A List of FREE VMware vSphere Tools | Tech Blog

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Wednesday, 04 May 2011 01:00

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Why? I wanted to create a list of free tools that you can use with vSphere. Not just 30-day trial tools, but actually *free* tools. I will be testing out all these applications in the next 2 months in preparation for a Top 5 or 10 blog and presentation at the Kentuckiana Virtualization Users Group meeting May21st
**UPDATE** 9/8/2011 - Top 10 Free VMware vSphere Tools and Utilities for 2011

The Top 10 Free vSphere ESX Tools and Utilities post has been released. (2010 Article) Let me know if I missed something because I would like to add it. kendrickcoleman [at] gmail [dot] com or @KendrickColeman on twitter. If you want to dive into performance, take a look at VM Advanced ISO. Free Tools for Advanced Tasks Utilities & Programs Veeam Monitor Free Edition - VMware monitoring solution designed to meet the day-to-day needs of VMware administrators who need real-time performance monitoring and alerting. Veeam Business View - an add-on that works with other Veeam products to provide business categorization for your VMware vSphere environment. Veeam FastSCP - FastSCP provides a fast, secure and easy way to manage files and bulk copy VMs across your VMware ESX environment. SolarWinds Free VM Monitor - continuously monitors a VMware ESX Server and its virtual machines. Track virtualization health at-a-glance and impress your boss with X-ray vision into your ESX Servers! <-- not vSphere compatible VKernel VM Stats - Provides key summary statistics for your VMware environment VKernel Capacity View - provides quick visibility and alerting to the storage and server capacity issues in your VMware virtualized infrastructure. Take a look at my Home Lab w/ Capacity View. Be sure to include the referral from kendrickcoleman [@] gmail [dot] com for validation(without the brackets of course). VKernel SearchMyVM - Googlelike SearchMyVM tool, delivered as a virtual appliance, instantly connects to VMware vCenter (VirtualCenter)and indexes the entire VMware ESX environment VKernel SnapshotMyVM - completely automates the timeconsuming process of documenting all virtual machines (VMs) in the dynamic data center VKernel Capacity Modeler - allows you to easily assess the performance impact of capacity changes to your existing virtualized environment CPUID System Information - shows the VMHost CPU Info by NTPRO RVTools - uses the VI SDK 2.5 to display information about your virtual machines and ESX hosts. VMware CPU Host Info 2.01 - allow you to read out all CPU information from all your ESX Servers by querying your VC server. It will show what features are available on your CPUs and if they are compatible to vmotion VMs and if FT is supported. ESX Manager 2.3 by ESXGuide - lots and lots and lots of management tools. ESX Manager 3.0 is on the horizon and looks very promising. Not sure how well this version works w/ vSphere. Now a Part of VM Vision Manager vSphere Mini Monitor 2.0 - VMM will now monitor a large number of changes to multiple objects within the vCenter environment

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12/20/2011 8:26 PM

A List of FREE VMware vSphere Tools | Tech Blog

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/a-list-of-free-vmware-vsphere-tools/Print.html

EMC Ionix Compliance Checker for VMware ESX - providing detailed compliance checks against both the VMware Hardening Guidelines and the CIS benchmarks for ESX <-- not vSphere compatible Trilead VM Explorer - Backup & Restore & Browse for ESX virtual machines vSphere Client RDP Plug-in - Xtravirt vSphere RDP Plug-in provides integration of the Windows Remote Desktop tool with the VMware vSphere Client. vLogView - a Windows based application which manages VMware ESX Server log files vAlarm - Windows based application which monitors alarms generated by VMware vCenter. Hyper9 GuessMyOS Plug-in - replaces generic VM icons in the VI3 and vSphere4 client inventory trees with OS-specific icons for both Windows and Linux guests Hyper9 Virtual Machine Manager - Open source solution to manage VMware VI3/vSphere4, Citrix XenServer 5 or Microsoft Hyper-V from your mobile device or cell phone. Disappeared Vdisk Waste Finder - report which disks are over-allocated Plugin Wizard for vSphere vCenter - allows you to register websites or web portals within your vCenter VI Client. Vizioncore vConverter SC - 4.2 - Freeware enterprise-class P2V and V2V solution that significantly reduces the time and effort in converting servers. Replaced with vConverter DR which is not free. Vizioncore vOptimizer WasteFinder - 2.2 - scans vCenter Servers (Virtual Centers) and alerts customers as to how much over allocated virtual storage they have and provides potential savings estimates if this wasted space is reclaimed. Vizioncore vOptimizer WasteFinder - 3.0 - scans vCenter and can shrink VMDKs to reclaim storage and can also realign VMDKs to 64k on 2 VMs for free. EMBOTICS V-Scout - agent-less tool for tracking and reporting on VMs in VMware VirtualCenter enabled environments (End Of Life September 2010) Novell PlateSpin Recon 3.7 for Inventory - enables users to take a complete hardware, software and services inventory of x86-based physical servers or virtual machines running VMware or Microsoft Virtual Server with absolutely no manual effort or disruptive agent technology. No longer free. PHD Virtual Patch Downloader 6.01 - simplifies the task of downloading patches for various ESX versions by automating the task <-- not vSphere compatible PHD Virtual Patch Downloader 6.2.0.5 - simplifies the task of downloading patches for various ESX and ESXi versions (including vSphere) by automating the task. VMDK Stub File Generator - The PHD Virtual Stub File Generator lets you recreate the .vmdk STUB file so that you can re-attach and access the data in the -flat.vmdk, eliminating any data loss from within the virtual disk making it very useful for vmware systems administrators and disaster recover experts. ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) - an appliance dedicated to deploying ESX servers fast and easy. It has a scriptbuilder to quickly create %postscripts. VKernel AppVIEW - Monitor your five most important VMs and see detailed data on how these applications are running in your virtual environment. Read my latest blog post VKernel AppVIEW and Your Hidden VI Issues Loadstorm - utility to generate CPU and/or memory load within a virtual machine. Great for testing out DRS vmClient - a lightweight tool which enables you to control the power of your virtual machines, its also capable of presenting the MKS console of your virtual machines (Read More) vFoglight QuickView - performance monitoring solution that provides essential alerts and data to enable administrators to quickly detect, diagnose

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12/20/2011 8:26 PM

A List of FREE VMware vSphere Tools | Tech Blog

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/a-list-of-free-vmware-vsphere-tools/Print.html

and resolve critical issues within the virtual infrastructure. VKernel StorageVIEW - instant visibility into the top five host/datastore pairs and their associated VMs with the highest latency. Xangati Free - VMs, networks, storage, apps, end-user devices in one pane of glass. Real-time continuous UI with ability to DVR record anything. Rich historical reporting on VM and application activity Solarwinds SAN Monitor - Gain Visibility into Storage Performance & Stay Ahead of SAN Slowdowns CloudCleaner v2.5 - Luke Terheyden of VMware, coded a clean-up tool for vSphere environments prepared and managed by VMware vCloud Director. Now a VMware Labs Fling VMTurbo Monitor - Discover all physical and virtual resources, View virtual infrastructure hotspots at a glance through a color-coded heat map, Identify overutilized and underutilized resources, Keep your virtual infrastructure healthy while assuring application performance Rolled into the Pay for Product VMTurbo Monitor VMTurbo Watchdog - detects and troubleshoots problems in real time and helps you analyzes their impact. Rolled into the Pay for Product VMTurbo Monitor VMVision Manager - A new way to view the virtual machines in your environment vDisk Informer - demonstrates which virtual disks have potentially wasted space on them and which virtual disks are misaligned causing a performance impact VMTurbo Performance and Efficiency Reporter - Free Right-sizing and Six Other Actionable Reports Hyper9 Search Plug-in - Enables users to jump directly to a VM in the Hyper9 Virtualization Manager for a VI3 or vSphere 4.0 client vSphere Plugin Wizard 2.0 - create a tabbed plugin of your favorite website or admin page inside vCenter VMware Scanner 1.4 - scan for VMware Servers (ESX, ESXi, VirtualCenter and VMware Server). It uses the VMware API to identify a VMware server and query the product name, version and build number. ESXi Customizer - automates the process of customizing the ESXi install-ISO with drivers that are not originally included UBERAlign - free and powerful tool to resolve alignment of VMs Thinware vBackup - an actual FREE backup solution for virtual infrastructure that can be easily implemented in any environment. VMware vSphere Visio Stencils - Box Shots, Icons, and Products. Get them all here. openstack - designed to provision and manage large networks of virtual machines, creating a redundant and scalable cloud computing platform
Scripting tools

IT administrators to unlock the full potential of their virtual infrastructure and reduce the daily operating costs of managing multiplatform environments. Fostered and supported by The Virtualization EcoShell Initiative (VESI) - an online community-driven Web site sponsored by Vizioncore - the Virtualization EcoShell is enhanced by the participation of community members through the exchange of new ideas, value-add services and extensible scripts (PowerCLI) - Project is dead and now PowerGUI is the predecessor. PowerGUI - a GUI for all those neat powershell scripts :) VESI PowerPack V3 - A huge power pack developed by Alan Renouf for vEcoShell that is more than just a one-trick pony tool (PowerCLI). Now held at PowerGUI VMware Community PowerPack PowerGUI VMware Community PowerPack - everything from the VESI PowerPack v3 and much much more! vGhetto - a nice consolidation of all the scripts written by William Lam and some members of the VMTN community (VMware vSphere CLI & Perl) Image Builder & Auto Deploy Powerpack - a PowerGUI Powerpack which enables us as VMware admins to have a graphical interface to Image Builder and Auto Deploy which are currently released as PowerShell snap-ins only.

vEcoShell - enables

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12/20/2011 8:26 PM

A List of FREE VMware vSphere Tools | Tech Blog

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/a-list-of-free-vmware-vsphere-tools/Print.html

Free tools brought to you by VMware VMark - Get an accurate measurement of application performance in virtualized environments with VMmark, the industry's first virtualization benchmark for x86-based computers vCenter Converter - of course we all know this appliance for easy P2V migrations vSphere Management Assistant - allows administrators and developers to run scripts and agents to manage ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server systems. PowerCLI - a powerful command line tool that lets you automate all aspects of vSphere management, including network, storage, VM, guest OS and more. VMware Support Toolbar - have a direct way for all the necessary links, downloads, RSS feed news for all things from VMware. Compatible w/ Firefox, IE, and Safari VMware SiteSurvey - Produces a report showing hardware compatibility and software configuration compatibility with advanced VMware features such as Fault Tolerance. CPU Identification Utility - Displays CPU features for VMotion compatibility, EVC and indicates 64-bit VMware support. VMware Studio - an integrated development tool that packages software applications into virtual appliances and vApps that are ready to run and optimized for VMware product platforms and the cloud. VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.1 Sizing Estimator - get the right answer to your question whether to install the VMware vCenter Update Manager database on the same DB as vCenter DB or not. And also if yes or not to install VUM at the same host as the vCenter Server host VMware Compliance Checker for vSphere - Check the compliance of your IT infrastructure against specific standards and best practices that are applicable for the environment VMware vCenter Orchestrator Appliance - Begin automating your vSphere environment

Free Tools From VMware Labs (I put a * next to tools I feel are worthy of being everyday tools.... note from Pable Roesch from VMware: these tools are not even in beta, these are more like science experiments w/ out any strings attached) Apache Pivot - Like most modern development platforms, Pivot provides a comprehensive set of foundation classes that together comprise a "framework". These classes form the building blocks upon which more complex and sophisticated applications can be built. Dynamo RIO - exports an interface for building dynamic tools for a wide variety of uses: program analysis and understanding, profiling, instrumentation, optimization, translation, etc. esxplot - * GUI based tool that lets you explore the data collected by esxtop in batch mode. Onyx - * standalone application that serves as a proxy between the vSphere Client and the vCenter Server. It monitors the network communication between them and translates it into an executable PowerShell code. Later this code could be modified and saved into a reusable function or script. SVGA Sonar - demo application for SVGADevTap vApprun - vApp features become available to both Workstation and Fusion users vCMA - * VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) - vCMA allows you to monitor and manage VMware Infrastructure from your mobile phone with an interface that is optimized for such devices.

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12/20/2011 8:26 PM

A List of FREE VMware vSphere Tools | Tech Blog

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/a-list-of-free-vmware-vsphere-tools/Print.html

VGC - * VMware Guest Console, too many cool things to list VI Java - vSphere Java API is a set of Java libraries that sits on top of existing vSphere SDK Web Services interfaces Virtual USB Analyzer - free and open source tool for visualizing logs of USB packets, from hardware or software USB sniffer tools Weasel - insert the ESX Installation DVD, this program guides you through the steps of network configuration, disk selection, etc. Or it can perform an automated install based on a script similar to Redhat kickstart scripts. IOBlazer - a multi-platform storage stack micro-benchmark. PXE Manager for vCenter - enables ESXi host state (firmware) management and provisioning Thinapped vSphere Client - Run vSphere client 4.1 in a snap. No install, just download the EXE and double-click. vCenter XVP Manager and Converter - provides basic virtualization management capabilities for non-vSphere hypervisor platforms towards enabling centralized visibility and control across heterogeneous virtual infrastructures VMware Auto Deploy - supports automatic PXE boot and customization of large numbers of ESXi systems Boomerang - allows you to use multiple vSphere servers simultaneously I/O Analyzer - a simple and standardized way of measuring storage performance in a VMware vSphere virtualized environments. ESX System Analyzer - help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi CloudCleaner - It selectively (or completely) removes all vCD-created virtual machines, resource pools, network pools, and networks. It can also unprepare hosts that have been prepared by vCD. InventorySnapshot - allows a user to "snapshot" a given vCenter inventory configuration and then reproduce it. vCD-nclient - aims to be a quick start for using the new Notifications feature in vCloud Director v1.5.

VMware View vAudit 1.5 - a utility for VMware View environments (3.01 and 3.1). The tool will display when your users are logging in to their virtual machines and it can also display and unsuccessful login attempts VDI Calculator - VDI calculator is targeted for VMware View designs, however you can use the calculator for any VDI running on top of vSphere infrastructure Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer - 40 optimizations to tweak your golden image. PCoIP Log Viewer 2.0 - provides capabilities to visualize and analyze PCoIP performance metrics collected from PCoIP server log files and real-time WMI counters. TS Tweaker - This Application will allow you to tweak some common registry changes to optimise Terminal Server Virtual Storage Appliances (VSA) Celerra UBER VSA v3 A VSA of EMC's Celerra UBER VNX (NFS) v1 - A VSA of EMC's VNX currently only working with NFS Nexenta - VSA of Nexenta NetApp VSA - must login to your NetApp Account to download and must be a NetApp customer OpenFiler - OpenFiler FreeNAS - FreeNAS StarWind Free Edition - iSCSI SAN with Deduplication

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12/20/2011 8:26 PM

A List of FREE VMware vSphere Tools | Tech Blog

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/a-list-of-free-vmware-vsphere-tools/Print.html

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