I have tried installing both VMware-vSphere-Perl-SDK-6.5.0-4566394.i386.tar.gz and VMware-vSphere-Perl-SDK-6.7.0-8156551.i386.tar.gz on a legacy 32bit machine. This mostly works, but the included esxcli is 64bit:
# file vmware-vsphere-cli-distrib/lib/bin/esxcli/esxcli
vmware-vsphere-cli-distrib/lib/bin/esxcli/esxcli: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib, for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, stripped
Naturally it can not be executed. Is there any other / fixed archive including a true 32bit esxcli?
This is just a shot in the dark, as I have no clue, but with lots of linux distrubtions stoping including 32bit binaries I'm not sure how much 32bit support any company will provide and if they do if the recent oses will even support the libraries.
Fair enough, but as long as VMWare offers i386 downloads I expect them to be i386. Clearly that is not true for esxcli
If you have an active support, tou may be able to open a ticket since its not including everything you expect