How do you monitor ESX (ESXi) Servers?

Hello,

I would like to get more information, how do you monitor VMWare ESX servers/hosts. I have experience with Quest and nWorks sollutions. I know about Jalasoft etc.
Everything is quite difficult when you need to monitor ESX Hosts in branch offices behind SCOM Gateway server.

What is your experience. How do you solve this without 3rd party MPs, when SNMP, SSH etc are disabled in ESXi version?

Thanks for your opinion.

Jan