This week we(Frank Denneman and I) played around with vscsiStats, it’s a weird command and hard to get used to when you normally dive into esxtop when there are performance issues. While asking around for more info on the metrics and values someone emailed us nfstop. I assumed it was NDA or at least not suitable for publication yet but William Lam pointed me to a topic on the VMTN Communities which contains this great script. Definitely worth checking out. This tool parses the vscsiStats output into an esxtop format. Below a screenshot of what that looks like:
Tools
Cool Tool: vAudit
For some weird reason I never picked up on this tool. Months ago Richard Garsthagen released a beta version of vAudit and recently it was updated to version 1.5.
Why would you use vAudit? vAudit has been developed to show you when your VDI Users are logging in and for how long they are using the virtual desktop. I think it is the ideal auditing tool during a Proof of Concept. Are your users actually using it as much as they are saying? When are they using it and for how long?
vAudit has an export to CSV feature which enables you to analyze trends regarding usage. Below you can find the release notes and a link to the download section of Richard’s site.
Download Version 1.5
- vAudit now also checks for login failures, so you can detect if people are trying to hack into your system.
- You can now resize the username column, so you can actually read the username if you have long domain names.
- When you MouseOver a session, it will display the machine name and time information.
In the next release, I will try to add information about your top users, make an export function and at some point will give your a graph with daily concurrent usage.
RVTools 2.7.1
Rob de Veij has just uploaded a new version of RVTools, 2.7.1. So far over RVTools has been downloaded over 25000 times. Yes 25000 times, that is a lot isn’t it. There’s a good reason though that it is popular. It is easy to use and gives you all the details you are looking for.
Version 2.7.1 contains the following new features and bug fixes:
- RVTools now reports storage which is wasted by zombie VMs, VMDKs, templates and snapshots. You can find this information on the vHealth tab page. If you guys pay me a dime for every gigabyte of wasted storage, found by RVTools, you will make me rich.
- Due to the fact that the search all datastores task can take a long time to complete, RVTools now use a separate thread to collect this information.
- The default percentage value of “free datastore capacity” is changed from 10% to 15%.
- Bug fix! If a snapshot is more than two levels deep, only the first two are visible. With the input from Mike Price this problem is now solved! Thanks again Mike.
The full releasenotes can be found here. I guess that’s enough for today, just download it!
Cool Tool Update: RVTools 2.6
Rob de Veij just uploaded a new version of RVTools. Check it out, there are a whole bunch of new cool features added. Honestly one of the best free tools around, great work Rob! (Everyone keep in mind that Rob does this during the evening so if you’re using this for commercial purposes would be nice to make a small donation.)
Version 2.6 (September, 2009)
- RVTools is now using the vSphere 4 SDK. The SDK has been enhanced to support new features of ESX/ESXi 4.0 and vCenter Server 4.0 systems.
- On vNetwork tab the Vmxnet2 information is improved (due to the new SDK).
- The name of the vCenter server or ESX host to which RVTools is connected is now visible in the windows title.
- New menu option: Export All. Which exports all the data to csv files.
- Export All function can also started from the command line. The output files are written to a unique directory in the users documents directory.
- New vSwitch tab. The vSwitch tab displays for each virtual switch the name of the switch, number of ports, free ports, promiscuous mode value, mac address changed allowed value, forged transmits allowed value, traffic shapping flag, width, peak and burst, teaming policy, reverse policy flag, notify switch value, rolling order, offload flag, TSO support flag, zero copy transmits support flag, maximum transmission unit size, host name, datacenter name and cluster name.
- New vPort tab. The vPort tab displays for each port the name of the port, the name of the virtual switch where the port is defined, VLAN ID, promiscuous mode value, mac address changed allowed value, forged transmits allowed value, traffic shapping flag, width, peak and burst, teaming policy, reverse policy flag, notify switch value, rolling order, offload flag, TSO support flag, zero copy transmits support flag, size, host name, datacenter name and cluster name.
- Filter is now also working on vHost, vSwitch and vPort tab.
- Health check change: number of virtual machines per core check is changed to number of virtual CPUs per core.
RVTools 2.5.5!
Just released, a brand new version of RVTools:
Latest Version: 2.5.5 | June 27, 2009
Download | Documentation
Release notes:
Version 2.5.5 (June 27, 2009)
Changed health check properties are not set at start of the program. The program will use the default values until you start and transmit the properties screen. This problem is now fixed.
Since version 2.5 the vDisk tab displays information that is aggregated from “config.hardware” and “guest” information. That was not a good idea! If there is more than one partition on a virtual disk the displayed information is wrong. To solve this problem I now split this information in a vDisk tab which will show only the information that is provided by the “config.hardware” information and a new vPartition tab that will display the “guest” information.
Better exception handling on filter.
New fields on vHost tab: Number of CPUs, Cores per CPU and virtual CPUs per Core.
For those who are using this awesome tool, there’s a donate button and of course there are other ways to give Rob some credits :-). Visit Robware.net