Virtualization Support in 4.6

babbitt · 2010-03-05T15:47:10.000Z

Hi all,

One of the features we’re introducing starting with 4.6 is the ability to inventory and manage your virtualization infrastructure. If you watched the webinar this morning you got a brief glimpse of what we have right now.

In a nutshell, I’ve started by adding virtual hosts and virtual machines to Inventory. The virtualization products we support right now are only the VMware ESX-class hosts: VI3, ESX/ESXi, vSphere. We can inventory the hardware of the host (model, harware spec, patch level, local storage, management interface configuration), and we take an inventory of the virtual machines running on the hosts.

Obviously the remaining runway is pretty short for this release, but I’d like to squeeze in more so 4.6 is more meaningful for those of you using VMware.

So for this 4.6 preview, I’d love to hear not only what issues you may discover while trying to inventory your VMware hosts, but also what other things might greatly help you do your jobs better. I’m already starting on the VM-centric view of the Inventory. What else?

Thanks!

-David

akp982 · 2010-03-05T15:53:58.000Z

Looks great, one thing i would love is to be able to start and stop them, we have a few we only turn on now and then, starting up the vmware client takes ages and is bulky.

jcruz7683 · 2010-03-05T16:14:14.000Z

If you add support for XenServer I’ll help test it…hint hint lol ; )

carolasher0432 · 2010-03-05T16:16:35.000Z

Can I second that support for XenServer?

craigm · 2010-03-05T16:28:07.000Z

I second Andy’s request to be able to restart them. And would like to request support for Microsoft Hyper-V.

texkonc · 2010-03-06T21:33:11.000Z

Cool. Be excited to see that working for our ESX Hosts.

dabeast · 2010-03-06T23:45:56.000Z

It is a start…would be nice to track the alarms and other stats from ESX/VC and have Spiceworks report on it.

stephenjohnlyons · 2010-03-07T16:06:55.000Z

da Beast wrote:

It is a start…would be nice to track the alarms and other stats from ESX/VC and have Spiceworks report on it.

I’ll second that!

ecgan7684 · 2010-03-07T19:15:30.000Z

SJLyons50 wrote:

da Beast wrote:

It is a start…would be nice to track the alarms and other stats from ESX/VC and have Spiceworks report on it.

I’ll second that!

Me too!

clem · 2010-03-08T02:09:08.000Z

I’m managing Citrix XenHosts, so would also ask for the Xen Support. thanks,

alexanderstrobel · 2010-03-08T06:48:23.000Z

i really like the feature!

it would be great if one could monitor hardware-status of the physical esx-host and receive alert on it.

clem · 2010-03-08T06:55:27.000Z

I’m actually monitoring hardware-status, -failures of my citrix xen hosts through ilo in combination with hp insight, works great. to have this feature in spiceworks would of course be fantastic.

russellp · 2010-03-08T09:52:21.000Z

Very nice feature. Listing all the Virtual guests hosted on the ESX Host is very neat.

Now how about doing it the other way so that if I look at a virtual machine that is hosted on an ESX server, there is a link to the hosting server?

chris2134 · 2010-03-08T17:16:27.000Z

I’m going to throw in my 2 cents and ask for Hyper-V support as well. ESX is too expensive for us!

dabeast · 2010-03-08T17:44:02.000Z

Russell P wrote:

Very nice feature. Listing all the Virtual guests hosted on the ESX Host is very neat.

Now how about doing it the other way so that if I look at a virtual machine that is hosted on an ESX server, there is a link to the hosting server?

Yes - going both ways is a great idea!

robertj · 2010-03-08T18:43:18.000Z

da Beast wrote:

Russell P wrote:

Very nice feature. Listing all the Virtual guests hosted on the ESX Host is very neat.

Now how about doing it the other way so that if I look at a virtual machine that is hosted on an ESX server, there is a link to the hosting server?

Yes - going both ways is a great idea!

I was just going to ask for the same thing. Could me as another vote for this.

russellp · 2010-03-09T03:11:51.000Z

CGNWHS wrote:

I’m going to throw in my 2 cents and ask for Hyper-V support as well. ESX is too expensive for us!

I thought ESX was free.

VMware

What is ESXI | Bare Metal Hypervisor | ESX | VMware

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dabeast · 2010-03-09T15:54:15.000Z

ESXi is free - for enterprise functionality (DRS, HA, VC, etc) it is expensive. It really depends on what you plan to use it for and how much down time can you afford.

I have 2 sites that have ESX3i without the enterprise functionality. They are ok without those features.

robertj · 2010-03-09T18:37:59.000Z

Something else that would be very nice to have for VM status. In the VM tab which lists the VM’s running on a particular server. It would be great if it showed their status. Like Powered Off, Running, etc.

dabeast · 2010-03-09T19:25:56.000Z

RobertJ wrote:

Something else that would be very nice to have for VM status. In the VM tab which lists the VM’s running on a particular server. It would be great if it showed their status. Like Powered Off, Running, etc.

In addition - be able to start, stop, pause, etc actions on the VMs.