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.

A nice new update for those on 3.5.  Update 5 was released tonight and can be downloaded here.  Additionally, here’s the What’s New from the release notes:

Notes:

1. Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported. All of these highlighted features are available only if you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 5 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 5. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and VMware Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.
2. VMware recommends VMware Tools upgrade for this version of ESX Server.

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX Server:

Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 3400 Series – Support for the Intel Xeon processor 3400 series has been added. Support includes Enhanced VMotion capabilities. For additional information on previous processor families supported by Enhanced VMotion, see Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (KB 1003212).

Driver Update for Broadcom bnx2 Network Controller – The driver for bnx2 controllers has been upgraded to version 1.6.9. This driver supports bootcode upgrade on bnx2 chipsets and requires bmapilnx and lnxfwnx2 tools upgrade from Broadcom. This driver also adds support for Network Controller – Sideband Interface (NC-SI) for SOL (serial over LAN) applicable to Broadcom NetXtreme 5709 and 5716 chipsets.

Driver Update for LSI SCSI and SAS Controllers – The driver for LSI SCSI and SAS controllers is updated to version 2.06.74. This version of the driver is required to provide a better support for shared SAS environments.

Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems – Support for the following guest operating systems has been added specifically for this release:

For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software.

• Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)
• Ubuntu Desktop 9.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Ubuntu Server 9.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Newly Supported Management Agents – See VMware ESX Server Supported Hardware Lifecycle Management Agents for current information on supported management agents.

Newly Supported Network Cards – This release of ESX Server supports HP NC375T (NetXen) PCI Express Quad Port Gigabit Server Adapter.