Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Tools

Cool tool update: RVTools 3.6

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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

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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.

Cool Tool update: RVTools 3.4

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It has been a while since I blogged about RVTools, but I just received an email from Rob saying that there is an update out so I figured it was about time. RVTools is in my opinion THE best free and independent tool out there for a vSphere enviroment. This is a must-have tool for every virtualization admin / consultant!

I have used it many times in the past, and I can tell you that it helped me digging up some nasty inconsistencies in environments and misconfigured VMs etc. I am surprised that none of the monitoring/reporting vendors has approached Rob to sponsor the tool itself… Especially considering RVTools was downloaded over 150.000 times so far.

What’s new for RVTools 3.4?

  • Overall performance improvements and better end user experience
  • VI SDK reference changed from 4.0 to 5.0
  • Added reference to Log4net (Apache Logging Framework) for debugging purpose
  • Fixed a SSO problem
  • CSV export trailing separator removed to fix PowerShell read problem
  • On vDisk tabpage new fields: Eagerly Scrub and Write Through
  • On vHost tabpage new field: vRAM = total amount of virtual RAM allocated to all running VMs
  • On vHost tabpage new fields: Used memory by VMs, Swapped memory by VMs and Ballooned memory by VMs
  • Bugfix: Snapshot size was displayed as zero when smaller than 1 MM
  • Added a new preferences screen. Here you can disable / enable some performance killers. By default they are disabled

Go and download it and give it a try, I am certain it will discover things you did not know about…

Cool tool: RVTools 3.2 released

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Today Rob de Veij released an update of his excellent tool called RVTools. We are up to version 3.2 already. You can find the update on the RVTools website. RVTools is an essential tool for every vSphere Admin. It allows you to report on the most important aspects of your virtual infrastructure, but probably the most important ones are limits / reservations / VMware tools. Seriously give it a try and you will be surprised with what you might find. I have used it in many environments and always managed to discover inconsistencies… Thanks again for the great work Rob!

These are the changes in version 3.2:

  • New tabpage with distributed switch information
  • New tabpage with distributed port information
  • It’s now possible to export a single tabpage to an excel file from the command line
  • It’s now possible to save the filter. The next time RVtools is started it will use the filter automatically.
  • Bugfix: On vSnapshot tab the displayed filename and filesize are not always correct
  • Bugfix: Improved exception handling on vPort tab

New version of RVTools!

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Rob just released a brand new version of RVTools. So what’s new?

Version 3.1 (April, 2011)

  • Logon form tab order rearranged
  • Logon form will remember your last selected host / vCenter server
  • On vInfo new fields Provisioned, Used and shared storage
  • On vInfo new fields install Boot Required, number of Virtual Disks
  • On vInfo new fields Fault Tolerance State,  FT Latency Status, FT Band width and FT Secondary Latency
  • On vInfo new field 128-bit SMBIOS UUID of the virtual machine.
  • On vDatastore new fields Total provisioned, Used and shared storage
  • On vDatastore new fields SIOC enabled flag and congested threshold value
  • On vDisk new field disk persistence mode.
  • On vNetwork all IP addresses of adapter are now visible
  • On vMemory new field distributed Memory Entitlement
  • On vCPU new fields static Cpu Entitlement and field distributed Cpu Entitlement
  • On vHost new fields Current EVC mode and Max EVC mode
  • New batch command line parameters -u user and -p password
  • Bugfix: custom fields not always visible on vSnapshot tab.
  • Bugfix: Export to Excel, some numeric columns are saved as text instead of numbers
  • RVToolsBatch.cmd with send by email example deployed in RVTools program file directory