VMware ESX3i: monitoring server health
An ESX 3i host has built-in sensors that let you monitor the health of the following components:
CPU processors
Memory
Fans
Temperature
Voltage
On systems without IPMI, only CPU sensors are available. Storage sensors are available only on systems with an LSI MegaRAID controller installed. If a particular component cannot be monitored on a given host, that component does not appear.

The screenshot shows my Dell PowerEdge 2900 series server.
A CIM-based framework and SNMP are available for hardware monitoring in ESX 3i. For more information, see this document.
1 comment
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There is no SNMP get support for trending in ESX 3i. The only thing you can do with it out of the box is send SNMP traps to a target to alert you when something is going wrong. No SNMP gets = no trending analysis via SNMP. If you want to that you will have to purchase Virtual Center or utilize the RCLI kit from VMware and pull the data out of ESX3i via Perl scripts.