VMware ESX 3rd Party Add-on Tools

Posted by Planet Malaysia on November 15, 2007

If you have a VMware ESX server, you may have a look at VMware ESX 3rd Party add-on tools as below.

Probably the new VMware ESX version 3.5 may have the similar tools or VMware Inc already working on it.

Virtual Machine MKS Client – logon to your Virtual Center server and take over the console of your virtual machines. In the menu bar you will see a list with all your virtual machines. You can also power off en power on your virtual machines. The menu bar contains a combobox which you can use to search trough a large list of virtual machines. All items in the menu bar can be hidden for the end user. When you provide a preselected virtual machine in the registry the user will be automatically connect to it.

V-Ployment – enables users to configure and rapidly deploy ESX Server builds to a consistent standard, whilst drastically cutting down effort, time and cost when provisioning or building additional servers. How Is V-Ployment Used? V-Ployment simplifies the build and configuration process of VMware’s ESX Server (VI3), saving time and effort. It also reduces the skill level required to produce consistent ESX server builds and provides template examples containing over 5 years of VMware awarded best practice. V-Ployment is a fast, consistent and easy-to-use tool that allows you to deploy and configure VMware ESX 3.x servers rapidly in your environment. It is a .NET2 Windows application that processes configuration information from a formatted CSV file (supplied by Repton) and outputs the specified ESX host build scripts into a configured ESX boot image file (.iso).

eG Monitor – The eG Monitor for VMware infrastructures (the eG VM MonitorTM), part of the eG Enterprise Suite, is a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing all aspects of virtual hosts and guests, whether the infrastructure is used to support server or desktop applications. Coupled with the ability of the eG Enterprise Suite to monitor over 80 applications, including Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and others, the eG VM Monitor – with its patent-pending In-N-Out MonitoringTM technology — provides a comprehensive end-to-end solution for monitoring and managing the performance of virtual IT infrastructures.

VI3 Visio Action Pack I – This stunning pack contains 70 individual handcrafted Visio objects to represent VMware VI3 environments. They can also be snapped together in a modular way to create over 30 more. There are Presentation and Printing Enhanced objects to suit any type of presentation or documentation.VI3 Visio Action Pack I combines amazing design with great versitility and practicality. These exquisitely designed objects can be used in numerous ways only limited by your imagination. There are also some sample templates to help get you going. This pack is designed to work with Microsoft Visio 2003 and 2007 only.

VMware Snapshot reverter – VP’s example of an application to allow you to revert multiple snapshots from an ESX host at the same time + source code. Just Added Version 2 - a little effort in this version + some error checking VMware Snapshot reverter 2.

VKernel – The VKernel Capacity and Chargeback Virtual Appliance is ESX-specific software that reports on capacity and resource consumption. It also provides chargeback totals based on a user-defined unit cost for four core metering sources: CPU, RAM, storage and network usage. An unlimited number of custom fields are available for monitoring cooling costs, administrative services, software licensing or whatever else you can dream up. VKernel says the product can handle as many as 300 hosts, so there’s definitely room to breathe.

EsXpress – a scaleable and fault tolerant backup, restoration, and disaster recovery solution for VMware ESX. They offer the Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA).

SnapHunter – is a free ESX3 Service Console utility which can report back on the Snaphot status of VM’s from multiple ESX Servers. Its features include: identify VM’s which contain snapshots, show size, date and name of snapshot, optionally commit snapshots, email reporting and scheduling.

Dunes VS-O and VD-O – VS-O offers a management layer on top of VMware Virtual Center or Microsoft Virtual Server which helps in virtual automation. VS-O is a type of virtual infrastructure management package. VD-O is used for VDI.

VMTS – offering a variety of FREE tools and scripts for VMware ESX Tools such as VMTS Patch Manager, SSH client for ESX, and more.

Platespin – offers Power Convert and Power Recon. Power Convert is a P2V, V2V, and complete server workload management system (depending on the package you buy). Platespin also offers PowerRecon which collects and reports on all physical and virtual servers. PowerRecon will report the most efficient use of your hardware & software, as well as tell you how much you could save by virtualizing your systems (both in hardware and in cooling/electricity usage).

Vizioncore – Vizioncore offers esxRanger, esxMigrator, esxCharter, and esxReplicator. esxRanger is a popular backup application for VMware ESX Server. esxMigrator is a P2V conversion application, esxCharter is a performance monitoring application, and esxReplicator is used replicate virtual machines or SAN LUNs to other servers or SANs, either on the LAN or across the WAN.

Veeam – offers Veeam Configurator, Reporter, FastSCP. Veeam configurator is used to extend the Virtual Center console and give you access to more options and flexibility than what Virtual Center provides. Veeam Reporter is used to document, discover, and create a visual diagram of your ESX server farm. Veeam FastSCP is used to transfer ISO files to your ESX server. They claim that FastSCP is 6 times faster than traditional SCP clients. Veeam also offers a couple of free utilites – Rootaccess Wizard for ESX and Veeam Monitor for VMware Server.

VS-O – is a very powerful platform which allows you to create or adapt any IT automated procedure to fit into your companies’ needs and best practices. VS-O has a wide range of plug-ins already integrated (VMware, proprietary VS-M, WMI, SNMP, Mail, JDBC, SSH and XML) and we will keep enhancing our compatibility with as many systems as required to best operate your global IT infrastructure. Through VS-O you can control all these systems from simple to very advanced operations, allowing you from a single entry point to control your whole IT infrastructure. VS-O contains a library of all the basic actions and commands you can execute within each plug-in. These actions are then assembled into workflows to build advanced procedures. Programming these procedures doesn’t require any particular skill a part from basic logic and global understanding of the IT environment.

vdf+ – VMware ESX Server df utility based on vdf VMWare© utility. It’s a perl script procedure to show mounted device including VMFS formatted device.

vmbk - perl script procedure to permit VMWare ESX guest’s hot backup. How it works? It uses the ESX functions in order to create a REDO LOG Disk ,in order to allow the backup of the disk through VMFSTOOLS command.
Features : Perl script, Hot Backup (without suspend vm guest), Schedule Backup, Interactive Backup, NFS support, SMB support, FTP support, Virtual Center, support, Backup vmx + cmos file, Create restore interactive command script, Support for undoable and raw disk, Veritas NetBackup direct support.

Ultimate-P2V – Ultimate-P2V (fix-vmscsi) is a free plug-in that allows you to clone a physical machine to virtual machine – and perform the neccessary “system reconfiguration” required to make it bootable. Without this tool or a commerical P2V tool the virtual machine would just give a “blue screen of death”

Ultimate Deployment Appliance – adds VMWare ESX deployment to the OS-list. Furthermore A few live CD’s are added (Damn Small Linux, Recovery Is Possible, GParted) and lots of other small features. Mike Laverick has helped with the development of a kickstart builder for VMWare 3.0.x and has suggested some other useful features (like binding a template to a MAC address, a local repository for ISO files, based on a SCSI disk, VMWare Tools).

VMCL – is the first free high availability software for VMware environment. It manages virtual machines failover when a physical host crashes. VMCL has a feature actually not available in any other commercial product: it decides which available physical host has to start faulty virtual machines depending on specific parameters (free memory, CPU usage) to be respected and considering a defined priority (note: not yet implemented). The whole thing is based on some file present inside one of shared vmfs volume. When a physical host is faulty VMCL will decide which remained physical host has to mount faulted host quorum and to start which virtual machine.

vmSSHjwc - (Virtual Machine SSH Java Web Client) is the first free Java SSH terminal for VMWare ESX 3.x integrated in the Virtual Infrastructure Web Access.

Mightycare esxPatcher - This program checks all the patches from the Vmware website against the ones on your ESX server using a repository. It has a friendly user interface and installs patches automatically.

VMTSPatchManager - ”Windows Update” for VMware© ESX 3.x VMTS Patch Manager addresses a critical need for VMware customers, allowing automatic (or manual) patching of ESX Servers platforms. Features: Automatic Patch downloading from VMware Web site, Virtual Center Integration, Support for Background Intelligent Transfer Service (Microsoft BITS), Password saved inside the Microsoft Protected Storage, SSH Connection (with root or other users), Implement a tiny Web server to deliver the patch, Multi Thread implementation, Configuration Wizard.

VI3 PatchDownloader - This program is designed for Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003 but may work on other Windows Operating Systems. The latest follow up to the well received VI3 PatchDownloader tool is now a command line executable meaning that it can be scripted and scheduled as a routine task. Additional functionality means that it is now easier than ever to keep up to date with VMware® ESX patches.

TDS Virtual Failover Application - is triggered as an action to some specified event and then evacuates a VMware ESX host using VMotion and puts the ESX host in Maintenance Mode. It can optionally shutdown the ESX host when finished. This application can be installed as a plugin to various systems management tools (Dell Open Manage, IBM Director etc). For instance, the TDSvfo can be set up to move all Virtual Machines away from an ESX host that sends a Pre Failure Alert message (PFA) or other critical alert before that host goes down, effectively giving you a pre-event failover without disrupting your services. Used together with VMware HA, TDSvfo gives you complete pre- and post event failover of your services running on VMware, giving you an extra level of service continuity.

TDS Virtual Backup Application - gives you automatic, live backup and a complete disaster/recovery solution for your Virtual Infrastructure. It can stream your virtual machines to practically any disc storage, and is integrated into Virtual Center for easy management and recovery in case of disaster. The backup images are registered in Virtual Center, so you can boot or restore your backups directly from the Virtual Center Infrastructure Client. TDSvba keeps the native VMware formats of all files, and does not capsulate or package the backups, so you can for instance easily restore your backup images to any VMware product using VMware Converter, or boot your backups directly on another VMware ESX host or VMware Server to check your backup integrity or do simple file level restores.

ESX Healthcheck - is a script that collects data about an ESX host. The collection is done by a bunch of ordinary unix-commands and some vmware tools.

VMPerfMon – Measure real usage of VM.

KS QuickConfig – This utility is designed to reduce the time to deploy and configure VMWare ESX 3 servers and well as eliminate inconsistencies that can arise with manual operations. This Windows GUI based utility is based upon similar functionality of the VMware Web based Scripted Installer but with the additional options of creating post configuration files and loading and saving configurations for repeated use. Complete the form and select the Save option from the toolbar or File menu to generate a pre-configured deployment file. The resulting file can then be used to automatically deploy a fully configured VMWare ESX 3 server. There is tool tip help for each line in the form as well as a help page in the Help menu. All fields must be completed, and a partition file created/selected to create a valid custom configuration file. The resulting ks.cfg file is written in binary format so is fully compatible with Linux Operating Systems.

VISBU - The Virtual Infrastructure Scripted Backup Utility. VISBU is a free backup utility that is run from the Service Console that provides VMDK level backups of any VM on storage accessible by the host. The script can be targeted at any ESX server or VC server, and if pointed at a VC server is DRS aware. The script is designed to be easy to use and offers all features from a simple menu driven interface, so a non-Linux administrator can use it with the minimum of fuss. It provides email reports, automated restoration scripts for every backed up VM, and supports backups to SMB, NFS, EXT3, iSCSI and SAN based volumes – in both 2GBsparse or non-2GBsparse format. It also handles scheduled backups, configuration file creation, automatic SMB volume mounting, and provides a good level of logging for easy troubleshooting.

VdeskTools - provides visibility and policy assurance using VMware® Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). The toolset offers systems management components that deploy quickly and easily within your virtualized desktop infrastructure. VdeskTools allows you to see network interactions within your virtual environment; manages and monitors who interacts with what server or application, from what virtual desktop, and when; and provides powerful reporting for comprehensive auditing and compliance requirements.

vmCDConnected – It scans all the Virtual Machines and shows if they have a CD connected to it. After scanning the VM’s you can disconnect all the CD’s with a click of a button. Why do we need it ? Imagine you have a DRS cluster with 80 VM’s, when one of those VM’s is connected to a CD it will stay on the same ESX server because V-Motion doesn’t work in combination with a connected CD.

VMotion Info - reports about the actual CPU features instead of just providing the raw data. Now it will be easy to tell if you can Vmotion across boxes by default and if not, if you can fix it.

VLan and Portgroup manager - It allows you to easily manage all portgroups and VLan IDs on all your ESX Servers.

viDocIT - As a system administrator of a Vmware VI solution you face several challenges. One of them is the constant changes in the environment which mostly result in a lot of documentation updates or even worse, no documentation at all. An installation documentation have to two goals. The first is to document how each ESX host is configured. The the other is to provide a simple way to compare the configuration of your ESX hosts with eachother.

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