Discovering VMWare ESXi virtual hosts

Unmanaged device discovery can discover VMWare ESXi virtual hosts. The discovery process is agentless and doesn't require that you install anything on the ESXi hosts. The discovery process uses your ESXi host credentials to connect to the host and remotely scan it.

Here's an overview of the configuration and scanning process:

  1. Enable agentless scanning as described in Agentless inventory and vulnerability scanner.
  2. Enable ESXi network scanning. Click Tools > Configuration > Self-electing subnet services > Agentless scanner. For each subnet, right-click and click Settings, then select Enable ESXi scan.
  3. In Tools > Configuration > Credential Manager >ESXI servers, enter the account credentials for your VMWare ESXi hosts.
  4. Within about 24 hours, ESXi hosts should appear in the Network view under Virtual OS hosts > All virtual OS hosts. Right-clicking one shows you the available options.

For more details on configuring ESXi virtual host discovery, see this article on the Ivanti Community.

Discovery problems with VMWare ESXi hosts using default self-signed certificates

When installing ESXi, you have the option of using a built-in, self-signed certificate. The problem with this certificate is that the ESXi hostname defaults to "localhost" and the hostname won't be unique on the network or to UDD. UDD treats all hosts with the same hostname as a single host, resulting in a single entry in the inventory database for all hosts sharing that hostname.

VMWare strongly recommends that you not use the self-signed certificate in a production environment. For virtual host discovery to work correctly, all ESXi installations must have a unique CA-signed SSL certificate and hostname. See the following links for more information: