cool tool

Cool Tool: SDDC Discovery aka bringing back “Maps”

Duncan Epping · Oct 16, 2016 ·

You still recall the days where you had the awesome map view in the vCenter Client? That unfortunately was removed from the Web Client. A shame as it was very useful for troubleshooting and seeing relationships between components of their stack. Guess what?! We just released a fling where we show you a map of your VMware products and how they are connected. I think it is brilliant to have that fling made available, and it would even be better if we can get this in to our products at some point. If you want to test it out, go to the SDDC Discovery Tool fling page and download it, don’t forget to leave feedback!

Awesome tool if you ask me, very useful, and if I can do a feature request, I would love to see some sort of grouping for the hosts which belong to the same cluster. Maybe stack the hosts in a cluster object and allow to drill down to see them all. Just a thought.

Cool tool update: RVTools 3.8

Duncan Epping · Mar 30, 2016 ·

It has been a year since version 3.7, but finally here it is… RVTools 3.8. Rob de Vey has been developing this tool since early 2008 and over half a million copies have been downloaded so far. I understand why, as it is a very easy to use tool that produces a lot of great information. On top of everything it was already providing, Rob introduced the following in version 3.8:

VI SDK reference changed from 5.5 to 6.0
on vInfo tab page new field: ChangeVersion unique identifier for a given version of the configuration
on vInfo tab page new field: HA VM Monitoring status
on vInfo tab page new fields: Number of supported monitors and Video RAM in KB
on vInfo tab page new field: Config status. Config issues are visible on the vHealth tab page
on vInfo tab page new field: OS according to the VMware Tools
on vTools tab page new fields: App state, App heartbeat status and Kernel crash state
on vTools tab page new fields: Operations availability, State change support and Interactive Guest Operations availability
on vHost tab page new field: NTPD running state.
NTP issues are visible on the vHealth tab page
on vHost tab page new field: Config status. Config issues are visible on the vHealth tab page
on vCluster tab page new field: Config status. Config issues are visible on the vHealth tab page
on vDatastore tab page new field: Config status. Config issues are visible on the vHealth tab page
on vSC+VMK tab page new fields: IP 6 Address and IP 6 Gateway
all VM related tab pages now have a VM Object ID and VM UUID columns
all VM related tab pages now have powerstate and template columns
all tab pages. Now have a vCenter UUID column (= unique identifier for a vCenter Server)
all VM related tab pages. The Custom Attributes columns are now ordered alphabetically
all tab pages. A select is now a full row select so it is easier to follow the information across many columns
bug fix: Refresh data issue on vRP and vCluster tab pages solved
bug fix: Filter issue on vCluster tab page solved
bug fix: On vInfo tab page the HA information was not filled with cluster default values
bug fix: Content Libraries vmdk files are no longer reported as possible zombie files
bug fix: msi installer sometimes installs RVTools in root of c:\ drive. This is solved now.

RVTools 3.7 is here!

Duncan Epping · Mar 16, 2015 ·

It has been a year since the last version. This weekend Rob de Vey finally released RVTools 3.7. With over 400.000 downloads so far, this is for sure the most used free health check tool that exists. And there is a good reason for it, it is most definitely also one of the bests tools that can provide valuable insights. I’ve personally been using it since the very first version and have discovered a bunch of potential problems at customers sites. Make sure to follow RVTools on twitter for any updates.

Version 3.7 (March, 2015)

VI SDK reference changed from 5.0 to 5.5
Extended the timeout value from 10 to 20 minutes for really big environments
New field VM Folder on vCPU, vMemory, vDisk, vPartition, vNetwork, vFloppy, vCD, vSnapshot and vTools tabpages
On vDisk tabpage new Storage IO Allocation Information
On vHost tabpage new fields: service tag (serial #) and OEM specific string
On vNic tabpage new field: Name of (distributed) virtual switch
On vMultipath tabpage added multipath info for path 5, 6, 7 and 8
On vHealth tabpage new health check: Multipath operational state
On vHealth tabpage new health check: Virtual machine consolidation needed check
On vInfo tabpage new fields: boot options, firmware and Scheduled Hardware Upgrade Info
On statusbar last refresh date time stamp
On vHealth tabpage: Search datastore errors are now visible as health messages
You can now export the csv files separately from the command line interface (just like the xls export)
You can now set a auto refresh data interval in the preferences dialog box
All datetime columns are now formatted as yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss
The export dir / filenames now have a formated datetime stamp yyyy-mm-dd_hh:mm:ss
Bug fix: on dvPort tabpage not all networks are displayed
Overall improved debug information

Cool tool update: RVTools 3.6

Duncan Epping · Feb 24, 2014 ·

It has been a while since I reported an update of RVTools. Rob just emailed me and told me that Version 3.6 is available as of today. He has been working really hard to get some great new functionality in, which I am sure all of you will appreciate. One of the coolest free tools out there if you ask me! Great work again Rob, thanks for contributing to the community like this.

Version 3.6 (February, 2014)

New tabpage with cluster information
New tabpage with multipath information
On vInfo tabpage new fields HA Isolation response and HA restart priority
On vInfo tabpage new fields Cluster affinity rule information
On vInfo tabpage new fields connection state and suspend time
On vInfo tabpage new field The vSphere HA protection state for a virtual machine (DAS Protection)
On vInfo tabpage new field quest state.
On vCPU tabpage new fields Hot Add and Hot Remove information
On vCPU tabpage cpu/socket/cores information adapted
On vHost tabpage new fields VMotion support and storage VMotion support
On vMemory tabpage new field Hot Add
On vNetwork tabpage new field VM folder.
On vSC_VMK tabpage new field MTU
RVToolsSendMail: you can now also set the mail subject
Fixed a datastore bug for ESX version 3.5
Fixed a vmFolder bug when started from the commandline
Improved documentation for the commandline options

Cool tool update: RVTools 3.5

Duncan Epping · Mar 9, 2013 ·

Yes, there is it is again… an updated version of RVTools. Rob just emailed me and provided me with a nice list of enhancements:

RVTools Version 3.5 (March, 2013)

On vInfo tabpage new field: Resource pool
On vInfo tabpage new field: Consolidation needed.
On vCPU tabpage new field: Number of cores per socket
New tabpage with resource pool information
On vNetwork tabpage new column: Switch name
On vNetwork tabpage new column: Starts Connected
On vTools tabpage new column: required version
On vHost tabpage new columns: custom fields
On vDisk tabpage new columns: raw disk information
Improved error handling for SSO login problems
Bug fix: Invalid snapshot size fixed
Bug fix: All datetime fields now use the local time zone
Bug fix: data not refreshed after changing filter

Now just go and download RVTools! I am certain you will find it very very useful.