Top 10 Free Tools That Should Be In Every VMware Administrator’s Toolkit

By Eric Siebert
published: Wednesday, July 02 2008

3rd party tools are a great way to make up for missing functionality in the vendor supplied management software. Administrators, developers and vendors are usually quick to write their own scripts, add-on’s and applications to help automate tedious or difficult administration tasks that often exist. This list covers 10 of the many free tools that are available that every VI3 administrator should have to help make their job easier. Many of these tools are provided by independent users who freely contribute their own time and skills to benefit the whole VMware community. This is by no means a complete list of the great  tools and scripts that are available for use, there are many others and it was difficult to only choose 10. So if you have not used some of the ones on this list I encourage you to download them and check them out.

Putty and SSH Plug In

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/   /   http://akutz.googlecode.com/files/ConsoleClientSetup-0.1.5.msi

SSH clients for remotely connecting to the ESX service console. Putty runs as a standalone application and the SSH Plug-in is a VI client plug-in that integrates an SSH console directly into the client.

WinSCP and Veeam FastSCP

http://winscp.net/eng/download.php   /   http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-fastscp.html

SCP clients for browsing ESX server file systems and transferring files to/from ESX hosts

VI3 SnapHunter and Snap Alert

http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=fileinfo&id=19    /   http://vmprofessional.com/index.php?content=snapalert

Utilities that can report all running snapshots on ESX hosts including name, size and date. Can also automatically email reports and optionally commit snapshots.

VI Scripted Backup Utility

http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=fileinfo&id=7

A backup utility that is run from the Service Console that provides VMDK level backups of any VM on storage accessible by the host. The script can be targeted at any ESX server or VC server, and if pointed at a VC server is DRS aware.

MCS StorageView

http://www.mightycare.de/downloads/task,cat_view/gid,16/

A utility that displays all the logical partitions, operating system, capacity, free space and percent free of all virtual machines on ESX 3.x or Virtual Center 2.x . It can also display how many gigabytes you can save by decreasing the logical partition to a size the VM really needs.

Storage vMotion Plug-In

http://akutz.googlecode.com/files/SVMotionClientSetup-0.4.4.msi

A VI client plug-in that extends the client’s functionality by providing an integrated, graphical tool that can be used to invoke storage VMotion (SVMotion) operations.

Vmotion Info

http://www.run-virtual.com/?page_id=155

A program that will collect Vendor, Model, CPU Types and the CPU feature bits from all hosts to check for vMotion compatibility.

VMCdConnected

http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/172-Software.html

Scans all Virtual Machines and shows if they have a CD connected to it. After scanning the VM’s you can disconnect all the CD’s with a click of  a button.

VMware Converter

http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/

Performs hot and cold conversions of physical and virtual servers to virtual machines. Also converts image formats.

Tripwire ConfigCheck

http://www.tripwire.com/configcheck/

Quickly assesses the security of VMware ESX 3.5 hypervisor configurations compared to the VI3 Security Hardening guidelines. Ensures that ESX environments are properly configured and provides the necessary steps towards full remediation when they are not.

Coming Next Week: Top 10 Things you must read if you are new to VMware