Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

rvtools

Cool tool update: RVTool 4.0.4 released

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Probably one of the most downloaded tools ever, just released a new version: RVTools 4.0.4. Rob emailed me over the weekend, that this new version was just released and he also mentioned that he has reached over 1.2 million downloads. 1.2 million indeed! Crazy number, especially knowing how many customers VMware has today. Congratulations Rob! Anyway, RVTools 4.0.4 was just released, what is in it?

Version 4.0.4 (May 1, 2020)

  • Upgraded RVTools solution to use VMware vSphere Management SDK 7.0
  • Upgraded RVTools solution to use CIS REST API, available since vSphere 6.5, to get tag information
  • vInfo tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags and min Required EVC Mode Key
  • vCPU tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vMemory tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags and Memory Reservation Locked To Max
  • vDisk tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vPartition tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vCD tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vFloppy tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vNetwork tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vSnapshot tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vTools tab page new columns: Virtual machine tags
  • vRP tab page new columns: Resource Pool tags and object ID
  • vCluster tab page new columns: Cluster tags, custom attributes and object ID
  • vHost tab page new columns: Host tags, in Maintenance Mode and in Quarantine Mode
  • dvSwitch tab page new columns: Distributed VirtualSwitch tags, custom attributes and object ID
  • dvPort tab page new columns: Distributed VirtualSwitch Port Group tags and object ID
  • vDatastore tab page new columns: Datastore tags, custom attributes and object ID
  • Preference extra checkbox for “Exclude tags”
  • CLI new parameter -ExcludeTags
  • Bug fix: removed column “Config Checksum” from vInfo tab page.
    This Base64Binary field was sometimes the cause for a XML deserialize error!
  • Bug fix: not all snapshots from all snapshot siblings where displayed
  • Bug fix: preference setting “Exclude Annotation fields” value was overwritten.
  • Bug fix: Name on vRP tab page was full path
  • Bug fix: In example RVToolsBatchMultipleVCs.ps1 script parameters changed for RVToolsMergeExcelFiles.exe
  • Bug fix: vSphere 7, “Unhandled exception: Input string was not in a correct format.”
  • Known issue: Tags are only visible when logged on with userid/password. It’s not working when SSO is used!

Top 10 VMware tools podcast and RVTools 3.11.6

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Right after we finished recording the Virtually Speaking Podcast on the topic of VMware Tools (Listen to it, great episode featuring Pete, John, William Lam and myself) yesterday I received an email from Rob. Rob mentioned an update to RVTools, bringing it now to version 3.11.6. As I mentioned on the podcast, RVTools has been around for 10 years now, what an achievement! Insane number of downloads, but understandable as it is very useful for anyone and everyone running a VMware environment. If you never looked at it, download it today, I am sure you will find various inconsistencies or issues, we all have! So, what changed in 3.11.6?

Version 3.11.6 (March, 2019)

  • Upgraded RVTools solution to use VMware vSphere Management SDK 6.7U1
  • Windows Authentication Framework (Waffle) is no longer used by RVTools
  • NPOI .NET library for creating excel export files is no longer used by RVTools
  • RVTools now uses OpenXML and ClosedXML for creating the excel export files
  • Performance improvements for export to excel
  • added -ExcludeCustomAnnotations switch to RVTools command line interface
  • added –DBColumnNames switch to RVTools command line interface
  • vInfo tab page new column: Creation date virtual machine
  • vInfo tab page new columns: Primary IP Address and vmx Config Checksum
  • vInfo tab page new columns: log directory, snapshot directory and suspend directory
  • dvSwitch tab page new columns: LACP name, LACP mode and LACP loadbalance Algorithm
  • vNIC tab page new column: Name of uplink port
  • vNetwork tab page new column: Network Adapter DirectPath I/O Parameter
  • vHost tab page new columns: Serial number and BIOS vendor
  • Header row and first column in export Excel file are now locked.
  • First “Select” column is removed from excel worksheet vFloppy, vCD and vTools.
  • added a new executable to merge your vCenter xlsx files super-fast to one xlsx file.
    RVToolsMergeExcelFiles.exe -input c:\temp\AA.xlsx;c:\temp\BB.xlsx -output c:\temp\AABB.xlsx -template c:\temp\mytemplate.xlsx -verbose –overwrite
  • Example script RVToolsBatchMultipleVCs.ps1 is changed. It will now uses RVToolsMergeExcelFiles to merge the xlsx files.
  • Bug Fix: a Single Sign On problem solved
  • Bug Fix: ExportvSC+VMK2csv command was not working
  • Bug Fix: ExportdvPort2csv command was not working
  • Bug Fix: On vNIC tabpage not all Switch/dvSwitch information was displayed
  • Bug Fix: Export now reflect value of “Latency Sensitivity” enumeration
  • Bug Fix: After changing the preference settings the data is not always refreshed as needed
  • Bug fix: Content Libraries vmdk files are no longer reported as possible zombie files

New version of RVTools is out

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I was talking with a couple of VMware partners last week, one of them mentioned how much they used RVTools for sizing and designing. Funny if you consider that this little free tool is made by someone in his spare time. RVTools is closing in on 1 million downloads, so it is safe to say that this is probably the most successful tool out there made by an individual. So once again, thanks Rob for spending the time and effort on this!

Here’s what’s new :

Version 3.10 (February, 2018)

  • Upgraded RVTools solution to Visual Studio 2017
  • Upgraded RVTools to .Net Framework version 4.6.1
  • Upgraded Log4net to version 2.0.8, Waffle.AD to version 1.8.3 and NPOI to version 2.3.0
  • Connection error when TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1 are disabled and only TLSv1.2 is enabled is solved by using .Net Framework 4.6.1
  • vInfo tab page new columns: The latency-sensitivity setting of the virtual machine, Change Block Tracking (CBT) and disk.EnableUUID values
  • vDisk tab page new columns: SCSI label, unit number and sharedBus
  • vHost tab page new columns: Assigned License(s), ATS heartbeat, ATS locking values. 0 = disabled 1 = enabled, Host Power Policy shortname, CPU Power Management current policy and CPU power hardware support
  • When Export to xlsx is executed a metadata worksheet with version number of RVTools and date time stamp is added to the output xlsx file
  • All columns in the RVTools export xlsx file(s) now have a filter
  • When export to csv newline characters are replaced by spaces
  • When started from cli and login fails an error message and login box was displayed. Now RVTools will exit with exit code -1, without showing the error message and login form.
  • Added an example PowerShell script with which you can merge RVTools export xlsx files
  • Added a example PowerShell script to start Export all to xlsx for multiple vCenters
  • vDatastore tab page: For NFS datastores the address column is now filled with remote host and path info
  • vDatastore tab page new columns: Datastore Cluster Name, Cluster capacity and Cluster free space
  • The upper limit on the Health check for number of VMs on a datastore is now 9999
  • vHealth tab page: new column “message type” which can be used as a filter in Excel
  • vHealth tab page: hbrdisk.RDID files are no longer reported as possible zombie files
  • vHealth tab page: low disk space messages no also show the free space in MB
  • All tab pages: Refresh or auto-refresh will respect your sort order
  • CLI export2xls parameters changed to export2xlsx (old parameter will still work)
  • Bug Fix: invalid “Horizontal Alignment” value in xlsx style sheet.
  • Bug Fix: Calculation of total snapshot size was not always correct
  • Bug Fix: Child snapshot hierarchy was not always correct
  • Default installation directory is changed to C:\Program Files (x86)\RobWare\RVTools without the version number

Cool tool update: RVTools 3.9.2

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It has been a year since version 3.8, but finally here it is… RVTools 3.9. Rob de Vey has been developing this tool since early 2008 and over 650k 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 3.9:

Version 3.9 (February, 2017)

  • Migrated RVTools to use .NET Framework version 4
  • Migrated RVTools to use NPOI 2.1.3.1
  • Support for vSphere 6.5
  • Improved logon performance
  • RVTools will no longer write messages to the Windows eventlog
  • All VM related tab pages now have a new column: OS according to the VMware Tools
  • All tab pages now have a new column: VI SDK Server
  • All tab pages column vCenter UUID renamed to VI SDK UUID
  • vInfo tab page: new column VI SDK API version
  • Export to Excel will now use xlsx format
  • Export to Excel all columns are now auto sized
  • Excel worksheet names will use same name as the tab page names
  • Annotations fields can now be excluded! See preference window
  • vPartition tab page new column: Consumed MB
  • vHealth _replica directories are excluded for zombie checks
  • sesparse.vmdk files are excluded for zombie checks
  • New tab page with license information
  • New PasswordEncryption application added with which you can encrypt your password
  • RVTools command line interface accepts now encrypted passwords
  • Bug fix: URL Link to online version info issue solved

Cool tool update: RVTools 3.8

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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.