VirtualCenter

Three weeks ago i wrote an article on Bluebear’s Kodiak. I guess the main conclusion was “great potential, not enough working features at the moment”.

Well, Bluebear’s engineers have been busy lately and added some additional features as you probably read in my previous post. The key message in that post clearly is “Configuration of all standard VM resources is available, e.g. Memory Size, CPU allocation/shares, virtual disks, virtual NICs, and removable devices”. In other words, this is the beginning… If they keep adding features in this pace then they probably have an alternative to VirtualCenter within 6 to 12 months.

So most of you probably want to see some screenshots of what to expect from the new version, I created screenshots of the VM config screens and one of the console screen with a new menu:

I don’t have any invites left, sorry about that…

Here you go, the new and improved version of RVTools. A while back Rob de Veij wrote an app called RVTools, what it did basically was check the VMware Tools version and status of each VM in a datacenter and report this in a nice GUI.

Rob probably had some spare time on his hands cause he added a lot of usefull tabs to his tool!

 

VM’s

The “VM’s” tab displays for each virtual machine the power state, Boot Time, number of cpu’s, cpu reservation, amount of memory, memory reservation, number of nics, configuration path, notes, ESX host name and operating system name.

Disk

The “Disk” tab displays for each virtual machine the virtual disks, total disk capacity, total free disk capacity, percentage free disk capacity, notes, ESX host name and operating system name.

Network

The “Network” tab displays for each virtual machine the virtual nics, powerstate, id, network name, connected value, Mac Address, IP Address, notes, ESX host name and operating system name.

CD

The “CD” tab displays for each virtual machine CD-Rom information like VM powerstate, label, connected value, startup value, summary, notes, ESX host name and operating system name. It’s possible to disconnect the CD-Rom from this screen.

Floppy

The “Floppy” tab displays for each virtual machine the floppy information like VM powerstate, label, connected value, startup value, summary, notes, ESX host name and operating system name. It’s possible to disconnect the Floppy from this screen.

VM Tools

Interacting with VirtualCenter 2.x or ESX 3.x, RVTools is able to list the current version of the VMware Tools installed inside each virtual machine. and update them to the latest version. Within the RVTools GUI, you can select and upgrade multiple hosts by clicking “Upgrade VMware Tools”. Within VirtualCenter, you’ll see an Upgrade VMware Tools task for each VM selected.

So visit Rob’s website and download this tool it’s definitely worth it, and provide Rob with feedback so he can make this tools even better.

I will start with the first few request:

1. Memory Limit of VM would be nice to know.
2. Snapshot
3. Warning levels for VM’s with for instance connected CD’s, Snapshots, Memory Limit lower than assigned Memory, Freedisk space below 10% etc….