Release: vSphere Client for iPad v1.1.0

 Software Releases, Tips and Tricks, VMware News  Comments Off
Jun 272011
 

A new version of the vSphere Client was release thru the iTunes Store and can be found here.  Here’s the What’s nNew section from the details in iTunes:

New in version 1.1.0

  • Support for connecting directly to a vSphere host (resolves Null Pointer Exception)
  • Integrated interface to input vCMA server settings and login credentials
  • Enhanced version compatibility checks between vSphere iPad application and vCMA server
  • Fix for Null Pointer Exception when rebooting a host while the host was in maintenance mode
  • Store password, if requested by the use, in the keychain
  • Ability to properly scroll the host list in landscape mode
  • Sorted host list (by name and grouped by vendor ID)
  • Display either ellipsis for long virtual machine names
  • Better performance metricswhen connecting directly to a vSphere host
  • Show “Unavailable” or “PoweredOff” message when unable to obtain performance data for a selected VM
  • Reflect available actions correctly, for a selected VM, when an operation was completed
  • Ability to cancel “revert to snapshot” action

My notes:  The client is maturing, slowly, worth a look but I typically only use it when in a pinch and need some simple tasks completed in the environment.

 

How to Export from vSphere Storage Views

 Administration, Storage, Tips and Tricks  Comments Off
Jun 172011
 

One of the greatest things VMware ever did in vSphere was add the Storage Views tab.  Storage views let’s you see detailed information on the size of your VMs, how much space each VM takes up in snaps, etc.  One question I very often get asked is:  “How do I export that information from Storage Views to excel or CSV?  The answer is simple, but it’s probably not where you have been looking.

Let’s go thru an example.  First things first, before you export, make sure you have all the information you need.  In the vSphere client, pick your level to look at the Storage View (the vCenter Server, the datacenter, a cluster, a host, etc) and select the Storage Views tab on the right.  Right-click the title bar in the right pane and make sure you have all of the fields you need.  The menu will look something like this one here:

Make sure you select all of the columns of data that you want (or don’t want).  Once you have that cleaned up, we go for the export.  Your instinct would be to go to File and Export like this:

Notice how the Export List option is greyed out?  That’s where you would expect to find the export function for the Storage Views.  I think there is a bug in the interface as that is not really where it is located in this case.  For Storage Views, move the cursor to some white space on the right or the bottom of the right pane and right-click.  You should see a popup menu that looks like something like this:

Select “Export List” from the menu and you can save the storage view as Excel, HTML, CSV, etc.  There, now you have some great data for graphs or whatever you like.

One more tip:  If you export the fields to Excel, the cells will all be text and the data values will have “GB” in the cells with them.  If you want to remove the “GB” and convert to numeric so you can work with the values here’s how:

Let’s say Cell C3  has a value of “7.77 GB”.  Create a new column and for the value put in  =VALUE(LEFT(C3,LEN(C3)-3))

The LEFT() function will cutoff the “GB” and the VALUE() function will convert the TEXT to a numeric value that you can add, subtract, etc.

Now you can add a cell at the bottom and use the AVERAGE() function and find out what your average VM size really is!  Or SUM() the Snapshot column and find out how much space your VM snaps are taking up on storage.  There are all kinds of options, have fun and enjoy!