ESXi hosts are Linux-based servers. Thus, it certainly helps if sysadmins understand Linux in order to manage and troubleshoot the servers. But fortunately for VMware admins who are experts only in Windows, PowerCLI can be an option when it comes to many ESXi tasks. To manage ESXi services, admins can leverage five cmdlets that can start, stop, get, set, and restart services. In this article, I will show how to use these PowerCLI cmdlets for managing ESXi services.

Getting the status of ESXi services

To show the status of services on an ESXi host, we can use the Get-VMHostService cmdlet. This cmdlet has only three unique parameters: -VMHost, -Server, and -Refresh. The -Refresh parameter refreshes data on the service before printing it to the console.

In the example below, I am just showing the current service status on the ESXi host VMHost-1:

C:\ > Get-VMHostService -VMHost VMHost-1 -Refresh
Key                  Label                          Policy     Running  Required
---                  -----                          ------     -------  --------
DCUI                 Direct Console UI              on         True     False
TSM                  ESXi Shell                     off        False    False
TSM-SSH              SSH                            off        False    False
lbtd                 Load-Based Teaming Daemon      on         True     False
lwsmd                Active Directory Service       off        False    False
ntpd                 NTP Daemon                     on         True     False
pcscd                PC/SC Smart Card Daemon        off        False    False
sfcbd-watchdog       CIM Server                     on         True     False
snmpd                SNMP Server                    on         True     False
vmsyslogd            Syslog Server                  on         True     True
vmware-fdm           vSphere High Availability A... on         True     False
vprobed              VProbe Daemon                  off        False    False
vpxa                 VMware vCenter Agent           on         True     False
xorg                 X.Org Server                   on         False    False

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