Is there a way in linux to find out which ESX host it is on, from the command line?

I don't know if there is a direct way within the hypervisor communications, but you can certainly use the perl SDK vminfo.pl script to go to vcenter and find out. I would *doubt* there was a direct way as it's actually a pretty odd thing to want to know, and largely none of its business as it were. So I would expect to need some sort of explicit admin toolset to find this out form the "outside" as it were.

I do not have Vcenter, but I am unfortunately in charge of a clients environment that has over 200 ESX servers.

When I log into a Guest VM, it would be extremely helpful to be able to figure out which one of the 200+ ESX servers it is sitting on.

What I figured out though, is that I can use tcpdump to listen for the CDP packet which gives me the switch and port the VM is connected to, which luckily enough is always close to the ESX host port. I popped into the switch, looked at the description and was able to figure out which ESX host it was.

Thanks.

Argh! CDP! kill it with fire!!! Using bad technology for good is still bad. You should get CDP exterminated.

I think the SDK can hit VM hosts directly too.