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** 5/17/2010 The Top 10 Free vSphere ESX Tools and Utilities post has been released.

Let me know if I missed something because I would like to add it. kendrickcoleman [at] gmail [dot] com or @KendrickColeman on twitter.

**Update** 7/22/2010 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 - “Google–like” 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 time–consuming 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.

vSphere Mini Monitor 2.0 - VMM will now monitor a large number of changes to multiple objects within the vCenter environment

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.

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

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.

EMBOTICS V-Scout - agent-less tool for tracking and reporting on VMs in VMware VirtualCenter enabled environments

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.

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 %post-scripts.

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, it’s 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 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.

Scripting tools

vEcoShell - enables IT administrators to unlock the full potential of their virtual infrastructure and reduce the daily operating costs of managing multi-platform 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)

VESI PowerPack V3 - A huge power pack developed by Alan Renouf for vEcoShell that is more than just a one-trick pony tool (PowerCLI)

vGhetto - a nice consolidation of all the scripts written by William Lam and some members of the VMTN community (VMware vSphere CLI & Perl)

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.

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.

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.

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