In addition to all the monitoring options available to hosts, ESXi includes an SNMP v3 daemon that can both send SNMP and receive polling requests to send SNMP traps for monitoring the server’s hardware and virtual machines. In addition, vCenter Server can be configured to send SNMP traps, which are typically sent to another management system.

Nothing in either ESXi or vCenter Server SNMP provides you with anything that you cannot already discover through the VMware vSphere API, PowerShell, vCenter Server CIM monitoring, or syslog. However, the primary situation in which SNMP might still be implemented is when a pre-existing SNMP management application within the service provider’s infrastructure is already in place, and the organization wants to continue with its use.