New ESXCLI Commands in vSphere 7.0: What Changed in 7.0 GA, Update 1, Update 2 and Update 3

Short answer: ESXi 7.0 GA added the image-based esxcli software commands (baseimage, addon, component, apply, sources), the esxcli nvme namespace with NVMe over Fabrics, system ntp/system ptp, SMART daemon control, PCI passthrough and uplink attachment commands. Later updates added more. 7.0 U1 brought daemon, network nic hwCap, vm appinfo and vsan network security. 7.0 U2 brought system settings encryption, system health report and syslog logfilter. 7.0 U3 brought network ip hosts, NVMe telemetry logs and vsan hardware vcg.

The per-update lists below come from comparing Broadcom’s ESXCLI Command Reference for 7.0.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2 and 7.0.3. Broadcom’s online reference starts at 7.0.0, so the “new in 7.0 GA” list is based on my own ESXCLI dump from an ESXi 6.x host (ESXCLI commands for ESXi 6.x). For every 7.0 command with a description, see ESXCLI commands for ESXi 7.0 and the ESXCLI 7.0 mindmap.

New ESXCLI commands in vSphere 7.0 GA (compared with 6.x)

Namespace	Commands	What it is for
software baseimage, software addon	get	Show the installed base image and vendor add-on (vLCM image model)
software component	apply, get, list, remove, signature verify, vib list	Manage components instead of individual VIBs
software apply	(command)	Apply a complete image from a software spec (base image, add-on, components)
software sources addon / baseimage / component	get, list, component vib list	Browse add-ons, base images and components in a depot
nvme adapter / controller / namespace / info	list, identify, get	NVMe adapters, controllers, namespaces and host information
nvme fabrics	enable, disable, discover, connect, disconnect, connection list/delete	NVMe over Fabrics discovery and persistent connections
system ntp, system ntp config	get, set	Configure the ESXi NTP agent from ESXCLI
system ptp, system ptp stats	get, set	Precision Time Protocol configuration and state
storage core device smart daemon, ... smart status	start, stop, status get, get, set	Control smartd and SMART statistics gathering per device
hardware pci pcipassthru	list, set	Configure a PCI device for passthrough
network nic attachment	add, list, remove	Attach a branch uplink to a trunk uplink with a VLAN ID
network nic dcb status	get	DCB information for a NIC
system settings advanced	add, remove	User-defined options under /UserVars/
system module parameters	clear	Clear load-time parameters of a VMkernel module

Removed in 7.0: storage vflash cache get/list and storage vflash cache stats get/reset appear in the 6.x dump but not in the 7.0.0 reference.

ESXCLI commands added in vSphere 7.0 Update 1

• daemon control start/stop/restart and daemon info get/list: manage daemons built with the DSDK, by solution ID.
• network nic hwCap activated list and network nic hwCap supported list: activated and supported hardware capabilities of physical NICs.
• rdma iser params set: change iSER kernel driver settings.
• vm appinfo get/set: state of the appinfo component on the host.
• vsan network security get/set: vSAN network security settings.
• vsan cluster list and vsan cluster preferredfaultdomain list: the vSAN clusters the host is joined to, and the preferred fault domain of stretched clusters.

ESXCLI commands added in vSphere 7.0 Update 2

• system settings encryption get/set and system settings encryption recovery list/rotate: host encryption mode and policy (require Secure Boot, executables only from installed VIBs), plus recovery keys.
• system security keypersistence enable/disable: the key persistence daemon.
• system health report get/list: health reports generated on the host.
• system syslog config logfilter add/get/list/remove/set: syslog log filtering.
• system settings gueststore repository get/set: the GuestStore repository URL.
• storage vvol stats add/disable/enable/get/list/remove/reset: vVols statistics tracking.
• nvme info set and vsan network security list: extensions of existing namespaces.

ESXCLI commands added in vSphere 7.0 Update 3

• network ip hosts add/list/remove: static IP-to-hostname entries.
• nvme device log persistentevent get, nvme device log telemetry controller get and ... telemetry host get: NVMe persistent event log and telemetry data.
• system ntp stats get, system ntp test and system ptp test: operational state and a service check for NTP/PTP.
• system slp get/set: SLP agent configuration.
• vsan hardware vcg add/get: map an unidentified vSAN device to a VCG ID.

Reference release	Commands listed	Added vs previous
7.0.0 (GA)	692	–
7.0.1 (U1)	706	+14
7.0.2 (U2)	730	+24
7.0.3 (U3)	743	+13

These counts come from the leaf commands on Broadcom’s reference pages. None of the 7.0 updates removed a command.

Quick examples (no options required)

# 7.0 GA: image-based software inventory
esxcli software baseimage get
esxcli software addon get
esxcli software component list
esxcli system ntp get

# 7.0 U2
esxcli system settings encryption get
esxcli system health report list

# 7.0 U3
esxcli network ip hosts list
esxcli system ntp stats get

What came next in vSphere 8.0

Several namespaces that are often described as “new in 8.0” were already in 7.0 U2/U3 (see above). The commands that first appear in the 8.0.0 reference include daemon entitlement, hardware devicecomponent, storage osdata and vsan storagepool. See New ESXCLI Commands Details in vSphere 8.0.

Sources

• Broadcom ESXCLI Command Reference: 7.0.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 8.0.0
• ESXi 6.x baseline: my own ESXCLI dump, ESXCLI commands for ESXi 6.x

Related on vdan.cz

• ESXCLI commands for ESXi 7.0 (full list)
• ESXCLI 7.0 mindmap
• New ESXCLI Commands Details in vSphere 8.0
• ESXCLI changes in ESX 9.0 and 9.1