Tools

HD_Speed measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your virtual disks, cd/dvd-roms, flash cards/sticks, floppys, etc, and offers a realtime graphical display.

Download

I/O Analyzer is a virtual appliance solution by VMware that provides a simple and standardized way of measuring storage performance in a VMware vSphere virtualized environments. I/O Analyzer automates the traditional storage performance analysis cycle and reduces the performance diagnosis time from days to hours.
 
Features include:

• Integrated framework for storage performance testing
• Readily deployable virtual appliance
• Easily configure and launch I/O tests on multiple hosts
• View integrated performance results at both guest and host levels
• Easily export performance data for off-site analysis

The ESX System Analyzer is a tool designed to help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi. It analyzes the ESX hosts in your environment and, for each host, collects information on factors that pertain to the migration process:

• Hardware compatibility with ESXi
• VMs registered on the ESX host, as well as VMs located on the host’s local disk
• Modifications to the Service Console RPMs which have been added or removed or files which have been added  or users and cronjobs which have been added

This tool also provides summary information for the whole existing environment

• Version of VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware for all VMs
• Version of Filesystem for all datastores

By having this information, administrators can determine what tasks need to be done prior to the migration. Examples include:

• Relocate VMs from local datastores to shared datastores
• Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI
• Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version

Be one of the first one to try, rate and comment - ESX-system-analyzer

Update: Remon Lam over at VirtualVlouds.info has figuered out the username and password, he also has a link to the userguide.

Foglight Network Management System (NMS) is an enterprise ready network performance monitoring and configuration management solution. It installs in less than 15 minutes and auto-discovers key metrics for network resources, including hardware, operating systems, virtual infrastructure, databases, middleware, applications, and services allowing you to:

- Reduce the wasted time and chaos associated with sudden network issues
- Mitigate the risk of downtime
- Reduce mean-time-to-resolution of network incidents
- Provide admin and management level visibility
- Manage up to 100 network devices for FREE
- Download and install in only 15 MINUTES

http://www.quest.com/foglight-network-management-system/

VMware Player is the easiest way to run multiple operating systems at the same time on your PC. With its user-friendly interface, VMware Player makes it effortless for anyone to try out Windows 7, Chrome OS or the latest Linux releases, or create isolated virtual machines to safely test new software and surf the Web. VMware Player can also be used to run a virtual copy of an old PC so that you can recycle the old machines you have under your desk or stored in the closet.

Installation Changes and Enhanced Keyboards

The hardware requirements to install this version of Workstation have changed. Workstation now requires a relatively modern 64-bit CPU. See Installation Requirements for details.

Virtual Hardware Improvements
 
This version of Workstation includes many hardware improvements. To try new hardware features, you must upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine or create a new virtual machine that uses the latest virtual hardware version.

•   The display technology has been changed to provide a better experience for Unity users and users who have multiple monitors. These changes also allow you to add a projector to your laptop without restarting your virtual machine.

•   Virtual machines can now support up to 64GB of memory. The host system should have more than 64GB of memory to use this feature.

•   An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2 guests. The HD Audio device is compatible with the RealTek ALC888 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec.

•   USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = “true”. Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.

•   Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. With the latest hardware version, Bluetooth devices that are paired to the host system radio are available to Windows guests and can be paired from within the guest. You should not pair Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice, to a guest.

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0

• Lists group membership of a principal in a given security domain.
• List of roles with privileges associated with each role.
• Lists all the permissions assigned to a principal.

Features & Usage of Permissions Tool

http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vpt

Quest has created a piece of software that contains our entire ‘optimizing knowledge’ called the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer and they have decided to make it available to the desktop virtualization community, completely free of charge! The impact of the Desktop Optimizer can be huge. Quest has performed tests where they compared a vanilla install of Windows 7 Enterprise (no users logged on) to an install that was optimized using the default set of optimizations in the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer.  The results are staggering! This Video will show you how easy your desktop can be optimized. More information and a download link can be found here.

CloudFS is a prototype replicated and distributed storage system for the VMware ESX platform. It allows VMs to run using local storage, without any single points of failure. CloudFS has been described in the research papers "Lithium: Virtual Machine Storage for the Cloud" at SoCC 2010 in Indianapolis, and "Scalable virtual machine storage using local disks" in the December 2010 issue of ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review.

The CloudFS code must be checked out under your VMware "bora" tree, and the build files patched from the file under scons/scons.diff. See the README file for further instructions. Please be aware that this is prototype software intended for a research audience, and not for ordinary users without above average systems hacking skills.

http://labs.vmware.com/flings/cloudfs

It looks like the vmClient has a competitor. Boomerang is a simple client application that makes it easy to use multiple vSphere servers simultaneously. Users can easily perform tasks like power operations on the virtual machine or connect to it using the VMware Remote Console (VMRC), which is provided with vSphere Client.

Features

• Supports connecting to multiple ESX and VC servers simultaneously.
• Allows you to save your credentials for easy login to servers.
• Favorites pane enables easy browsing through multiple virtual machines on different servers.
• Simple user interface gives you quick access to connecting to a virtual machine or issuing power operations.
• Keyboard navigation allows you to type the name of the virtual machine you want to use or to use directional keys to navigate.
• Configurable automatic update checking.
• Servers with large numbers of virtual machines are automatically collapsed into hyperlinks, which you can click to view subsets of the inventory or the entire thing.

Be one of the first one to try, rate and comment - http://labs.vmware.com/flings/boomerang

pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSense is a popular project with more than 1 million downloads since its inception, and proven in countless installations ranging from small home networks protecting a PC and an Xbox to large corporations, universities and other organizations protecting thousands of network devices.

A VMware Appliance is available here: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/VMwareAppliance
I’ve also created a vSphere compatible OVA file which is available here: http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/pfSense

We all know Carter from the days he brought PowerCLI  to the market. After the successful launch of this new automation product, Carter moved over to Spring, where he’s working as a product manager of one of the most secret Spring projects. For these secret projects he was looking for a tool or appliance which could be used to introduce low network bandwidth, latency and packet loss in order to test his cool WebApps. After some searching and tweeting around he has decided to build an appliance on his own.  WANatronic uses Ubuntu 8.04 JEOS, RC tools and IP tables. I’ve recorded a short video about what you can do with it and how it works. If you’re interested in giving it a try and you’re using vSphere, I’ve created a VMware vSphere WANatronic 10001 appliance OVF file which can be downloaded from this location.

When you want to test services like DNS, RDP or PCoIP on another host just use the following command line and put in your own addresses: route ADD 8.8.8.8 MASK 255.255.255.255 192.168.178.225 In this example DNS requests for 8.8.8.8 just like in Carter’s example are routed trough 192.168.178.225 (the IP address of my WANatronic).