Summary
InventorySnapshot allows a user to “snapshot” a given vCenter inventory configuration and then reproduce it. The “inventory” includes the Datacenter folders, datacenters, clusters, resource pools, vApps, hierarchy, roles and permissions, configuration settings, and custom fields. In other words, if you have an inventory with a given set of hosts and VMs organized into a group of clusters, we can faithfully reproduce this environment, including the cluster settings and custom roles you may have defined.
As a simple example, suppose you have an inventory with one datacenter (DC A), one cluster (Cluster A), and two hosts (Host A and Host B). At a high level, our fling emits a PowerCLI script that, when executed, does the following:
- Creates Datacenter “DC A.”
- Creates cluster “Cluster A.”
- Adds host “Host A” to “Cluster A.”
- Adds host “Host B” to “Cluster A.”
Notice that this can be helpful for a variety of reasons. For example, suppose you’ve spent a lot of time creating a development vCenter environment, and now you wish to deploy it in production. Using our fling, you can snapshot your “dev” environment and then run it against the “production” vCenter server, saving you the task of laboriously adding each host, creating the proper clusters and resource pools, etc.
For more details, review the following document:
System Requirements
Prerequisites
- Java 1.6.0_23 or higher
To run InventorySnapshot, you must have Java installed. We require version 1.6.0_23 or higher, and you can use either the JRE or the JDK. If Java is not already installed on your system, please visit http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html and download Java SE 6 Update 23. - PowerCLI 4.1.U1 or higher
To run InventorySnapshot, you must have the VMware PowerCLI installed. In our case, we have tested with version 4.1U1, build 332441. To download this, please see the following URL: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI. Note that to complete this step, you will also need to install Powershell, as discussed in the PowerCLI documentation.
Assumptions
- VMs are already registered on their hosts.
- Entity names (VMs, Folders, etc.) are unique within an inventory.
Caveats
See section VII of the documentation for a complete list of caveats.
- Currently does not archive alarm information.
- May not support certain non-English or special characters in entity names.
Instructions
For a complete step-by-step guide to using this fling, review the documentation and watch the provided videos.
To get started, do the following:
- Snapshot the inventory using the UI.
- In Windows, double-click on inventorySnapshot.bat to bring up the UI.
- In Linux and MacOS, use the inventorySnapshot.sh shell script to bring up the UI.
- Edit the createInventory.ps1 PowerCLI script (generated in the previous step) so that the host passwords are correct. You can do this using the UI, or you can manually edit the createInventory.ps1 file using your favorite text editor. Just search for 'PASSWORD' to see where you need to input the proper passwords. If you use the UI, the file is saved as “createInventory-PasswordModified.ps1.”
- Login to a vCenter server using the PowerCLI, change into the directory that contains the createInventory.ps1 script, and just type
.\createInventory-PasswordModified.ps1. If you edited the script by hand and saved it as createInventory.ps1, then typecreateInventory.ps1instead.
This vCenter fling takes a snapshot of the vCenter inventory and creates a bunch of binary files to describe this inventory and the configuration of the various entities (clusters, networks, etc.). More importantly, it also creates a file called "createInventory.ps1." This is a PowerCLI script.
This PowerCLI script contains commands to re-create the inventory that you've just archived. Feel free to take a look! It is important to note that re-creating most inventories requires adding hosts. As a placeholder for the actual passwords of the hosts being added, our script generates “-password 'PASSWORD'” in the createInventory.ps1 script. Using the UI, we enable you to change the passwords for each host. Of course, you can also open up the file in the editor of your choice and change them yourself. Please note that for now, we store the PowerCLI script as a plaintext file, so your passwords are cleartext. If there is sufficient demand, we can work on changing this.
Video
Inventory Snapshot
Change Log
Updates in Version 1.1
These release notes are intended to supplement and super-cede the documentation in this fling.This release introduces three new features.
1. Template restoration. We have added snapshot and restore of VM templates. In other words, if you have templates in your hierarchy, when you snapshot and then restore the inventory, the templates should be re-registered properly. Prior to this release, we did not archive template information.
2. Command-line snapshot. You can now initiate InventorySnapshot from the command line using cmdLineSnapshot.bat or cmdLineSnapshot.sh. This will snapshot the inventory from the command line, but it will use dummy passwords for the ESX hosts. In order to edit the passwords for the ESX hosts, you will need to use the readFromSnapshot.bat (or readFromSnapshot.sh) UI. When you click on this script, a UI will come up that will ask you to specify the directory where the snapshot has been stored. You type in the name of the directory and click on 'Read from snapshot directory.' The UI will then load the snapshot, allowing you to modify host passwords, etc. You can also use the 'Browse for snapshot directory' to find the snapshot directory using the file browser.
3. Non-unique folder names. In the past, we required all entities (folders, VMs, RPs, etc.) to have unique names. We have now relaxed this restriction for VM and host folders. You can now have the following hierarchy:
Root
|
->Production A Folder
| |
| -->Production Folder
| |
| -->Host A1
|
->Production B Folder
|
-->Production Folder
|
-->Host B1
Note that the folder name "Production Folder" is repeated. This works for hosts and VMs. It should also work with datastores and networks, though those have not been as extensively tested.
Updates in Version 1.0.1
This version fixes a bug that throws ArrayIndexOutofBoundsException when the ClusterConfigSpecEx of the cluster contains ClusterAffinityRule and ClusterAntiAffinityRule data defined.
Updates in Version 1.0.2
- Support for UTF-16 and international character sets. PowerCLI version 4.1u1 runs the generated PowerCLI seamlessly. If you would like to view the PowerCLI file we create (instead of just running it with the PowerCLI interpreter), your text editor must support UTF-16. For example, on MacOS, emacs 22.1.1 (among other editors) supports UTF-16, and on Windows, TeXworks (among other editors) supports UTF-16.
- Bug fix for users without DRS licenses: in version 1.0 and 1.0.1, we created clusters with DRS enabled by default, and then reconfigured the cluster according to its actual settings. However, if a user does not have a DRS license and creates clusters without DRS, the cluster creation would fail with a license error. We now correctly create a cluster without DRS settings first, and then we reconfigure it according to its actual settings.
- Removal of some spurious file reads: this should speed up the PowerCLI generation phase slightly, but will likely have no other visible impact.
Engineers
 | Balaji ParimiWorks in the Ecosystem Engineering group. | |
 | Ravi SoundararajanWorks in the Performance group. | |
 | Mike StunesWorks in the Performance group. |
The tool is very interesting and usefully. But based on 4.0 sdk. Now we have 5.1. very long time between 4.0 and 5.1.
Dont think its poss. To have latest working version based on 5.x sdk. Because its a free ones – theirefore i dont understand why not possible to say official: yes willl be version for 5.0 sdk available soon or not. Dont understand the point to NDA. Not logical
So anyway. Point which is interesting.
- how could a user self changing the code , once recognizing that something dont work? That would be nice ;).
Thx
Max
Hello,
This tool looks very promising. I need to migrate a cluster inventory to another brand new cluster (in the same vCenter/ datacenter). Would doing a search/replace oldcluster/new cluster be enough on the generated scripts after having migrated the VMs ?
Would resource pools be created and VMs be moved into those pools ?
Thanks.
Really good stuff – and very often it’s urgent Case to have such an Snapshot created and re/produced elsewhere.
But it’s really a pitty that such “nice” Tools are not fastly getting Updated to the latest Build.
So the the official Tested version was vCenter Server 4.1 Update 1| 10 Feb 2011
theire where 4 Additional Updates (U2,U3,U3a) > no update to the snapshot Tool
VMware vCenter Server™ 5.0 | 24. August 2011 > no update to the snapshot Tool
2 Additional Updates (U1,U2) > no update to the snapshot Tool
vSphere 5.1 | Releases 10 SEP 2012 > no udpate to the snapshot Tool
2 Additional Updates (0a,0b) > no update to the Snapshot Tool
So between 27.10.2011 and 20.12.2012 is a very long time.
is the Project freezed? don’t understand why such Tools where posted and then not be kept maintainend ;). hehe
Best regards
Was anybody testing the the Inventory on 5.1?
Max
I just tested :
source: vCenter 5.0 Update 1
target: vCenter 5.1 Update 0
Test without any Hosts – works fine :)
greetz Sven
Thank you very much for ths wounderful product and the details.
I have vCneter5 with ESXi 5.0. While i am trying to run Inventory Snapshot .bat file in a windows2008 server, it is not opening. Cold you please help me to solve this issue. I have already installed Java and PowerCLI in this system.
Thanks,
Anish Panthalani
After reinstalling my JRE1.7, it is working perfectly :) Thanks,
Anish Panthalani
Great! Thanks!
Ravi is there a new version , because you mentioned some bugs. Thanks
This looks like an interesting tool. However, it seems to mention only cluster information (clusters, cluster folders, resource pools…..). Does this tool export/import VM folders; VM locations; permissions assigned to folders/VM?
thanks!
Hi Michael,
I’m not sure what you mean regarding VM locations, but we _do_ export/import VM folders. It does capture permissions, but honestly, there seem to have some bugs which I’m trying to work out.
Great tool, thank you! It helped me a lot migrating our 250+ VMs datacenter from a 5.0 vCenter appliance to a 5.1 vCenter MS SQL Setup.
Issues we observed so far:
- Though we removed umlauts, we had to learn that slashes aren’t supported in VM names also. We found
the according VMs in a folder called “Identified virtual machines” (“Erkannte virtuelle Maschinen”).
- We also had problems migrating users/groups and roles containing dashes
- Logfile output would be great
The problems weren’t so much severe, we corrected them manually after import. A log file, though, would be great to identify failures.
Best wishes
Peter
Thanks! And thank you for your helpful comments!
I lost all the OVF Properties on the VMs using them (vApp Options enabled in the VM settings). Do you confirm this tools does not manage these parameters ?
Sorry for the late reply…
I need to double check, but I don’t believe we manage those parameters.
What about the VM annotations attributes?
Does this tool migrate them too?
Regards
Ben
I need to double check, but I know we get custom fields for VMs. Is that what you mean?
This is a great tool. Everything works fine excluding DVS.
Our plan is to upgrade from vSphere 4.1 U2 to vSphere 5.0 with an empty database. The export and import is working fine but i have problems with DVS. The script creates all DVS Information but there is no matching between the VM DVS Port Groups and the DVS under Network anymore.
The VM network configuration field shows “Invalid backing” and the Network label field is empty.
Are there some workarounds or fixes for this behavior?
Thanks in advance
this should be part vCenter native functionality… great job!
A great tool, thanks for making available.
Just letting you know in addition to EVC on a cluster, it had problems with DRS groups.
This seems like a great script and handy.
Might consider adding Caveats for impacts to other products such as VMware View Pool data for linked clones.
FYI
If Restoring View pool data to a new instance of VC the desktops will no longer be manageable without correcting the VC IDs in Various Dependent Databases or ADAM.
It seems that the configuration of the EVC Mode in a cluster is not restored. Am I wrong ?
I took a snapshot on a vCenter 4.0U2 and then ran the powershell script on a vCenter 5.0 Update 1.
I had an error with DVS. Only one PG have been rebuild …
Well, I’ve just migrate a vcenter server (source in 4.1) to a new version 5. I used the tool ( with some corrections … like some notes which included (“”).
We import successfully dvswitch …. Maybe a good thing is to have the capabilities to create DVS into each “cluster rebuild script”. (for example we know that a dvs is used of course in a specific datacenter but dedicated for a specific cluster …). So if we want to only rebuild this specific cluster … we need the DVS too.
Thanks for your great jobs , apologyze me for my “french english”.
is still not visible for me. either on Windows 7 / 2k8r2 nor on win 2k3. I don’t have a XP machine to run it at the moment. Is there any plan to fix it? Otherwise the tool is not working under win7?
We plan to use this tool to migrate entire vSphere 5 environment to a new vCenter server in next 3 months. Can we expect a new version with vCenter 5 support by this time? Otherwise we have to correct and re-write the final scripts, which is quite complicated in our environment (45000 lines of code) and we do not want to waste our time, if the new version is released soon :)
Thanks
I’m going to look at this and see what I can do. No promises at this time, though. You are planning to migrate at the end of 3 months, or over the course of 3 months?
ravi
I would really like to see this for vSphere 5 — finished migrating etc. but good to save/backup vCenter settings etc.
Thank you, Tom
Hi, thank you for the reply. We would like to migrate as soon as possible (corrupted database causes occasional vCenter crashes), but we can wait about 3 months, if there is a chance that a version with better vCenter 5 support will be released.
Thanks,
ethano
Thank you guys so much, seems like it should be a built in tool for vcenter. I was playing with the vcenter appliance and ran into some limitations so I wanted to move over to a fully functional environment and this tool was perfect.
Thanks!
Steve
Thanks!
First, thanks for a great tool, this really is a life saver..
When using multiple cluster in the same datacenter with the same names on the resource pools there will be some problem when the script is trying to move the vm:s to the pools.
This is what i did to make it work.
this is the line made by the tool
$parent = Get-ResourcePool -name “CR2 – Silver” -Location (Get-Datacenter -name “data-1″)
this is the one i edited and got to work.
$parent = Get-ResourcePool -name “CR2 – Silver” -Location (Get-Cluster -name “cluster-1″)
As you can se the location was the problem for me..
//Toni
Yes, I understand. I assume uniqueness of RPs within a datacenter, but I should consider uniqueness within a cluster instead, which is what you’ve indicated. Thanks!
Ravi
Have you recoded to get dvswitch migrations working yet?
Thanks!
Jay, sorry for the late reply! I haven’t fixed it yet, but I think I have a pretty good idea why it is happening. I hope I can get to work on this soon…
ravi
This tool worked great except creating DVS and associating to correct hosts. I tried running the script a second time as Bas recommended but still end up with the following error in vcenter “The host proxy switch associated to dvSwitch no longer exists in vCenter”
Hi Nick,
yes, I think this is a bug, and I need to examine the code further to see if I can resolve it.
Thanks!
Ravi
By the way, were you upgrading from VC4.0 to VC5.0? Just making sure–this is a known issue with using the script for 5.0, and one that I need to look at.
It runs well except it fails while creating the DVS portgroups.
This is caused by the script order. The script tries to create the portgroups first and the DVS afterwards.
I found a workaround by running the script twice.
Thanks for the feedback! I will take a look.
Ravi
Hi,
Used vcenter 4.1 with Esxi 4.1. Vswitch1 with vmkernel, uplinks & vm port group were created
I took inventory snapshot & deleted vswitch1
After modifying password, deleted datacenter on vc & replayed the power shell file
It created dc, host, resource pool but no vswitch elements.
Does this tool have ability to create vNetwork elements?
Also I didnt see any powershell commands for vNetwork elements
Appreciate your answer
Hi!
For vSwitch elements (not DVS, but vSwitch), we assume that the host already has the appropriate vSwitch configuration. If you deleted the vSwitch, then that would make a change on the host, and when you try to restore the host, the vSwitch settings would no longer be there.
Does this explanation make sense?
Hi Ravi,
Thanks for the explanation. You made it clear that this tool is not meant for replaying host only configuration but more to recreate the vCenter configuration. Will try this using this tool and host profiles as a work around. Thanks once again.
One of my vCenters has Cisco Nexus 1kV on board. Environment resides on vSphere 4.1.
Will it work if i snapshot inventory and put to new vSphere 5? What about Nexus switch? If i upgrade VSM and VEMs after i Import snapshot, will it work that way?
Thanx
Hi there!
Right now, we don’t support Cisco Nexus 1kV. I need to look into adding support for this.
Ravi
Hi Guys,
This is a great tool! I have been using it to reset my environment in multiple scenarios. It’s a great addition to my toolbox, :)
-randy
this will save us a lot of time with our DR site testing, during which we register/ un-register VMs and they end up in different folders. Awesome work!
Thank you.
No problem! Thanks for your feedback!
We are trying to determine how best to migrate to vSphere 5, as part of the migration we need to change the IP address of the vCentre server so we are considering a fresh install. If we use this tool to transfer the inventory, what happens to the running workload in the cluster ? Can we associate all the hosts with the new vCenter without disturbing the running VMs ?
Glen, the running VMs should not be disturbed. You’ll be removing and re-adding hosts to the vCenter, but the VMs will still be running.
Thanks for the excellent tool! I’ve never had so much fun destroying my lab and watching it come back instantly. Now on to the question:
Section D2 of the “InventorySnapshot-v5.pdf” states:
“If you wish to move a cluster to a different vCenter server, you must first create its parent datacenter in the new vCenter server. Sorry, it’s a limitation of our code for now.”
Is this still true for the current fling version “inventorysnapshot1.0.2″? I cannot reproduce that issue on vCenter 4.x or the new VCSA5. All of my restores using this fling automagically create the required datacenter in my lab testing. Preparing to roll this out in prod this week so trying to cover all bases.
It’s no longer true: I fixed it, but I forgot to update the documentation.
Thanks!
-Ravi
Excellent! Thanks!
I have just run this against my 2 host Essentials Plus setup and I now have everything moved over to a new 5.0 vcentre appliance. Being a small shop without a test network, I was sweating this one a bit but everything seems to have gone very smoothly. The script did generate some yellow errors (mainly concerned with out of date syntax for enumerating peripherals and one red error that complained the administrators group no longer existed – but we’re running, now with the new key installed, and all is good.
Thanks!
Thank you for the kind words!
Would you consider this a valid tool for carrying out a migration of inventory from vSphere 4.1 to 5?
It depends on if you are using any VC4.1-specific stuff. The current version only records attributes that were available in VC4.0. The tool will work in migrating from VC4.1 to VC5.0, but the only attributes to be migrated will be VC4.0 attributes.
We are hoping to release a VC4.1 version soon…
Hi guys,
I have a handful of questions I was wondering if you could answer for me. I read through all the answered comments and documentation and I don’t think they’ve been answered so far, but apologies if they have. Here goes:
1. It says it recreates the custom fields. Does it also recreate the contents of the fields for each object, not just the fields themselves?
2. Has it been updated for vCenter 4.1 attributes yet (e.g. VM-Host affinity rules)?
3. If all the hosts are configured for AD authentication, can I use AD credentials on the Host Information tab? If so, what is the correct syntax for the username?
4. If I am just exporting a Cluster in the Inventory Tree tab, does it re-create the datastore object above it in the destination. More importantly, does it recreate the Folder hierarchy in the “VM and Templates” view in the new vCenter (they are datastore not cluster based)?
5. Here’s the long one :) I’d like to understand the vDS migration.
Ordinarily, if I wanted to migrate a vDS connected host from one vCenter to another, I would have to create a vSS with matching Port Groups on each host, migrate all VMs to the vSS Port Groups, move the host to the new vCenter and then migrate the VMs to new Port Groups on the new vDS (i.e. http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/migrating-distributed-vswitch-to-new-vcenter/).
Does this script just recreate the vDS, or will it safely reconnect all the VMs to the same Port Groups on the new vCenter vDS? Will the VMs lose network connectivity at any point?
Many thanks for the fantastic tool for the community. I hope you guys are provided time to continue its development for new vCenter versions.
Forbes.
Hi Forbes,
1. Yes, it should recreate the data for the custom fields as well.
2. It hasn’t yet been updated to for vCenter 4.1 attributes, but we hope to do that soon.
3. I need to double check this. Since this is a Fling, I must admit that we didn’t test it with all possible scenarios.
4. Yes, it recreates the folders. There are some restrictions about folder names but we are hoping to fix those restrictions soon.
5. Balaji wrote that part of the code…I’ll need to ask him about it. :-)
First – Thank you for creating this Tool! I am looking forward to testing it out but I also have a concern regarding vDS migration:
Have you guys gotten a chance to determine answers to the Forbes questions?
Does this script just recreate the vDS, or will it safely reconnect all the VMs to the same Port Groups on the new vCenter vDS?
Will the VMs lose network connectivity at any point?
This information would be most helpful.
We are planning to migrate from vCenter 4.0 (32bit) to vCenter 4.1 (64bit) and have a number of dvSwitches. If we use this Tool, what is the impact to dvSwitches, ESX Hosts and VMs during and after the migration?
I have performed the above vCenter Migration before using the VMware Migration Tool (but with Std switches only) and we did not have any down time to Hosts or VMs. Our goal is to perform the same migration (w\ dvSwitches), WITHOUT any down time.
Can this Tool accomplish the migration with without any downtime?
Thank you in advance for help!
Sorry for the delay…I’ll try to answer these shortly…
-ravi
While I haven’t been able to fully test a rebuild from the PowerCLI script yet I was wondering if it’s included, or possible, for the re-added inventory item to retain it’s original ID.
Currently if you remove a resource pool and re-add it you’ll get a new ID. This causes some serious problems with vCD if you lose a resource pool on accident or when disabling DRS. I’m looking at this utility to at least get visibility in the complicated hierarchy for a recovery standpoint. I think that vCD environment is the perfect need for this utility. Great work guys!
After I run the inventory snapshot I am unable to access the Commit Changes button so that I can isolate a specific section of the Inventory Tree. Not sure what the issue with the UI is on this. Something I’m doing that prevents me from resizing?
I posted this below, but it might have been lost in the shuffle…
Josh,
I have to admit that I tried this on various flavors of Mac, Linux, and Windows, but I didn’t try it on Windows 7. Let me set up a VM, give it a whirl, and see it I can reproduce this problem. Sorry about that! In the meanwhile, if by some chance you’ve got a Linux VM or a Mac laptop, perhaps it will work there for you :-)
Also, regarding the ability to retain the same IDs…unfortunately, entity IDs are not preserved when you remove and then add an entity, or when you move an entity between vCenters.
Josh, I just tried this in Windows 7 in my VM and it worked fine on a pretty big environment. Can you tell me a little more about your monitor size and resolution so I can try it with those settings and see what happens?
thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.
ravi
I believe I nailed down the issue that I was having before with not being able to see the Commit Changes button on the Inventory Tree tab.
Screen Resolution
I just received a new monitor with much higher resolution and since then I’ve been able to view the button. If i run it on my laptop screen (1200×800) without the higher resolution I’m not able to scroll down to see the button.
Unable to see important buttons and information in the view provided. the documentation states that I need click on the “commit changes” button…but it’s not visible. Is there something I’m missing? This is really messing me up because I’m hoping to use tool for more targeted replications.
Hi Josh,
Would you mind uploading a screenshot to the vmware support ftp site so I can take a look? What platform are you running on?
Sorry for the inconvenience!
thanks!
Ravi
sure thing…sorry i double posted…didn’t realize my post was at top and thought i had dreamed it…will upload shortly.
thanks
I’m running
Windows Server 2008 64bit
PowerCLI 4.1u1 Build 332441
Java 6.0.290
Laptop is running W7 64bit
PowerCLI 5
Java 6.0.290
Everything grabs the information fine as best I can tell, but UI doesn’t resize. I have a pretty large environment I’m grabbing as well.
I’ve uploaded the image Inventory Snapshot Issue – Redacted.png It has been redacted to remove actual inventory data and is the view I receive when in full screen view as well.
Thanks for the assist!
Josh,
I have to admit that I tried this on various flavors of Mac, Linux, and Windows, but I didn’t try it on Windows 7. Let me set up a VM, give it a whirl, and see it I can reproduce this problem. Sorry about that! In the meanwhile, if by some chance you’ve got a Linux VM or a Mac laptop, perhaps it will work there for you :-)
Also, regarding the ability to retain the same IDs…unfortunately, entity IDs are not preserved when you remove and then add an entity, or when you move an entity between vCenters.
Hi – this is a great tool and it’s fast!
I’ve been using the Perl SDK to try and capture a snapshot of the entire inventory like this and it takes forever – or it dies in ‘find_entity_views’ because the data is too big coming out of VC. I’m dying to know how this works and why it’s so fast. Any hints you can provide? :-)
Thanks!
Curt
Curt, if you were internal to VMware, I could give you more details. A lot of it has to do with knowing the minimal set of relationships to capture. It is tempting to create a recursive method to try to do a traversal of the entire hierarchy, but that is actually not necessary. Also, I’m using Java to grab the data, and for inventory operations, Java is more efficient than perl. As for find_entity_views, because it is doing a bit of client-side filtering, you end up grabbing a whole lot more data from the server than you need.
If you upload your perl code, I might be able to take a look and offer some tips, in case you are interested.
-ravi
Hi,
I am trying to use this method to upgrade from VC 4.1 to 5.
It runs well except it fails while creating the virtial distributed switch.
I have deleted read only users and other roles and get this
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
At C:\inventorysnapshot1.0.2\cinventorysnapshot1.0.2\createInventory-PasswordMo
dified.ps1:186 char:24
+ $dvsView.AddDVPortgroup <<<< ($spec)
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (AddDVPortgroup:String) [], Ru
ntimeException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
At C:\inventorysnapshot1.0.2\cinventorysnapshot1.0.2\createInventory-PasswordMo
dified.ps1:526 char:24
+ $dvsView.AddDVPortgroup <<<< ($spec)
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (AddDVPortgroup:String) [], Ru
ntimeException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
Exception calling "CreateDVS" with "1" argument(s): "Cannot complete a vSphere
Distributed Switch operation for one or more host members."
At C:\inventorysnapshot1.0.2\cinventorysnapshot1.0.2\createInventory-PasswordMo
dified.ps1:714 char:22
+ $folderView.CreateDVS <<<< ($dvsCreateSpec)
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodException
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
At C:\inventorysnapshot1.0.2\cinventorysnapshot1.0.2\createInventory-PasswordMo
dified.ps1:826 char:24
+ $dvsView.AddDVPortgroup <<<< ($spec)
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (AddDVPortgroup:String) [], Ru
ntimeException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
Exception calling "CreateDVS" with "1" argument(s): "Cannot complete a vSphere
Distributed Switch operation for one or more host members."
At C:\inventorysnapshot1.0.2\cinventorysnapshot1.0.2\createInventory-PasswordMo
dified.ps1:1014 char:22
+ $folderView.CreateDVS <<<< ($dvsCreateSpec)
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodException
Exception calling "SetEntityPermissions" with "2" argument(s): "The requested c
hange cannot be completed because it could leave the system without full admini
strative privileges for a user or group."
At C:\inventorysnapshot1.0.2\cinventorysnapshot1.0.2\createInventory-PasswordMo
dified.ps1:1931 char:28
+ $_this.SetEntityPermissions <<<< ($entityMoRef,$permission)
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodException
Hi Tejas:
I will look into this.
Thanks
-Balaji
I’m getting this error on running the script to restore a specific datacenter
I’m snapshotting vcenter 4.1 build 345043 to a brand new instance of the same version.
Any help would be appreciated…Thank You
Processing halted; script was too complicated
At C:\DATA\createInventory-Datacenter-XXXXXXX.ps1:10759 char:42
+ $newRoleId = (get-virole | where-object {$ <<<< _.Name -match "^Admin$"} | se
lect-object Id)
Hi Mark,
I have seen this error when the script file is very large. The way I have gotten around it is to create .ps1 files for each cluster individually (using the UI–if you just click on the Datacenter and hit ‘commit changes’ on the bottom of the screen, and then go to the final page of the UI, it will create .ps1 files for each cluster). Then, you can restore them individually. Another option is to break up the script file into smaller chunks and run them one at a time so that PowerCLI does not have to parse the whole thing at once.
Are either of these possible options for you? I know this is a limitation and we are trying to think of ways to fix this.
Ravi
Also, Mark–if you are interested in tarring up the directory with the snapshots, I can try to see if I get the same error on my end. You can give me the version of the .ps1 script that has placeholder passwords instead of the actual passwords.
Thanks for the reply, yes i can send it to you, what is your email and is winzip ok.
The script that I’m trying is 2.5mb, when I look at it the first part of the script pertains to the datacenter that I’m am trying to restore, then there is is a bunch of entries not pertaining to the specific datacenter but is part of the full inventory.
Hi Mark,
2 quick notes:
1. While the script itself is only 2.5MB, on Windows the whole PowerCLI interpreter may end up taking over 1.2GB or so. Depending on the machine where you are running PowerCLI, this might be quite a bit of memory and may cause the error.
2. You mentioned that there is stuff in the file that is not related to restoring the datacenter. In perusing your file, it looks like all of that stuff is related to roles and permissions restoration, which I do across the entire infrastructure rather than for a specific datacenter. Would you like to try a version of the .ps1 that does NOT have the roles and permissions stuff and see if that works? If so, I can try to make a .ps1 for you that only has stuff related to your DC (Phoenix) and nothing else.
What do you think?
Sorry for the hassles!
I was able to get it to work without the permissions section, but I’m trying to restore an instance that has 13 datacenters, 90 hosts, 2000 plus virtual machines, and there are alot of user permissions set.
Also I’m running PowerCLI on a vm and I was monitoring the performance and it didnt look like it was using much resources
Hi Mark,
Well, I’m sorry that there seems to be an issue with the permissions code. I did test it pretty thoroughly so I guess I’ll have to investigate this further later on.
Anyway, I was a little bit confused by your request. Did you want a way to remove all of the permissions code from the .ps1 script? We could actually split your .ps1 into two scripts: one with all the inventory code, and the other with all of the permissions code. Is that what you want?
One more thing, I’m missing one vm in the ps1 script, it shows in the inventory tree, but when I do a search in the script the vm is not found.
If the VM is in the “Discovered vms” folder, then it doesn’t have to appear in the .ps1 script, since it does not have to be moved anyway.
As for uploading, do you know how to upload to the VMware support web site?
I have uploaded the file to dir MARK, hope it went through
Got it. Which was the problematic datacenter?
Phoenix
Mark, I posted this above, but I put it under the wrong thread, so I’ll just repeat it here.
====
Hi Mark,
2 quick notes:
1. While the script itself is only 2.5MB, on Windows the whole PowerCLI interpreter may end up taking over 1.2GB or so. Depending on the machine where you are running PowerCLI, this might be quite a bit of memory and may cause the error.
2. You mentioned that there is stuff in the file that is not related to restoring the datacenter. In perusing your file, it looks like all of that stuff is related to roles and permissions restoration, which I do across the entire infrastructure rather than for a specific datacenter. Would you like to try a version of the .ps1 that does NOT have the roles and permissions stuff and see if that works? If so, I can try to make a .ps1 for you that only has stuff related to your DC (Phoenix) and nothing else.
What do you think?
Sorry for the hassles!
I posted above also one more thing, would it work if I somehow pulled out the permissions sections pertaining to the datacenter that im restoring and then run the script?
Thanks for all your help
If you want a script that doesn’t have the permissions checking code, it’s actually pretty simple. All of the permissions checking code is done at the end of the .ps1 file, so you just need to delete everything between
# ### START UPDATE ROLE_PERM: ALL
and
# ### END UPDATE ROLE_PERM: ALL
Does that make sense?
(Basically the script is:
1. fix inventory
2. fix roles/permissions
3. fix custom fields
We are deleting #2).
I got the inventory to work, pulling that code out as a separate script. Then I went in and pulled out the permissions code for the particular datacenter and that also ran fine. So like you said earlier I’ll just have to run smaller scripts and I should be good. Thanks for all your help
Does the current InventorySnapshot script support vCenter 5.0? I have vCenter 4.1 and would like to move to a vCenter 5.0 virtual appliance. If it does support it then I have another question. If I capture the vCenter 4.1 inventory, bring up a vCenter 5 appliance, add my current 4.1 licenses (the same that is installed on vCenter 4.1), then run the script against the vCenter 5 appliance will it move the hosts from the 4.1 server or will the hosts be on both the 4.1 and 5.0 server?
Hi Eugene,
It supports VC5.0 in the sense that if you snapshot a VC4.1 and then restore to VC5.0, that will work. You should be aware, though, that at the moment we only capture VC4.0-specific state, so if you are using stuff specific to VC4.1, then those attributes will not be captured. We are working on updating all of these things to support later vCenter versions.
As for the 2nd question, the hosts will be moved from VC4.1 to 5.0–they will not reside on both.
Ravi
It would be useful if the data gathered in the snapshot could then be viewed with a vSphere client, without actually having the servers.
Use case: have customer run tool, send output file, then view the data in the vSphere client at different site. This could be used in addition to partner HealthChecks to view the hierarchy in a GUI.
-Matt
Yep. I’m probably going to provide something similar as part of the ‘command-line’ version.
Basically, you’d be able to take a snapshot using the command line, and then you’d open the snapshotted files using the client (without requiring access to the servers).
Ravi
Matthew,
In version 1.1, I added a feature where you can take a snapshot from the command line and then read the snapshot later. The relevant .bat files are “cmdLineInventorySnapshot.bat” to take the snapshot, and then “readFromSnapshot.bat” to start up the UI and read the snapshotted files. I hope this helps.
Wir möchten das Tool jede Nacht automatisch laufen lassen. Warum funktioniert das scripten nicht, obwohl es als Beispiel angegeben ist?
I took German in high school, so forgive me if I am misinterpreting your request, but I believe you are asking why the command-line version does not work. In the original release, we decided to deprecate the command-line version, and we are asking you to use the UI instead (using inventorysnapshot.bat). However, in the near future, we expect to release a command-line version, so if you wait a little bit longer, we can help.
Can it backup and restore alarm definitions in vcentre? I usually setup alerting for all of the alarm definitions in vcentre but we have multiple virtual centres (one for each environment qa, dev, prod, etc), and its a pain whenever we build a new one to have to manually setup all the definitions all over again.
Not yet. We are working on that feature.
In the meanwhile, perhaps you might consider looking at this post and seeing if it would help…
http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/2010/12/managing-vsphere-alarms-with-powercli.html
I have to blow away one host and rebuild it…can this app restore just that ONE host’s configuration etc. or must I redo the host by hand???
Thank you, Tom
Tom, if you mean that you have to essentially reinstall ESX on a single host, then unfortunately, this tool will not help. Sorry. Or am I misinterpreting your question?
Quick question, does this tool supports vCenter 2.5?
Hmm.
We are using APIs that are backward-compatible with vCenter 2.5, so I think the snapshot phase would work, but I am not sure if PowerCLI works with vCenter 2.5, so I think that might cause an issue when trying to restore the inventory.
Have you used PowerCLI with vCenter 2.5?
Ravi
In fact, I believe I did try managing vCenter 2.5 from PowerCLi before though some of the fields does not enumerate properly but yeah, I could give this a shot. Also, to what details doest this inventory snapshot generates? For instance, are all the cluster configurations and rules being converted into PowerCLI codes as well?
Regards,
Cyril
Yes, all cluster configuration is included in the generated PowerCLI code. It also generates PowerCLI code for custom fields.
Guys, your tool is amazing. I could fix my vCenter performance stats issue by resetting SQL database and restoring all inventory using your product.
However, I had issues with two test hosts that were configured to use dvSwitch. The error in vCenter was “The host proxy switch associated to dvSwitch no longer exists in vCenter”
anothing thing I noticed – all templates were not registered back to vCenter. Had to add them manually.
Thanks for the comments!
We’ll need to examine the templates issue: we’ve heard that from a few other customers.
As for the dvswitch error, do you happen to have the output from the PowerCLI script? We’ll still take a look anyway, but just thought I’d ask.
thanks!
Can this tool be used to bring 4 different vCenter servers into a new vCenter v4.1 server? I am looking at bringing together 4 separate vCenter to make it easier for me to manage and for better licensing.
Hi Sean,
Just to double check that I understand your question. If you want, you can independently snapshot each vCenter, and then run each of the resulting PowerCLI scripts against the new vCenter 4.1 server. Then you’ll have a single vCenter4.1 server that is managing all of your hosts. I think that is what you want, right?
Yes, exactly.
Thank you very much! Time to play!
Hi,
Will this be updated for vSphere V5? I see lots of deprecated /changed things…
thanks,
mike
We do intend to release a version for vSphere v5, though the timetable for release hasn’t been determined yet.
Thanks,
Ravi
Hi,
Looking very useful app!
I didn’t fully understand what i can backup / copy with this application.
There is a list of all the object?
something like:
Folders
Cluster
Resource pool.
etc…
Thanks!
Roey
Hi Roey,
Basically, it can archive your entire inventory structure (datacenters, clusters, folders, resource pools, hosts, and VMs), the configuration settings of your clusters and resource pools, roles/permissions, and custom fields.
There is more to it than that–if you look at the documentation and watch the videos, hopefully it will give you a good feel for what it does. :-)
thanks!
Ravi
We tested the fling and it worked for the most part, creating the datacenters, clusters, moving the specified hosts etc.
But we noticed that the user/group permissions were not recreated and only some of the roles were populated correctly.
Are these settins a known limitation or a potential bug with the fling.?
Here’s the error when the fling is trying to create a new role:
New-VIRole : 6/23/2011 3:09:41 PM New-VIRole Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
At C:\vmware\inventorysnapshot\snapshot.03\createInventory-PasswordModified.ps1:13534 char:11
+ new-virole <<<< -name "CTR Global VMware Admin" -Privilege $privList
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [New-VIRole], VimException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Core_BaseCmdlet_UnknownError,VMware.VimAutomation.ViCore.Cmdlets.Commands.PermissionManagement.New VIRole
We're also missing some users in other roles, all the users in the vCenter Permissions and missing Alarm definitions.
Thanks for any help…
Eric
Hi Eric,
this might be a possible bug in the fling. Just to double-check: for the users/groups, are those users and groups present on both the source vCenter and destination vCenter? The fling won’t create the users: just the roles and permissions. The error you’ve shown above often happens when a user or group doesn’t exist on the destination vCenter.
If the users/groups are present on both, I’ll have to look more carefully at this…
Thanks!!
We figured out the problem.
The original server had CapacityIQ installed at one time.
The script was failing out when trying to adding a user (in a long list) that had a parameter associated with CapacityIQ. We deleted the user and fixed that error.
We are still experiencing errors, but i beleive they are related to the fact that we are tryng to test the script (and not actually move any hosts or VM’s) before implementing it. If we run into another bug i’ll post again.
Hi,
i try to move vCenter to a new host.
But i get an Error:
Add-VMHost : 22.06.2011 16:07:30 Add-VMHost The operation for the ent
ity ClusterComputeResource-domain-c53 failed with the following message: “Die L
izenz zum Ausführen des Vorgangs ist nicht verfügbar.”
Bei E:\inventorysnapshot1.0.1\inventorysnapshot\snapshot\createInventory-Passwo
rdModified.ps1:19 Zeichen:11
+ Add-VMHost <<<< 192.168.1.XXX -Location $cluster -user root -password 'XXXX' -Force
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (Smile [Add-VMHost], NotEnoughLicense
s
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Client20_TaskServiceImpl_CheckServerSideTaskUpda
tes_OperationFailed,VMware.VimAutomation.ViCore.Cmdlets.Commands.AddVMHost
How can i fix this Error?
Thanks…
vCenter has the license information (a license key) that determines how many hosts (and features) can be managed by that vCenter.
E.g. If a vCenter has a license key with 100 licenses, and if adding a host consumes 5 licenses, then you can add 20 hosts. To add more hosts, you need to add more licenses to the vCenter. The number of licenses consumed by a host depends on the number of CPUs, features etc.
The error message here suggests that there are not enough licenses to add that host.
But why?
I had enough licenses to create on the first server VCENTER the data center and hosts.
Why did I suddenly do not have enough licenses when I use this script? The license is stil the same.
Have i enter anything special before run the script?
Are you using the same license key for the second vCenter? This error is coming from the vCenter. I will double check what causes this error.
I’ve found the reason for the error message.
In the Script createInventory i’ve found “-DRSEnabled -DRSMode FullyAutomated” but our license don’t have DRS.
Thanks for your help.
Ah, I see. Sorry about that! That’s my fault. We’ll try to fix this soon.
Thanks!!
Ravi
Hi Zipster,
Until we are able to provide a more permanent fix, I think a temporary workaround (in case you haven’t already tried it) is to remove the “-DRSEnabled -DRSMode FullyAutomated” from the New-Cluster command. We actually set the cluster configuration settings later on in the script, so we do not need to create the cluster with DRS enabled to begin with.
I hope this helps.
Ravi
This fling looks pretty good. I already have a PowerCLI script that does exactly this, but if this fling can be expanded out to copy alarms etc that would be awesome.
And if it copied all of the data including stats that would be even better. :)
Great work guys! We’d love to use this to start with a fresh database.
We are have some troubles however. The java script seems to stop at a certain point (after reading DRS rules) with the following error: java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 2
- After this the host information tab does not display all the hosts.
- It looks like the Inventory Tree Tab does display all the hosts.
- The generated powercli code does not create a full backup of our environment.
We did our best to remove all special characters in de VM notes fields, resource pools and vm folders. There are no duplicate names used throughout vCenter.
Are there any known limitations to the number of hosts/vm’s?
Any help/tips/advice would be great!
Thanks,
Dutch
Hi Dutch,
first of all, sorry you are seeing issues!
Which version of vCenter are you using? 4.0? 4.1? Just want to make sure. How large is the environment. I’ve tested the archiving on some reasonably sized setups (up to 1000 VMs). However, to be fair, we haven’t done performance tuning on it, so if you have a truly huge environment, performance may not be that great–we are working on this.
May I see a screenshot of your inventory and a screenshot of the host inventory tree from InventorySnapshot?
thanks!
Ravi
Dutch,
would you mind trying the latest version (1.0.1) to see if it fixes your issues?
thanks!
Ravi
Hi Ravi and Balaji,
The updated script works perfect. Thanks!
Maybe an idea to recreate the EVC settings as well?
Thanks
Really good.
Hi,
I just used it as an “alternative backup”. I didn’t use it to recreate or reproduce my enviornmet..
as an backup, I think it’s ok..simple and effective.
I just missed some feedback information after click on the “create script button” at the last window.. so I’m hopping that the file it’s created or modified fine..
Rather, I got the feedback information at the password window, when I reset password and clicked on “submit button..” (it gives me the message that the file “createinventory-passowrdmodified.ps1″ will be created) thats fine..
I think the last window, should gives the feedbak message saying that the file “createinventory-passowerdmodified.ps1″ file was generatede or modified fine. that’s would improve the trust about the conclusion process.
Hi Edson,
Yes, I must apologize for that. I made a UI change before release and I should have documented it properly[
Here is the deal:
When you hit “Commit changes” on the “Host Information” pane, InventorySnapshot creates a file called “createInventory-passwordModified.ps1″ and brings up a dialog box. If you do NOT click on anything within the “Inventory Tree” pane, then there are no new files to re-created on the final “Generate New PowerCLI Code” pane, so when you click on “Generate PowerCLI Code,” nothing happens. However, I should have put up a dialog box to indicate that no new files needed to be created. I used to do that before, but I got rid of it before release.
This is good feedback to help us improve our UI.
Great tool :o)
We have been looking for something similar for quit some time. We have some serious problem with our vCenter and therefore this tool comes with perfect timing. I have tried to take a snapshot of our environment but I seems to only get half !!
We have 2 datacenters and I only get the Ps1 files for one of them and the user I’m using is also administrator in the missing datacenter. I get the files as expected but they are empty.Do you have any ideas of where I’m failing ????
Looking forward to ee you reply – thanks in advance.
Hi Kim,
Do either of the files named “createInventory-PasswordModified.ps1″ or “createInventory.ps1″ contain the entire inventory?
In other words, are you only seeing problems when you try to select specific datacenters to restore?
Also, do you have any special characters (or UTF-16-specific) characters in any of your DC names?
Another option is to go to the “Inventory Tree” pane of the UI and just click the root (group-d1) and see what that provides.
If these don’t work, perhaps if you send us a screenshot of the environment we can try to help you out.
thanks!
Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Both “createInventory-PasswordModified.ps1″ and “createInventory.ps1″ only contains 1 datacenter the same one (ESX01).
It doesn’t matter if I just select the missing datacenter under “Inventory Tree” – group-d1 or select everything – output in the files mentioned above is the same, one DC is missing. My Dc’s has the following names: ESX01 and Coop_DK_ALB_NFS. Perhaps the problem is related to the _ in the name of the missing DC ???
Please let me know if you still need some screenshots which I gladly would provide you with :o)
Rgds,
Kim.
HI Kim,
it might help to have a screenshot of your inventory plus a screenshot of the InventorySnapshot windows (without your passwords, of course :-). Not sure if you’d be comfortable sharing these on this forum. If not, we should try to figure out how to get access to the screenshots.
“_” should be an acceptable character, so I hope that isn’t the problem :-)
Ravi
Hi Ravi
I have taken a screenshot of my inventorySnapshot and my inventory from vCenter. I have them in a doc file – can I sent it to you ??? Or do you prefer if I post them here ???
Rgds,
Kim
Hi Kim,
Hmm…I am not sure how to do this. Do you know how to use the inbound ftp site @ VMware? If so, maybe you can use that and let me know where you put the data. If that doesn’t work and you are ok posting screenshots, feel free.
Hi Ravi
I have upload screendumps.doc to your ftp site under Inventorysnapshot. Hopefully this will clarify things :o)
Looking forward to hear about your findings.
Hi Kim,
Would you mind taking an InventorySnapshot but NOT changing the passwords, and then zipping up the directory and sending it to me. The way to do this is to just invoke the InventorySnapshot screen, hit “Commit changes” on the “Host Information” tab without changing any passwords, and then quitting the application. I’d like to see the generated PowerCLI.
Also, do you have read permissions on the datacenter that is NOT appearing? We require you to have Administrator permissions in order to archive all Datacenters.
thanks!
Ravi
Hi Ravi
I have upload 2 PowerCli files (createInventory.ps1 and createInventory-PasswordModified.ps1) to your ftpsite in Inventorysnapshot_Coop. As fare as I can see in the files there is no references to our second DC and the user I’m using is administrator in that DC as well.
Looking forward to hear from you.
Kim.
Hi Kim,
I took a quick look @ the PowerCLI files. The PowerCLI files are either truncated, or the InventorySnapshot died while generating code for DMZ- Ekstern.
There are a few things to do here:
1. We should probably create a special debug build that can dump logging information. I don’t have one ready right now, but it is something I will need to look into.
2. Can you send me the entire contents of the directory (i.e., including all of the binary files with names like “morNameMap” ). From there, I hopefully can take a closer to look to see where it might have had issues.
3. I’ve been working on a version that supports UTF-16, so that we can allow international character sets. On the off chance there are any such characters here, that might help as well (though I know that you’ve said you’ve gotten rid of such characters). We might try to give you a pre-release version of that for testing.
Sorry you’ve had so many problems. Hopefully we can fix them and get this up and running for you.
Hi Ravi.
I have uploaded all the files to /inventorysnapshot_coop01. If you want me to try the “UTF-16″ version – I would be happy to try it :o)
Don’t worry about the problems because we have a vCenter problem which might require us to start all over and therefore this tools comes very handy :O)
Kim.
Hi Kim,
I haven’t looked at your files yet, but the problem you are seeing is similar to one that we’ve observed in another setup, and we may have found the bug that is causing this behavior. We will try to release a fix soon.
Kim,
would you mind trying the latest version (1.0.1), which has recently been uploaded. This may fix your issues.
thanks!
Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Great news – everything seems to be working fine. I now have a PS1 file of each cluster and they are not empty anymore and DC inventory files which is not empty anymore. I will try later to make an actual restore.
Thanks for looking into this. I appreciate it.
Rgds,
Kim.
Nice fling, this will save us a lot of time!
using it with the “front-end” works perfecly, but….. :-)
i am trying to put this (run.bat+ all params) into a windows 2008 scheduled task, but do not succeed..
when doing the same run.bat server user pass snapshot d:\vmware\backup-inventory from a dos-prompt, the front-end keeps popping up (empty) and nothing is happening..
is it possible to use it from a scheduled task?
Hi Ferdinand,
When you say “run.bat”, do you mean that you are running this within a PowerCLI prompt and you are getting no output? Can you describe your workflow a little bit more?
Are you using the run.bat script within the directory, or your own? That run.bat script is actually old and should be deprecated. If there is sufficient need for a command-line version, we can try to provide one.
Thanks!
Thank you for this tool, testing it out in my lab and have some questions:
Does it save alerts, alarms, notification settings as well?
Is there option to restore good “snapshot” to the dev snapshot (in case where dev gets corrupted or you mess up and need to revert back)?
Regards,
Harron
Hi Harron,
Thanks for trying it out. We don’t save alarm stuff at present. That’s one of those things we hope to do later (standard disclaimers apply).
Can you give me a little bit more information about your second question? What do you mean by restoring a “good” snapshot to a dev snapshot?
This is good stuff!
Thank you.
Great tool! Thank you.
Wonderfull !
I’m currently in that phase of migrating my test/dev to Prod.
So much time saved and good perspectives for future backups..
Does it also save customization files ?
Thanks a lot
Custom fields and their values are saved.
I am assuming that you are not talking about the CustomizationSpec files you use while deploying a VM from a clone or template etc. These files are not included as these are not part of any configuration of any of the inventory items.
Does this reproduce dvSwitches? I assume vSwitches work fine.
Either way, great work!
It reproduces the dvSwitches as well (the specific properties pertaining to the default VmwareDistributedVirtualSwitch only in this release).
Does it also support vCenter 5.0 beta environment?
The tool is developed using 4.0 SDK.
You can snapshot vCenter 4.0 and restore it on any version 4.0 and above without any issues.
If you take a snapshot of the newer versions of the vCenter like 4.1 or 5.0 it will miss the new properties.
Will you be updating this for 5.0?
We aren’t allowed to comment on forward-looking issues like this (standard legal disclaimer), but we do hope to release something that works with 5.0.
WOW!!!
great stuff.
This is very useful
Thank YOU….