Imagine wanting to access a VM, but you don't know the IP address, and you don't have a GUI client for your vSphere environment? The most basic way of getting the IP address of a VM from the vSphere hypervisor level, is logging in to the ESXi Shell (could be local or SSH), and finding your VM number in the VM list: # vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms In my example, my VM has number 42. Then type # vim-cmd vmsvc/get.summary 42 | grep ipAddress ipAddress = "10.11.12.13", Et voila! NB this requires running VMware tools in your guest OS, evidently.
plenty of grains to pick