Veeam Reporter
Veeam Reporter is in a class of its own when it comes to VI3 reporting. Whereas Veeam Monitor is focused on performance metrics, Veeam Reporter is focused on:
♦ Discovery
♦ Documentation
♦ Analysis
The SQL stored data captured by Veeam Reporter is designed to provide easy-to-use documentation about the virtual infrastructure. The tool can be used to analyze the environment and report the information in Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Adobe Acrobat (PDF) formats. This output provides one of the most sought-after yet never-accomplished feats in the world of IT management: documentation.
The content within these various file formats is just as flexible and deep. Veeam Reporter can gather information regarding:
♦ Network architecture, including virtual switches, ESX Server hosts, and virtual machines.
♦ Storage devices, including details of local and SAN-based storage and the virtual machine files stored within. In addition, Veeam Reporter provides metrics on storage capacity, limits, and utilization for the entire datastore or the virtual machines residing in the respective datastore.
♦ Resource pool configuration, including CPU and memory allocations.
♦ A full VI3 inventory for complete documentation of the virtual infrastructure.
Of all the tools, Veeam Reporter provides a level of functionality that is unparalleled by any other product in its category. It is unique in its offering and will most certainly save administrators a great deal of time and headaches in documenting and managing the growth of the virtual infrastructure.
Management, Operations, and Configuration
Most of the early software products developed for a virtual infrastructure focused on supporting the backup and the restore of virtual machines for business continuity and disaster recovery. A growing number of applications focus on supporting the management of the ESX Server hosts or the virtual machines. In some cases, even some traditional Windows-based applications have become even more useful when used inside the virtual infrastructure.
Acronis Disc Director
Disc Director is an application composed of partition, boot managers, and hard disk data editing tools developed by Acronis Inc. This tool has been around for some time now, and its use in a virtual machine makes it an excellent application to have handy when managing a virtual infrastructure. Disk Director can perform online disk configuration changes in physical computers as well as in virtual machines. Some of the more useful features for virtual machines include the ability to:
♦ Resize, move, split, and merge partitions without data loss or destruction.
♦ Convert partitions to other file systems without data loss.
♦ Copy (move) partition contents.
♦ Delete partitions.
♦ Recover hard disk partitions that were accidentally deleted or damaged due to a hardware or a software error.
♦ Format, label, assign letters, hide and unhide partitions, set active partitions, and perform additional disk management operations.
♦ Boot installed operating systems from any hard disk partition.
♦ Boot installed operating systems from under Windows.
♦ Recover boot records, files and folders structure, find lost clusters, remove viruses, and so forth.
Disk Director provides an advantage when extending Windows disk drives for virtual machines because the extension of the disk can be performed without any downtime regardless of which disk partitions are being altered. Acronis Disk Director is a great tool to have in your repertoire, especially now that a VMDK can be extended right through the properties of the virtual machine.
Veeam Configurator
Throughout this book we have shown how many tasks can be completed using the VI Client GUI as well as the command line. And while the command line can be powerful and ultimately save time, a learning curve is involved that often makes administrators shy away from the command line. Veeam Configurator provides a centralized GUI for managing a portion of the ESX Server configuration settings for multiple ESX Server hosts.
Veeam Configurator is made up of modules, called Experts, that eliminate the need to know scripting. The latest version of Veeam Configurator is version 1.5 and includes the following six Experts:
RootAccess Expert Allows for enabling or disabling of root access via SSH.
TimeSync Expert Allows for NTP configuration across multiple ESX Server hosts.
AddUser Expert Facilitates creating additional Service Console user accounts on one or more hosts simultaneously.
PatchLevel Expert Provides reporting on the current patch level for all ESX Server hosts.
EsxDiag Expert Collects diagnostic data across multiple ESX Server hosts, including TCP and DNS information, Service Console configuration, NTP settings, and failed services.
CustomScript Expert Allows for executing custom scripts on multiple ESX Server hosts at the same time. This is an excellent way to allow limited scripting knowledge to have a big impact.
Veeam Configurator can be a big timesaver for the administrator responsible for multiple ESX Server hosts. Whether from three hosts to thirty hosts, Veeam Configurator allows for customizations and scripts to be executed in a centralized location.
Veeam FastSCP
Veeam FastSCP is a free tool that provides file copy and management features. Using FastSCP you can copy files from a Windows system to an ESX Server system or vice versa, as well as copy files within or between ESX Server systems. Imagine you want to copy ISO files to a SAN LUN accessible by an ESX server host, or perhaps you want to make a copy of the entire directory where a virtual machine's files are stored. Veeam FastSCP is the perfect fit. If your backup strategy involves VCB, then FastSCP might be the tool of choice for copying restored virtual machine files back into an ESX-accessible directory to perform the vcbRestore command.
With its FastSCP product, Veeam has identified and solved the major problems with providing data transfer to and from ESX Server hosts. Whereas FTP lacked security and SCP lacked efficiency, FastSCP provides efficient and secure data transfer.
The interface for FastSCP is comfortable and easy to use and with a price tag of $0 this is definitely a tool you'll want to install.
WinSCP
WinSCP (Windows Secure Copy) is an open source free Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client and FTP client for Windows. WinSCP provides two program interfaces:
Norton Commander Interface The first interface is based on Norton Commander (and similar file managers). The interface displays two panels: a local folder structure in the left panel and a remote folder structure in the right panel.
Explorer-like Interface The second interface is similar to Windows Explorer in that you will only see the remote folder structure. To transfer files, perform a drag-and-drop operation between the WinSCP window and the Windows Explorer window.
WinSCP, like FastSCP, is used for file management services between and within ESX Server hosts. Unfortunately, this tool is significantly outperformed by FastSCP, but it has for a long time been a staple for ESX Server administrators.
FabulaTech USB over Network
One of the most significant features in today's IT world that has been eliminated from the virtual machines running on ESX Server 3.5 is the support for USB devices. For some administrators, access to USB devices is a critical component. The FabulaTech USB over Network product offers an excellent solution for USB access for virtual machines.