Summary
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
- Files which have been added
- 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
- Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version
- Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI
System Requirements
The following are the requirements, to run ESX System Analyzer:
- ESX System Analyzer virtual appliance specifications:
- 20GB virtual disk
- 512MB virtual memory
- 1 vCPU
- vCenter Server 2.5, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0
- ESX Hosts 3.5, 4.0, 4.1
- Username and password for a vCenter Server user with administrator access
- Root password for all ESX hosts to be analyzed
- Root SSH enabled on all ESX hosts to be analyzed
The ESX System Analyzer application is compatible with following browsers:
1. Internet Explorer 8
2. Internet Explorer 7
3. Mozilla Firefox 6.0.2
4. Chrome 13.0.782
Instructions
Please see the following documents
Video
Change Log
Engineers
 | Charu ChaubalWorks in the Infrastructure Product Marketing group. |
Just wanted to know how to use it to check against the 5.1 HCL. Is it possible , are there any Instructions ?
THX
is it comply for vsphere 5.1??
I keep getting Upgrade Advisor Exception : Exception : Unknown Exception Occured errors when I run my scans. Any suggestions?
I got that same error when I downloaded the HCL for ESXi 5.0u1 instead of ESXi 5.0
Hi,
Great fling – it has been quite useful for an upgrade I am doing. However, I noticed that a QLogic FC HBA in some of our hosts, which I manually checked against the 5.0 HCL (and what definitely not compliant with ESXi 5.0) is listed as compatible in my ESX System Analyzer report. The device driver being use in ESX is: ISP2312-based 2Gb Fibre Channel to PCI-X HBA. I know that this is not on the 5.0 HCL and I know that when installing ESXi 5.0 manually (I tried) the installer also warns that this HBA is not tested or supported in ESXi 5.0. It works, but obviosly not supported. Therefore the ESX System Analyzer report seems incorrect – just slightly worrying if some info is not correct as it could mean other devices listed as compliant may be incorrect.
Cheers,
Sean
My scans continue to fail. On the scan report it fails on “Scan vCenter Virtual Machine Step – Unknown Exception Occurred”. I’m only interested in running hardware scans against the hosts for HCL compatibility. Is there any way to exclude other scan types?
There’s no way to exclude scan types. Can you go to “List Scans” and view the HCL Scan Report? Or is that not even available?
I can get the Scan Report. It lists the following:
Scan Initialization – Completed
Scan vCenter Verification Step – Completed
Scan vCenter Datastore Step – Completed
Scan vCenter Virtual Machine Step – Failed – Unknown Exception Occurred
Feature request –
This tool is great just for the HCL scan. It would be even better if we could scan ESX,b>i 4.x hosts for HCL compatibility with ESXi 5.0.
Sorry, the tags got messed up. I mean “scan ESXi 4.x hosts for HCL compatibility with ESXi 5.0″.
I’m having the problem select the hosts under the cluster. It appears the checkbox is gray out for some reason….
I’m having the same problem as Robert. Any fix yet for the hanging issue?
I got it all set up and running – ran a scan and it just sits at 14% completed.
I can’t even stop the job, therefore I can’t delete it, therefore i can’t start another job either. Not even a reboot of the server itself fixed the issue.
Hi Robert,
I’m from the support team of ESX System Analyzer tool and would like to analyze the issue you faced.
First thing I would like to know is that were there any network connectivity issues for e.g no internet connection after the scan was started?
Also please share the following details:
1) The vCentre details, details on number of ESX hosts configured for that vCentre.
2) I would also like to analyze the logs. The logs can be found under the following location in the ESX System Analyzer Appliance:
/root/var/lib/tomcat5/webapps/ua
At this location there is a file named as catalina.out.
3) Also share an xml file named as jobsdata.xml located at the location:
var/lib/tomcat5/webapps/ua/xmlconfig
You can send the logs on my e-mail address: ShikhaH@InterraIT.com
Thanks
Shikha
How to use this tool?
It’s too bad it requires root ssh access. I’m sure a lot of customers like us do not have this enabled.
Many apologies for the wrong User Guide, Folks. I have updated and the correct file is there now.
Dana Nourie
Hi all,
Yeah they posted an incorrect link to the User Guide, I’ve uploaded the document to my blog so you can find it at http://www.virtualclouds.info/?p=2576
Please update the user guide.
How do we login to the webpage once all other tasks are completed?
I am sure we can figure the other stuff out.
I also need the user guide. This tool is useless without it!
Hi,
the analyzer user guide, points to the installation guide pdf. so, how to dowload the user guide?