LS: correct, windows doesn't know who the host is. I was not certain what the "enhanced esx" support would include. If there would be a way to query the host and relate that information back to the windows guest's details. "Server 1 last seen on VMHost A".
Taeratrin: I had asked our VM admin about WMI and he was under the impression that the classes were pretty much limited to host parameters (cpu/memory/disk/etc). This could be wrong, as we mostly manage our VMs via VCenter and have not really had the need to explore the WMI classes.
However during that conversation and some research we determined that there is a free Powershell module/cmdlet which can return all the guests and their power status via command line.
I will post back the exact syntax, results and requirements once I have figured it out. We are pretty new to VM, and are still learning a lot of the "under the hood" stuff.
One thing to note, the cmdlet allows root level actions, with the proper credentials you can fully control most/all functions of the VMhost. There does not appear to be a read-only access role by default. This would require two things to maintain the security of the VMs, the LS customer should create a R/O user in their VM farm and would need some method of providing any script that tries to pull the data via this method those credentials. If the LS customer wants to scan multiple hosts that may not be managed by the same vcenter or are standalone esxi hosts, unique credentials may need to be supplied for each host.
I have seen plenty of posts via google asking for a way to relate host-guests, some of the solutions are rather manual and unreliable, like adding a share with he host's name. Not sure how that would help if you Vmotion a server but that was actually suggested on the vmware forums.
It would make a nice Premium Feature for LS, if it could be done.
Taeratrin: I had asked our VM admin about WMI and he was under the impression that the classes were pretty much limited to host parameters (cpu/memory/disk/etc). This could be wrong, as we mostly manage our VMs via VCenter and have not really had the need to explore the WMI classes.
However during that conversation and some research we determined that there is a free Powershell module/cmdlet which can return all the guests and their power status via command line.
I will post back the exact syntax, results and requirements once I have figured it out. We are pretty new to VM, and are still learning a lot of the "under the hood" stuff.
One thing to note, the cmdlet allows root level actions, with the proper credentials you can fully control most/all functions of the VMhost. There does not appear to be a read-only access role by default. This would require two things to maintain the security of the VMs, the LS customer should create a R/O user in their VM farm and would need some method of providing any script that tries to pull the data via this method those credentials. If the LS customer wants to scan multiple hosts that may not be managed by the same vcenter or are standalone esxi hosts, unique credentials may need to be supplied for each host.
I have seen plenty of posts via google asking for a way to relate host-guests, some of the solutions are rather manual and unreliable, like adding a share with he host's name. Not sure how that would help if you Vmotion a server but that was actually suggested on the vmware forums.
It would make a nice Premium Feature for LS, if it could be done.
