Recently, I had to install the Cisco vem module onto an esxi 6 host as it was not installed and i couldn’t join the esxi host to the cisco nexus 1000v distributed switch. here is the process on how to first check if the vem module is installed on the esxi host.
SSH into the esxi host and run the following commands to check if the VEM module is installed
host# esxcli software vib list | grep -i vem
the above command will display the cisco vem module installed on the esxi host, if nothing is displayed then you will have to install the vem module by downloading the vem vib from the nexus 1kv in the environment.
i did it by going to https://nexus1kv_hostname in a web browser which will display you the vibs which you can download from nexus 1000v, download the vem vib associated with your environment and run the following command to install the vib onto the esxi host
upload the vem vib file onto a datastore on the host
SSH into the esxi host where you want to install the vem module
host# esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/<directory_path>/cross_cisco-vem-version_x.x.x.x.x.vib
NOTE: directory_path in the above command is the place where the cisco vem vib is stored. (name of the datastore/volume)
Once the vib is installed you can check the status of the vem by using the command
host# vem status
The above command will display that the VEM agent (vemdpa) is running
Converged, Hyperconverged Infrastructure & Virtualization 