Esxcli vs Localcli commands

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

• What is the difference between esxcli commands and localcli command?

Resolution

• Esxcli is the standard command-line tool for managing ESXi hosts. It communicates with the host's management stack (hostd) and is suitable for both local and remote management. However, localcli is a lower-level tool that bypasses hostd and interacts directly with system APIs. It is intended for troubleshooting situations where hostd is unavailable or unresponsive as it bypasses normal management processes.
  
  Example:

[root@esx-02a :~ ] time esxcli 
real 0m 0.49s
user 0m 0.38s
sys  0m 0.00s

[root@esx-02a :~ ] time localcli 
real 0m 0.20s
user 0m 0.16s
sys  0m 0.00s