is available on the vCLI documentation page http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/ and in the vSphere Documentation Center for the product version that you are using.

■	vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference is a reference to vicfg- and related vCLI commands and includes reference information for ESXCLI commands. All reference information is generated from the help.

■	A reference to esxtop and resxtop is included in the Resource Management documentation.

■	The DCLI Reference is included separately from the vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference. All reference information is generated from the help.

Command-Line Help

Available command-line help differs for the different command sets.

Command set	Available Command-Line Help
vicfg- commands	Run <vicfg-cmd> --help for an overview of each options. Run Pod2Html with a vicfg- command as input and pipe the output to a file for more detailed help information. pod2html vicfg-authconfig.pl > vicfg-authconfig.html This output corresponds to the information available in the vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference.
ESXCLI commands	Run --help at any level of the hierarchy for information about both commands and namespaces available from that level.
DCLI commands	Run --help for any command or namespace to display the input options, whether the option is required, and the input option type. For namespaces, --help displays all available child namespaces and commands. Run dcli --help to display usage information for DCLI.