Tools - 24

VMware Labs present its latest fling PXE Manager for vCenter. VMware PXE Manager is a management tool that supports automatic PXE boot (network boot using PXE) and automatic customization of large numbers of ESXi systems, other features are:

• Automated provisioning of new ESXi hosts stateless and stateful (no ESX)
• ESXi host state (firmware) backup, restore, and archiving with retention
• ESXi builds repository management (stateless and statefull)
• ESXi Patch management
• Multi vCenter support
• Multi network support with agents (Linux CentOS virtual appliance will be available later)
• Wake on Lan
• Hosts memtest
• vCenter plugin
• Deploy directly to VMware Cloud Director
• Deploy to Cisco UCS blades

 VMware PXE Manager


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

 

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Check the compliance of your IT infrastructure against specific standards and best practices that are applicable for the environment. The Compliance Checker is a free, downloadable, fully-functional product for checking compliance of your environment to help you ensure that it remains secure and compliant.

This product is a robust utility providing detailed compliance checks against the VMware vSphere Hardening Guidelines. Unlike other free tools in the market, Compliance Checker for vSphere is a fully functional product. For example, you can print the reports that Compliance Checker produces, and can run compliance checks across multiple ESX and ESXi servers at once.

VMware Compliance Checker for vSphere lets you:

• Check compliance for multiple VMware ESX and ESXi servers concurrently - Run compliance check on up to 5 ESX or ESXi servers at a time and produce reports.

• Supports VMware vSphere hardening guidelines - Perform checks on VMware ESX and ESXi servers to conform with the latest VMware vSphere hardening guidelines.

• Analyze compliance assessment results - After a compliance run, you can view the assessments by ESX/ESXi hosts, plus guests.

• Save and Print assessment results -  You can save and print the compliance assessment reports to your team for review and they can be saved for archival needs.

http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere-compliance-checker/

VMware Labs present its latest fling, the Ruby vSphere Console - RVC is an open source project. Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) is a console UI for vSphere, built on the RbVmomi bindings to the vSphere API. RVC is a console UI for VMware ESX and vCenter. The vSphere object graph is presented as a virtual filesystem, allowing you to navigate and run commands against managed entities using familiar shell syntax.
Features:

• Tab Completion
• Marks
• Ruby Mode
• VMODL Introspection
• Multiple Connections
• Extensibility

This video will show you how to get up-and-running. You'll learn how to install the Ruby vSphere Console and how to connect to the vCenter Server. I'll also show some basic tasks like powering off and -on virtual machines.

Update: Rich Lane has released RVC 1.3.5 which fixes a bunch of bugs on Windows, including VMRC support. He has created a wiki page at https://github.com/vmware/rvc/wiki/Running-on-Windows

Arista vEOS is a virtual-machine-based or switch-integrated implementation of Arista EOS that integrates with VMware vSphere to provide the network operator visibility and configuration access to the virtual switches within the virtual server environment. In this video I'll show you how to deploy the vEOS virtual appliance.

Last Friday I attended a seminar hosted by Arista Networks and XTG in Gouda where Frederik Vos delivered a real cool demo of the vEOS virtual appliance which is available for free at Artista’s website.

http://www.aristanetworks.com/en/products/eos/veos

vEOS is a Virtual Appliance that provides an industry-standard CLI based management interface of a VMware vNetwork distributed switch (vDS). To a network administrator, vEOS provides the management interface just like a physical switch – SSH/telnet access, industry standard CLI, and integration with SNMP management tools like HP Openview for auto-discovery of VMs. Furthermore, vEOS simplifies network administration tasks such as:

• Configuration of ports groups
• Configuration of uplinks
• Monitoring virtual switches, operation and status
• Creation of distributed port profiles for consistent management across physical and virtual networks

Video - How to deploy the Arista vEOS

With vEOS, both server and network administrators can manage the virtualized cloud infrastructure in tandem, using their own unique and well understood workflows. Another key benefit of vEOS is that it automates network provisioning during VM migration: P2V, V2V and V2C. When a VM migrates from physical port to virtual or from one virtualized host to another across the network, vEOS migrates the corresponding network settings providing end-to-end consistency. While other solutions require replacing the existing internal virtual switch with vendor specific product, causing outage during the insertion, Arista’s EOS is unique in its ability to work with existing virtual switches while providing a consistent administrative experience.

VMinformer has made some significant improvements to make life easier for teams running or assuring virtual infrastructure. Going beyond just simple security configuration settings, it allows you to visualize your storage in a way that enables you to pin-point key issues quickly.  If you haven't tried VMinformer, or have not reviewed it recently you will be amazed to see what VMinformer shows you.

Check out more - http://www.vminformer.com/products/trial-edition A short video showing how you can use VMinformer a unique security assessment tool to rapidly identify the key security risks that effect your organizations VMware infrastructure.