My attempt to monitor ESXi 5.1 hosts using Zenoss failed spectacularly at the install vCLI phase.  I have since been able to complete vCLI installation, and managed to run the resxtop command successfully.  However, the new version of resxtop (5.1 U1) returns too much output, and will not work with Zenoss’s esxtop ZenPack.  I guess I will have to wait until the Zenoss community comes up with a ZenPack for Zenoss 4.2 to work with the newer ESXi versions.

This post is to document the installation of vSphere CLI 5.1 U1 on CentOS 6.4, which is NOT supported by VMware (they only support vCLI installations on CentOS 5.5).

I will start with a minimal install of CentOS 6.4.  Then SELinux is disabled by editing /etc/sysconfig/selinux and rebooting the system.  Then, a yum upgrade is performed to update the kernel and all packages to the latest versions.  And a reboot, of course.

The vSphere installation will use these packages:

• perl-CPAN = the installer will use CPAN to install PERL modules.
• make & gcc = CPAN will use make and gcc to compile codes.
• openssl-devel = the installer will run a check for this package before it can proceed.
• perl-YAML = some of the PERL modules required by the installer will need this.
• libxml2-devel = XML PERL modules will require this library.
• libuuid-devel = the UUID PERL module will require this.

So let’s install them.

# yum install perl-CPAN make gcc openssl-devel perl-YAML libxml2-devel libuuid-devel

The installation script will also use some environment variables to be fed as arguments.  These environment variables will be needed to be set before installation.

# export http_proxy=
# export ftp_proxy=

Next, download the vSphere CLI installation package, and extract the archive.

# tar xzvf VMware-vSphere-CLI-5.1.0-1060453.x86_64.gz

Travel into the extracted directory, and run the installation program.

# cd vmware-vsphere-cli-distrib
# ./vmware-install.pl
Creating a new vSphere CLI installer database using the tar4 format.

Installing vSphere CLI 5.1.0 build-1060453 for Linux.

You must read and accept the vSphere CLI End User License Agreement to
continue.
Press enter to display it.

-- LICENSE AGREEMENT --

Do you accept? (yes/no) yes

Thank you.

Please wait while configuring CPAN ...

Please wait while configuring perl modules using CPAN ...

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "Archive::Zip" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "Compress::Zlib" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module
"Compress::Raw::Zlib" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "Crypt::SSLeay" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module
"IO::Compress::Base" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module
"IO::Compress::Zlib::Constants" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module
"Class::MethodMaker" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "HTML::Parser" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "UUID" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "Data::Dump" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "SOAP::Lite" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "URI" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "XML::SAX" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module
"XML::NamespaceSupport" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module
"XML::LibXML::Common" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "XML::LibXML" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module "LWP" .

CPAN is downloading and installing pre-requisite Perl module
"LWP::Protocol::https" .

In which directory do you want to install the executable files?
[/usr/bin]

Please wait while copying vSphere CLI files...

The installation of vSphere CLI 5.1.0 build-1060453 for Linux completed
successfully. You can decide to remove this software from your system at any
time by invoking the following command:
"/usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-vSphere-CLI.pl".

This installer has successfully installed both vSphere CLI and the vSphere SDK
for Perl.

The following Perl modules were found on the system but may be too old to work
with vSphere CLI:

version 0.78 or newer

Enjoy,

--the VMware team

Checking /usr/bin/ shows a bunch of commands that has been installed like resxtop, vicfg-*, esxcfg-* and others.