There's no ftp client in VMware esx 4.1

VMware has removed ftp client tool in esx 4.1, so if you have shell scripts using ftp commands they will fail.
This applies to upgrades too, so if you have esx 4.0
and you are going to upgrade your system to esx 4.1, note that the ftp command will be deleted from your esx server.
And NO, if you try to copy the ftp command from earlier version 4.0 it will not run.
However you can install NcFTP Client utility that works fine in vSphere 4.x and rewrite your scripts for use ncftpget and ncftpput command-line utilities in your shell scripts.
You can also use cURL tool that now it's included in vSphere 4.x
Remember to enable ftp client requests at firewall level with the following command from vSphere shell:

esxcfg-firewall -e ftpClient

Note: As vSphere is a 64bits OS you should download the latest Linux (intel 64-bit) version:





If you are using VMware esx 3.x you should download and install the Linux (Intel 32-bit) version.

From vSphere v4.1 you could use cURL to download NcFTTPClient using the following commands:

# Enable ftp client at firewall level

esxcfg-firewall -e ftpClient

# Get ncftpClient tool

curl -O ftp://ftp.ncftp.com/ncftp/binaries/ncftp-3.2.5-linux-x86_64-glibc2.3-export.tar.gz

Then extract and install the package with:

tar xvzf ncftp-3.2.5-linux-x86_64-glibc2.3-export.tar.gz

cd ncftp-3.2.5

make install