This “occasionally” pops up as a request, the following worked for me:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1002404

specifically:

1. putty to ESX host

2. login

3. type “su –“ to elevate your status

4. type “_dmidecode

less_” and keep pressing space until the info is on screen

It’s worth configuring capture on putty to make this easier, simply enable logging and type “dmidecode” then retrieve the data from the log file.