I get a lot of questions about ESXi and SSH. Most people manage to connect to their ESXi but don’t know what to do next because there’s no actual Service Console there. Well the answer is short and simple: vim-cmd.

A couple examples of stuff you can do with vim-cmd:
enter maintenance mode: vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

List all registered vm’s: vim-cmd /vmsvc/getallvms

Install VMware Tools for VM with ID: vim-cmd /vmsvc/tools.install [vmid]

Power on a specific VM: vim-cmd /vmsvc/power.on [vmid]

So check out the link above and start trying out this poweful command