Fling: ESX System Analyzer

When I joined Tech Marketing in February of this year my first task literally was the ESX System Analyzer. I was part of the team who developed the specs and test the app, but the main driving force behind the tool was my colleague Kyle Gleed (@VMwareESXi).

The tool / fling was designed specifically to help people migrate from ESX to ESXi and to smoothen the transition especially in those environments where the Service Console was customized over the years. If you haven’t migrated yet, and want to make the jump to a lean and mean hypervisor I suggest to take a look at this fling and analyze your environment to help with planning the transition!

Source: VMware Labs

The ESX System Analyzer is a tool designed to help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi. It analyzes the ESX hosts in your environment and, for each host, collects information on factors that pertain to the migration process:

• Hardware compatibility with ESXi
• VMs registered on the ESX host, as well as VMs located on the host’s local disk
• Modifications to the Service Console
  • RPMs which have been added or removed
  • Files which have been added
  • Users and cronjobs which have been added

This tool also provides summary information for the whole existing environment

• Version of VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware for all VMs
• Version of Filesystem for all datastores

By having this information, administrators can determine what tasks need to be done prior to the migration. Examples include:

• Relocate VMs from local datastores to shared datastores
• Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version
• Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI