The VMguy

I had a couple questions surface about this recently.  A couple of users have asked me how they can grab some details out of their vCenter for reporting on their VMs.

1. Open the client and connect to the vCenter server
2. From the menu bar select view/inventory/virtual machines and templates
3. on the left pane, select the level of the vm list you want to grab (if you want all of the vms, select the top-level folder)
4. on the right pane, select the virtual machines tab which will show you the list of vm’s at whatever level you’ve selected on the left pane.
5. one suggestion I have here is to right-click the titles on the right pane, this provides a list of all the fields available.  Select “DNS name” as one of the fields and it will add the “dns name” field to the rightmost column (very helpful in case you have named your vm’s in vcenter different than their actual dns names).  Another helpful field that you may want to use is “Guest OS” IMO.  You can also add any other fields that you want (or don’t want) to report on.  You can re-order them by dragging and dropping the field titles in the right pane.
6. when you have the right pane looking the way you want it, go back up to the menu bar and select File/Export/Export List…
7. Pick your format (Excel is available) and export it.  It will export everything in the right pane including your field titles in the spreadsheet.

Enjoy and good luck.