check_esxi_hardware

Improve pywbem exception handling across old (< 1.0.0) and newer (>= 1.0.0) pywbem versions.

Also handle HTTPError exception. This is useful when the plugin is mistakenly pointed to a HTTP endpoint which does not serve any CIM elements (ESXi HTTPS UI for example).

Attention: The plugin requires the Python module "packaging" from now on!

In order to fix deprecation warnings on Python 3.12 (see #72), this release removes support for legacy and meanwhile EOL versions of:

• python2
• pywbem 0.7.0

Meanwhile every still running and active system should run Python3.

If your monitoring system doesn't, don't update and remain on plugin version 20221230.

This release fixes a bug (issue #68), when no serial number was presented by the CIM elements. The plugin will now show a s/n: None in the output, if no serial number was detected.