VC 2.0.2 features

[seangar]

Are there any reporting features in this version and 2.0.5 ?

TIA

S

[Troy_Clavell]

My personal opinion is that I'm not too fond of the reporting tools VC offers. Have you looked at Veeam Reporter?

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-reporting.html

What types of reports are you looking for?

[seangar]

Looking for ESX server stats, cpu, mem, warnings, etc. Daily, weekly, tigeered alrams etc. Reports for sys admins and my boss to show overall trends.

We have a 3 cluster, 28 server farm and are looking at another one for next year.

[kjb007]

The reporting features in VC are not great, but they are good in a pinch. In the absence of other reporting tools, it is a fair tool to use. As your db grows, however, it can be a pain to get it to report on a large number of objects. I have a cluster of about 100 vm's, and if I try to report on cpu/mem stats, even after setting timeout to a high value, it takes a long time to return anything, if at all.

Until your env gets large, though, it does a decent job of telling you how the env is doing.

So, to answer your question, yes, there is reporting capability in 2.0.x and 2.5

-KjB

[seangar]

How do I access these reports ?

[kjb007 · Accepted solution]

Right-click on an object you want to report on, and click 'Report performance', or click the performance tab. You should be able to see the current counter and change. If you use the performance tab, use the 'disk' icon on the top right and select what you want to report on.

[seangar]

OK, I feel real stupid. Thanks.

Are there any sites with scripts out there to atuomate the reports ?

S

[kjb007]

Not like the ones you see on vc. It does a pretty good job with the graphs. Also, take a look at the vi toolkit for powershell. It will give you similar reports, as far as the raw numbers are concerned, but not the graphs. If you want the graphs, which, of course make it a lot easier to read, try Veeam reporter, or even sql reporting services, although you'll need some development experience with that.

-KjB

[lamw]

If you're brave and know some SQL, you can always write some custom perl/java scripts/programs to extract all the data you're looking for from VCDB. The tables aren't as crazy as some other applications and if you dig(g) around a little, you can start to relate the tables. Most reporting applications that use the API use the data that is stored in the VCDB, it has all the information you need, but how to extract that and view that, thats the toughy. I've used the data provide to track where VMs are at any given moment through external scripts along with other useful metrics and data. There's also a schema for the VCDB floating on the web somewhere that gives you a high level break down of the database if that helps.