Steps to Get MAC Address from VMs in ESXi

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Steps to Get MAC Address from VMs in ESXi

This guide explains how to retrieve the MAC addresses of Virtual Machines (VMs) running on an ESXi host.

Step 1: Connect to ESXi Host via SSH

Use any SSH client (e.g., PuTTY) to connect to your ESXi host:

ssh root@<ESXi-IP>

Replace <ESXi-IP> with the IP address of your ESXi host.

Step 2: Run the Command

Run the following single command to list all VMs and their MAC addresses:

for w in $(esxcli network vm list | awk 'NR>1 {print $1}'); do name=$(esxcli network vm list | awk -v wid=$w '$1==wid {print $2}'); mac=$(esxcli network vm port list -w $w | awk '/MAC Address/ {print $3}'); printf "%-30s %s\n" "$name" "$mac"; done

Example Output

Ubuntu-Server                00:50:56:AA:BB:CC
Windows-2022                 00:50:56:11:22:33
Kali-Lab                     00:0C:29:9F:88:77

Notes

• Works for both powered-on and powered-off VMs.
• Each VM may have multiple MAC addresses if multiple NICs are configured.
• Output is displayed in a clean tabular format with VM name and MAC address.

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