reporting on vmware usage

Question

I want to be able to report on vmware server usage across a cluster of 30 vmware ESX hosts with about 350 VM instances. The kind of reporting i want to do is basic dept A used X amount of resource this month. I've had a look at veeam and vmware's own product but both are expensive (circa $30k) and feature overkill for what we need. Does anyone know of a vmware reporting tool that is basic and cheaper?

Answer 1

There exists a VMware Perl API that would allow you to write some perl code to interact with your VMs and hypervisors.

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/viperltoolkit/

Answer 2

I would also recommend the API route but if you're not comfortable with that you could try collecting the data with esxtop. You can run it in batch mode and then import the output to a database and run reports/queries against it.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006797

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/guest-sdk/guest_sdk_40.pdf

Might also be worthwhile to review your statistics levels and collection intervals.

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx-vcenter/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.dcadmin.doc_41/vsp_dc_admin_guide/performance_statistics/r_collection_levels.html

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx-vcenter/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.dcadmin.doc_41/vc_perfcharts_help/c_perfcharts_collection_intervals.html

Also, VMTurbo has a free "Community Edition" of their monitoring product that you could try out.

http://www.vmturbo.com/products/community-edition

Good luck!

Dave

Answer 3

Look into the VMTurbo suite. There's a free edition that's worth evaluating. It provides metrics by application, VM, datastore, etc. The software can also be used to make resource planning recommendations (similar to DRS).