VMware Tools and Resources -

TL;DR: VMware provides various tools and online resources for customer depending on the use case. Here I’ve summarised some which I’ve come across that are useful, that I use often and that I have bookmarked.

I’ve broken the below into sections

Collect, Assess and Size
Reference

Collect, Assess and Size

The following tools are used to collect and assess what a customer has deployed in their environment.

Live Optics

Live Optics is my go-to tool as a starting point when working with that are customers looking at upgrading their environment. Some customers use it for gaining insight to what they have deployed.

It collects details about the hosts including memory, cpu, storage, Nic’s, VMs and performance.

You can register for a Live Optics account here: https://app.liveoptics.com/register/vmware

RVTools

RVTools is an incredibly useful utility to collect and assess a customers’ environment. It has been around since 2007 and many customers who use vSphere, know, use and love RVTools. According to the website, it’s been downloaded more than 1.8 million times.

You can download it from here: https://www.robware.net/rvtools/

Once you have collected the data you can input them into the following tools for sizing and generating proposals which you can share with customers.

vSAN Sizer

VSAN Sizer, as the name suggests is used to size vSAN environments. It can accept data from Live Optics, RVTools and One IQ. If no data source is available, you can input detail about the workload based on data observed from the existing environment.

Once you’ve built your configuration, the sizer provides you with a configuration of what your proposed vSAN cluster may look like. You can build and optimise the cluster hardware based on what your customer requires (As an example, they might prefer 24 cores per socket as opposed to 28).

During a vSAN Sizer sizing exercise, you are also able to select the OEM vendor you wish wish to work with if desired. The tool will then provide some options which can be shared directly with the vendor and they can build a config based on the output.

You can access vSAN Sizer here: https://vsansizer.esp.vmware.com/

Cloud Foundation Capacity Planner

Much like the vSAN sizer, this tool is used to size VCF environments. It allows you to size the VCF Management Domain based on the the software being deployed.

For the workload domains, the configuration is the same as the vSAN Sizer, allowing your to import data directly from Live Optics and RVTools and you continue to build the workload cluster as you would for a vSAN cluster. Although VCF supports non-vSAN clusters in the workload domains, it only gives you the ability to size vSAN based workload domains.

You can access Cloud Foundation Capacity Planner here: https://vcfcapacityplanner.esp.vmware.com/

VMware Cloud Sizer

To customers looking to get an idea of what infrastructure would be required in VMC on AWS, the tool they would use is the VMware Cloud Sizer.

There are two options, the Quick Sizer and the Advanced Sizer.

The quick sizer accepts inputs for the number of VM’s and vCPU/Core ratio. You can then fine tune details about vCPU/VM, vRAM/VM and Storage Capacity/VM.

The Advanced sizer allows your to import from Live Optics and RVTools and gives your additional control over sizing for additional services such as NSX.

You can access VMware Cloud Sizer here: https://vmc.vmware.com/sizer

Reference

The following resources are useful for referencing VMware solutions.

Documentation

RTMF (Read The Manual First 🤣)! For those old enough to remember when software would come bundled with physical manuals and there was no option to Google a configuration issue, we would start with the documentation. Docs should still be the first place that you go to as it’s the home of all documentation for all VMware products and this should be your starting point.
https://docs.vmware.com/

KB / Knowledge Base

The knowledge base is a collection of articles that provide information and troubleshooting step, across products and even details processes.

An example of a process would be “How to change the Super User and Procurement Contact in Customer Connect” and the solution would be found in KB article 2011011.

The knowledge base can be found at: https://kb.vmware.com/s/

Blogs

Blogs provides useful information and updates across the VMware portfolio. You will often find that the product managers or technical marketing teams write the articles. This means that you’re hearing from the people who work closely with the teams developing the product or service offering. It is useful for getting updates for the products that you are interested in. If you can also view topics of interest and view different franchises such as Multi-Cloud, Modern Applications or Digital Workspace.

You can access blogs here: https://blogs.vmware.com/

Core

Core could be considered a blog with lots of information and resources related to the core technologies enabling modern infrastructure such as VCF, vSAN, vSphere and so on. The resources include videos, interactive infographics, deployment documents, POC guides and so much more.

You can access Core here: https://core.vmware.com/

Tech Zone

Tech Zone links to various pillars with technology specific content. The pillars you will find are for Networking and Security, End User Computing and Modern Applications. You can access Core (mentioned above) from here too for all things Cloud Infrastructure.

To get to Tech Zone, navigate to: https://go.techzone.vmware.com/

(Easy links to the main sections below)

Product Lifecycle Matrix

The Product Lifecycle Matrix provides information about the life cycle of each product. For each product it will list the date when the product became generally available (GA) and provides details about when that product will no longer be supported.

Some terms to be aware of when using the lifecycle matrix are:

End Of General Support (EOGS): General Support for a product begins at General Availability for that product. Support is provided to customers who have purchased VMware support and customers have access to updates, upgrades and bug and security fixes. EOGS is when this support ceases.

End of technical guidance (EOTG): Once a product goes EOGS customers can still get technical guidance for that product if its available. During this phase, VMware does not make any new hardware support, updates, security patches or bug fixes available. EOTG is when this support ceases.

End Of Support Life (EOSL) is when a product is no longer generally supported by VMware and is either EOGS or EOTG.

End Of Availability (EOA): a product is end of availability when a product it is no longer available for purchase.

The tool also provides colour coding on the status of the software product, red being approaching EOS within 6 months and purple being reach end of support. An example of this is vSphere 6.5 (ESXi 6.5). it has already reached EOS and its end of availability but support will still provide technical guidance.

You can access it here: https://lifecycle.vmware.com/

Configuration Maximums (Config Max)

Config maximums provides details about VMware product limits and maximums (number of VM’s per ESXi host in vSphere 7 as an example). It can also be used to compare these maximums between versions (number of VM’s per ESXi host in vSphere 7 compared to vSphere 8).

You can access it here: https://configmax.esp.vmware.com/home

Ports And Protocols

This portal allows you to view ports required by various VMware products. You get information about the service description, protocol (TCP or UDP) and information about source an destination.

You can access it here: https://ports.esp.vmware.com/

VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG)

The VCG provides information on partner certified products. Compatability of each VMware product is tested with third party vendors and those results are then published.

An example of this would be vSphere 8.0 being supported on a Super Micro server using an Intel CPU. This can go deeper still, verifying compatibility of storage controller firmware within a vSAN storage node.

You can access it here: https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

VMware Tools and Resources