CIM and SNMP

The vCenter Server system sends only SNMP traps. The traps sent by vCenter Server are typically sent to other management programs. An SNMP management server must be configured to interpret the SNMP traps sent by vCenter Server.

ESXi includes an embedded SNMP agent that can send traps and receive polling requests (such as GET). This agent is called the embedded SNMP agent.

There is no additional information in ESXi SNMP that you cannot also get using the vSphere API or VMware vSphere PowerCLI™. The primary situation where SNMP might be useful is to support an existing SNMP management application in the environment.