[smartmontools-support] Getting smartctl for ESXi/VMWare

[Christian Franke]

Marcin Szewczyk wrote:
> I am thinking about using smartctl on an ESXi/VMWare 6.7 machine. I have
> noticed that use of a static Linux build[1] of the tool on ESXi is
> mentioned in bug reports, mailing list, blog entries and so on but I am
> unable to find some (semi)official statement on how big is the risk of
> using it on ESXi or at least some approximation if it usually works. I
> am thinking about syscall/ioctl numbers and ABI in general. I suppose
> there is no guarantee they match between Linux and ESXi, is there?

At least NVMe and MegaRAID on ESXi do not work with smartmontools:

https://www.smartmontools.org/ticket/800
https://www.smartmontools.org/ticket/1333

I don't remember any report about a working use case with smartmontools 
on ESXi.

Regards,
Christian