How Virtual Machine Snapshots work in VMware

How Virtual Machine Snapshots work in VMware

In VMware a disk "snapshot" is a copy of the VM's disk file (.vmdk) captured at a certain point in time. This snapshot preserves the disk file system and the files stored on it which can be of any type (including all the operating system files). So if something goes wrong with your virtual machine, you can restore it to a snapshot which was working previously.

One can also create snapshots for different versions/service-packs on an OS.Hence snapshots can also be looked upon as version controlling mechanism at OS level. So if your computer was shut down abruptly or gets infected by virus, just revert to a snapshot.

So how do snapshots really work ? 
There's just one Thumb Rule to VMware's snapshot technology : "Snapshots only store the differences between the current state and the original state". It follows the copy-on-write scheme with every subsequent disk access. Lets try to understand what that means ...

Consider that you have a text file with the word "COMPUTING" stored in it.This file is a sparse in nature : which means it spans across multiple blocks on the disk.Step 1 below demonstrates this scenario. The black lines indicate the links on to the stored data. For demonstration purpose lets consider that each block on disk has only one character.

Note : The blocks shown above contain only one character and is purely for example purpose. In real the block size could be of say 1MB or a sector on disk.

Now when you take a snapshot another file named Snapshot1.vmdk will be created. When you create a snapshot, any changes made on the original virtual disk image are not made on the original disk, but they are written to a new (snapshot) disk file. This action is very fast as there is no need to copy whole virtual disk image.

Thumb Rule : "While saving changed data blocks in a snapshot, all modified block will be saved first , followed by blocks which were deleted as compared to base disk blocks." As seen in Step 2 , blue block is linked at the end of the snapshot1.vmdk

Lets suppose that you take a snapshot after you have saved the word "COMPUTING" in the file. After the snapshot you modify the file by changing its last two blocks (letters N and G circled above) and clear the letter I. The new changed word is "COMPUTER" as show in the Step 2. The blue block above is nothing but an empty block created by deleting letter I. The blocks in RED represents the new snapshot1.vmdk disk which contains only the changed characters.

Thumb Rule : "While reading any file in current state read only the data accessible by first level links, irrespective of number of snapshots and original data of the file."

Reading the first links of the "Current State" disk from Step 2 (Green blocks) , word "COMPUTER" is retrieved and the size of snapshot1.vmdk is 3 blocks (2 filled and one empty). However since its a differential snapshot file its size is much less than original base disk (9 blocks).  Snapshot image size grows as you continue to change more and more data from your original virtual disk image (which remains untouched from the moment you took the snapshot).

Thumb Rule : "Size of a snapshot will always be less than the base disk, but in worst case it will be exactly the same size if all blocks were to be changed."

As seen in Step 3 , we now take another snapshot after saving the word "COMPUTER" in the file. On making more changes after snapshot2 , similar process is followed to create snapshot2.vmdk file. The new changed word in the file is  "CONTAINER". As a result now neither snapshot 1 nor the base file are written two, but are still referenced. Snapshot 2 will store the new changes as compared to snapshot 1. If you read the first level links of the green blocks from top to bottom , the word "CONTAINER" is read with the fact that only 5 letters are stored in snapshot2.

Below are the list of changes made to the file

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Step1 - Base Disk  = COMPUTING

Step2 - Snapshot1 = COMPUTER

Step3 - Snapshot2 = CONTAINER

From the above scenarios its clear that taking snapshots in VMware involves only writing the differences in files changed from the time of the snapshot, not the complete virtual machine disk. This mechanism is similar to taking diff and patch in Unix, but in a more sophisticated way that diffs on a binary level with the knowledge of how a VMFS ( Virtual Machine File System ) is structured.

Now we have a clear idea about the Copy-On-Write Protocol - Every time a block from the base disk or previous snapshot is changed , copy it to the current delta or snapshot file, which implies that when you perform a snapshot restoration, it only has to rewrite the sectors that were modified since you took the snapshot. As a result snapshot revert is also super fast.

But the Question is, What happens when you revert to an older snapshot? The VM software throws away the contents of snapshot2.vmdk and starts over with  reading contents from snapshot1.vmdk. During this all the Blue links in Step3 are replaced with Green Links. ( this is a similar strategy followed in deleting a node from a linklist ... Pure programming stuff ). Note : Links to Snapshot1 and Base are not changed.

There are two more important aspects of Snapshot management : Discarding a snapshot and Merging a snapshot (reverting to a non-immediate parent snapshot). I'll discuss it in my future articles.

A snapshot preserves the state and data of a virtual machine at a specific point in time.

• The state includes the virtual machine’s power state (for example, powered-on, powered-off, suspended).
• The data includes all of the files that make up the virtual machine. This includes disks, memory, and other devices, such as virtual network interface cards.

What is vCenter Single Sign-On?

I was until I dived in and found answers which I will do my best to explain here.

vCenter Single Sign-On is a new feature of vSphere 5.1 that is not just an authentication broker but also a security token exchange providing a more secure way of accessing your vSphere solutions. What that means is that when you previously logged into vCenter Server, you were authenticated with the provided username and password against the Active Directory configured for vCenter Server. With vSphere 5.1 and vCenter Single SIgn-On you no longer log directly into vCenter Server but with a security domain defined by your vSphere environment. When logging in to vSphere 5.1 you actually pass authentication to the  vCenter Single Sign-On server which can be configured with multiple identity sources like Active Directory and OpenLDAP and on successful authentication, your username and password is exchanged for a security token which is then used to access the vSphere components like vCenter Server and vCenter Orchestrator etc.

Although vCenter SIngle Sign-On is an additional component in the vSphere suite, a critical component that is required before any other vSphere 5.1 component is installed or upgraded, it actually doesn’t necessarily mean you need to re-architect your vSphere environment. You can use vSphere just as you have been from years past and vCenter Single Sign-On will fit right on in just as an additional service local too or separate from vCenter Server.

Where some of the confusion comes from I believe is with the added benefits that vCenter Single Sign-On can bring  when administering multiple vSphere environments. When installing vCenter Server you have the choice to specify or install a vCenter Single Sign-On server providing the ability to add multiple vCenter Servers and their components to a centralized vCenter Single Sign-On source. This provides a single pane of glass view across all vCenter servers, 5.0 and higher for administration as well as the ability to define queries that can be searched across multiple vCenter Servers without the requirement of Linked Mode used in the past.

Now this maybe seen as a single point of failure, a critical one at that when talking authentication but vCenter Single SIgn-On can be configured in a clustered or multisite deployment to help with availability.

Clustered deployments are with multiple instances of vCenter SIngle Sign-On are deployed, one is defined as a primary instance the remainder as slaves and all share a single database instance and placed behind a third party load balancer can provide redundancy or high availability of the vCenter Single Sing-On solution. This typically is local to a single site however if geographical sites are used with multiple vCenter servers, you can still utilize a central clustered environment, however a multisite configuration is recommended.

Multisite deployments are  where a local replica is maintained at remote sites of the primary vCenter Single SIgn-On instance. vCenter Servers are reconfigured to use the local vCenter SIngle SIgn-On service and reduce authentication requests across the WAN. Multisite deployments do drop the support of single pane of glass views unless Linked Mode is utilized and multisite deployments are actually required to maintain Linked Mode configurations where roles, permissions and licenses are replicated between linked vCenter servers. Linked mode will re-enable single pane of glass views across multisite instances.

VMware vSphere 4.1 to 5.1 Upgrade

VMware vSphere 4.1 to 5.1 Upgrade

1. Stop vCenter Services

2. Install vCenter 5.1

3. Install vCenter Update Manager

4. Install vSphere Client

5. Login to New vCenter 5.1 Console using vSphere Client

6. Install Update Manager Plugins

7  Upgrade ESXi Hosts using Update Manager

Whats new in VMware vSphere 5.5

1. Hot Pluggable SSD PCI Express (PCIe) Device

2. Support for Reliable Memory Technology (Some part of CPU will be allocated to ESXi Host to use HOSTD and WatchDog Process to avaoid memory crass)

3. Power Policy Setting for DPM (High Performance/Balanced/Low Power/Custom)

4. New SATA Controller

5. VM Hardware Version 10

6. Expanded vGPU Support (nVedia)

7. Graphic Acceleration for Linux Guests

8. Simplified SSO

9. vSphere Web Client Enhacement (Drag and Drop, Filters, Recent Items)

10. vSphere App HA : In earlier version you had the ability to monitor virtual machines heartbeat using VMware Tools. In Vsphere 5.5 you can leverage third party application monitoring agents or create their own agents using VMware vSphere Guest SDK. vSphere APP HAcan be configured to restart an application service when issue is detected. It is possible to protect several commonly used, off-the-shelf applications. vSphere HA can also     reset the virtual machine if the application fails to restart. Two Virtual Appliances per vCenter.

11. vSphere BIG Data Extension - It's a tool that enables administrators to deploy and manage Hadoop Clusters on vSphere from a Familiar vSphere Web Client interface. Support - Apache Pig, Apache Hive & Apache HBase. Hadoop Clusters can be protected easily using VMware vSphere HA and FT

12.  vSphere Storage Enhancement : 62 TB VMDK and 62 TB RDM

13. PDL Mode Auto Remove (Permanent Device Loss) - that can occur when a disk device either fails or removed from the vSphere host in an uncontrolled fashion. With vSphere 5.5 host can take necessary steps to prevent directing unnecessary IO to this device. This alleviates other conditions  that might arise on the host as a result of this unnecessary IO.

14. vSphere Flash Read Cache

15. Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) now uses 22 new HASH Algorithms

16. Trafic Filtering - ACL

17. Quality of Service Tagging - Help to achieve end-to-end QoS

18. Enhanced Host Level Packet Capture

19. Support of 40GB NIC - This functionalities is delivered via Mellanox ConnextX-3 VPI Adapters configured in Ethernet Mode.

Free VMWare Tools for VMWare Professionals

Free VMWare Tools for VMWare Professionals

You can download the Tools by clicking the respective images.

Tool Name	Features of the Tool	Download link
Veeam Backup Free Edition for VMware and Hyper-v	With Veeam Backup Free Edition, you can quickly Backup, archive or copy a VM—without pausing or powering it off Restore data from inside a VM Restore from backups or SAN snapshots Migrate and manage VMs and files All in one easy-to-use tool that’s completely free.
Veeam ONE Free Edition for VMware & Hyper-V	With Veeam one Free Edition, you can Monitor 24x7 real-time monitoring and alerts Easy documentation and management reporting Saves time and cost Predefined and customizable dashboards
Veeam Stencils for VMware and Hyper-V	Veeam Software provides a free collection of VMware and Hyper-V virtualization Visio stencils that can be used by ESX administrators, system integrators and datacenter managers to create their own diagrams in Microsoft Visio 2003, 2007 or 2010 as part of your Hyper-V or VMware deployment planning.
Veeam Management Pack for VMware	Veeam Management Pack(MP) extends deep VMware monitoring, management and capacity planning to Microsoft System Center, providing complete visibility of physical and virtual infrastructures and applications – all from one console.Veeam MP integrates fully with VMware and System Center, enabling all System Center functionality—including alerts, diagrams, dashboards, reporting, auditing, notifications, responses and automation.
Veeam FastSCP	Veeam FastSCP can copy files over 6 times faster than WinSCP and other SCP-based tools Fast VM / File Transfer Simple ESX File Management Integration with Veeam Backup Secure Connection
Solarwinds Free VM Monitor	VM Monitor Highlights: Quickly check the health of your VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V host by monitoring CPU, memory utilization, number of virtual machines configured and running, and much more View detailed virtual machine health statistics including VM name, guest OS, and VM state, as well as processor, memory, and network usage
Solarwinds Free VM-to-Cloud Calculator	VM-to-Cloud Calculator Highlights: Automatically inventory your virtual machines and capturing description, CPU, memory, storage, and count Compare cost estimates from Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, and Rack space Cloud Servers Easily generate updated estimates as your virtualized infrastructure evolves
Solarwinds Free VM Console	Free VM Console Highlights: Bounce (shutdown & restart) VMs without logging into vCenter or vSphere Get end-to-end visibility into your VMware environment—from vCenter through ESX hosts to VM guests Track the real-time up/down status of your VMs from your desktop — without logging into VMware apps
Free Cloud Performance Monitor Powered by CopperEgg	Free Cloud Performance Monitor Powered by CopperEgg Highlights Fast, non-stop, real-time monitoring Server-resident, small footprint, no polling, push-only Delivered as a SaaS service Simple and easy installation. 5-seconds and you are up!
Unitrends Enterprise Backup	Free Edition: Protect 4 VMS Free forever – no expiration Online support only NFR (Not for Resale) Edition: Eligibility: VCPs, VCIs, vExperts, MVPs, MCPs Protect 2 sockets and 2 physical servers Phone, e-mail and online support 1-year expiration (renewable along with certification)
PhdVirtual  Virtual SAN	Virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX 3 Server provides the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN.
PhdVirtual Patch Downloader for ESX	Patch Downloader simplifies the task of downloading patches for various VMware ESX versions by automating the task.
VMTurbo’s Virtual Health Monitor	VMTurbo Virtual Health Monitor is the only FREE real-time performance monitoring solution without limitations of how broadly it can be deployed or which hypervisor platform it runs on. It enables you to: Gain visibility into your entire infrastructure See and identify problems in real time Generate performance and efficiency reports
Trilead VM Explorer	Trilead VM Explorer is a uniquely simple and flexible back-up solution for your infrastructure. It is easy to configure and offers powerful functionalities. VM Explorer® even supports the ESXi free edition for full back-ups. Maximum 2 host support in Free edition Job scheduling made easy Flexible Configuration Dynamic Compression Full and incremental backups Replication for disaster recovery File level restoration
Xangati for vSphere – Free	Xangati for vSphere – Free can help you tackle the following issues: Tracking which VM’s IOPS surge is bogging down a high latency datastore Identifying where you have underutilized capacity that can be re-allocated Zeroing in on which processes are driving a CPU spike on a Windows VM and much more.
Xtravirt vAlarm for vSphere	vAlarm for vSphere is a Windows based application which monitors alarms generated by VMware vCenter, and provides visual alerts via a smart notification bubble on the desktop where installed as it happens. It removes the need to actively watch management consoles, and reduces the risk of missing that system generated message amongst the dozens of other emails received every day.
Xtravirt Presentation Pack for VMware	Presentation Pack for VMware is a huge package of exquisitely detailed icons including virtual infrastructure, conventional IT equipment and many more high quality objects. Provided in flexible formats for Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, together with a set designed especially for Visio, your diagrams and illustrations will be the showcase of any document or presentation.
Xtravirt Document Downloader for VMware	Document Downloader for VMware is a handy utility which maintains a local repository of VMware product documentation on your PC, making it an ideal tool for consultants or administrators that require offline access to those resources.
Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition	Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition includes: Snapshot Explorer Storage Explorer Change Explorer Environment Explorer vScope Explorer SearchMyVM Explorer
PowerGUI	Graphical User Interface & Script Editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell. PowerGUI is the freeware tool administrators need to speed PowerShell adoption, and harness the power of PowerShell to efficiently manage their entire Windows environment. PowerGUI simplifies management with an intuitive user console that includes Point, Click, Script™ for quickly building scripts using only a mouse.
Workspace Assessment from Quest	Take the first step toward a successful desktop virtualization project with free Workspace Assessment . Is the transition from physical to virtual desktops a smart move for your organization? Do you want to know which of the many desktop virtualization deployment options will be the best fit for your users, applications and machines? Our Workspace Assessment provides the insight you need to make well-informed decisions. And it's free!
IgniteFreeVm from ignitefree	IgniteFreeVM is the only free VMware performance monitoring tool linking visibility of the database, virtual server, physical server, and storage layers.
vOptimizer Waste Finder	vOptimizer Waste Finder quickly locate and reclaim over-allocated VM storage and dramatically reduce unnecessary storage costs and also improves VM performance, reduces time spent managing virtual storage, and eliminates risks of poor virtual storage management practices. Provides visibility of the total amount and value of over-allocated VM storage Reclaims wasted VM storage (shrinking VM disk files) for use by other applications and business units
vDisk Informer from Virtualize Planet	vDisk Informer demonstrates which virtual disks have potentially wasted space on them and which virtual disks are misaligned causing a performance impact.
Thinware vBackup	Thinware vBackup is an enterprise grade backup solution for virtual infrastructure that can be easily implemented in any size environment. Reduce backup costs. Reduce down-time. Agent-free configuration Utilizes Off-host processing.
VMDK Stub File Generator	A free trouble-shooting tool for VMware administrators. Often times the VMDK stub file is either corrupt or removed by mistake making the -flat.vmdk unusable even though all of the user data is still contained within it. This new stub file generator is an absolute necessity when a corrupt VMDK file prevents you from accessing your flat file backup data. The PHD Virtual Stub File Generator lets you recreate the .vmdk STUB file so that you can re-attach and access the data in the -flat.vmdk.
RVTools	RVTools is able to list information about VMs, CPU, Memory, Disks, Partitions, Network, Floppy drives, CD drives, Snapshots, VMware tools, Resource pools, ESX hosts, HBAs, Nics, Switches, Ports, Distributed Switches, Distributed Ports, Service consoles, VM Kernels, Datastores and health checks.
svfAlarms	A windows utility to allow the export and import of VMware vCenter Alarms.
ESXi-Customizer	ESXi-Customizer is a user-friendly script that automates the process of customizing the ESXi install-ISO with drivers that are not originally included. Unlike other scripts and manuals that are available for this purpose ESXi-Customizer runs entirely on Windows and does not require any knowledge of or access to Linux.
VMware Scanner v.1.4	This is a simple utility to scan for VMware Servers (ESX, ESXi, VirtualCenter and VMware Server). It uses the VMware API to identify a VMware server and query the product name, version and build number.
vAudit 1.5	vAudit is a utility for VMware View environments (3.01 and 3.1). The tool will display when your users are logging in to their virtual machines and it can also display and unsuccessful login attempts. Version 1.5 includes the option to export the data to a comma separated file.
VMware CPU Host Info 2.01	This tools will allow you to read out all CPU information from all your ESX Servers by querying your VC server. It will show what features are available on your CPUs and if they are compatible to vmotion VMs and if FT is supported.
ITQ VLan and Portgroup Manager	This application in C# based on the new ESX3.x /VC2.x SDK. It allows you to easily setup all port groups and VLan IDs on all your ESX Servers. You can first read out (use the export feature) the network settings of a single ESX Host. With that information you can then setup all your other servers.
VCplus	VCplus is a program (windows service) that can add additional information into your VirtualCenter environment. Currently it can add Disk Usage within the VM, is snapshot is present and snapshot size and it can sync DNS name with display name
Virtual MAC Tools	To keep the MAC address of your virtual machines persistent, you can use Virtual MAC Tools to achieve this without manually editing .VMX file of virtual machine.
VM Time	A small utility that measures the time within a Virtual Machine and the time of the Host it is running on. It will report on any time differences between the two. Nice for testing and checking if the VM really knows what time it is and detect any 'time drifting'
VM PerfMon	This is a simple program to actually measure the actual performance within a VM. It uses the VI3 GuestSDK and shows a graph of the actual CPU usage (not what the VM thinks, but real world usage) and displays in text more information about memory and CPU usage.
vmclient	A lightweight tool which enables you to control the power of your virtual machines, it’s also capable of presenting the MKS console of your virtual machine
VCE Vblock Visio Stencils	These stencils can be used by partners for presentations to show they are Vblock Qualified or by parent companies to show validated diagrams.
Openfiler	Openfiler is a powerful, intuitive browser-based network storage software distribution. Openfiler delivers file-based Network Attached Storage and block-based Storage Area Networking in a single framework.
StarWind iSCSI SAN Free Edition	StarWind iSCSI SAN Free is an iSCSI Target that converts any Windows server into a SAN. This tool provides the wide range of storage management and data protection features. If you want to deploy iSCSI SAN in your testing lab, for personal use or educational purposes, and evaluate this technology, you can do so completely free with StarWind. The solution is designed for use with the market leading server virtualization platforms – VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix.
StarWind V2V Converter	StarWind Converter is a downloadable V2V conversion tool for virtual machines. You can use it to convert VMDK to VHD files and VHD to VMDK as well as to IMG file, which is a native StarWind format. This is a very simple but useful file conversion tool that will convert virtual hard drive images from VMware's VMDK format into the Microsoft's VHD format. It is a sector by sector copy operation from one format to the other. It does not modify the source image and will leave it so you can continue to use it.
FreeNAS	FreeNAS is a powerful, flexible home storage system – configured by you, for your needs.From inexplicable file system incompatibilities to the mystery of the missing crossover cable, everyone knows the pain of trying to share files between different operating systems. Luckily, FreeNAS is here to make make the solution simple.Whether it’s streaming music and movies, backing up a desktop, or syncing files over the web, FreeNAS provides the tools to help you build the perfect file storage appliance for your home!
Loadstorm	It’s a pretty simple utility to generate CPU and/or memory load within a virtual machine (or a physical server if you are still living in the dark ages). You can specify the number of threads to generate for CPU load and the approximate load each thread generates. You can also specify how much memory you want the application to consume. There’s a timer so you can configure it to only generate the specified load for a set period of time, and system memory utilization and system/per core CPU utilization indicators within the application.
SyslogAppliance	SyslogAppliance is a ready to run logging system which can be deployed right "out of the box". Just plug it into any VMWare environment and enjoy receiving log messages from a variety of sources, including Routers, Firewalls and even Windows event logs. It is a great troubleshooting, reporting, analysis and capacity planning tool.
ManageEngine  Free VM configuration Tool	VMware Configuration Tool helps administrators to monitor VMware ESX 4.0 & VMware ESX 4.1 hosts and it can manage/configure some important attributes of the virtual machines available in the host machine. Parameters that can be managed/configured for a virtual machine(s) using this tool are as follows: Power Operations CPU - Configuration Memory - Configuration Rename Virtual Machine
ManageEngine VM Health Monitor Free Tool	Using VM Health Monitor Tool, You will be able to perform: Monitor VMware ESX server Monitor VMware ESXi server VMware host resources like CPU, Memory, Disk Details Monitor Virtual Machine(VM ) and Guest OS Resources Network Bandwidth Usage Monitoring Real time monitoring tool Easy to learn and use
Jam Software’s HeavyLoad	Free Stress Test Tool for Your PC
GParted	GParted is a free partition manager that enables you to resize, copy, and move partitions without data loss.
UBERAlign	UBERAlign is the tool for VMware Virtual Machine alignment and Space Reclamation
SteelBytes  HD_Speed	HD_Speed Measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard disks, cd/dvd-roms, flash cards/sticks, floppys, etc. Realtime graphical display.
FalconStor’s  Free iSCSI SAN software	FalconStor iSCSI Virtual SAN Appliance enables you to use shared storage without requiring additional storage arrays, SAN switches, or HBAs.
StorMagic’s SvSAN for VMware	SvSAN Provides a single shared data store on your existing servers disk or other direct attached storage device.
Netwrix VMware Change Reporter	Netwrix VMware Change Reporter provides virtual machine monitoring solutions to audit what changes were applied to your virtual environment, who made them, and where. Detailed reports help control VM sprawl and sustain regulatory compliance. See how your organization can benefit from Netwrix virtual machine monitoring tool.
Iometer	Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems.
Slym software’s vSphere Configuration Backup	vSphere Configuration Backup is an automating tool for saving configurations of multiple ESXi and SQL databases.
ImgBurn	ImgBurn Allows you to create and manage ISO files to use with your VMs.
Winscp	Winscp is a free SFTP, SCP and FTP client for Windows.
PuTTY	PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Windows and Unix platforms, along with an terminal emulator
Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Solution Accelerator	The Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) Solution Accelerator is a Microsoft-supported, stand-alone solution for the IT pro or solution provider who wants to convert VMware-based virtual machines and disks to Hyper-V-based virtual machines and disks.
HP Insight Control Storage Module for vCenter	HP Insight Control Storage Module for VMware vCenter is a plug-in for VMware's vCenter management console which enables the VMware administrator to quickly obtain context-aware information about the HP storage in their VMware environment directly from within vCenter.
Free ISO Creator	With Free ISO Creator, you can easily create ISO image from any files and folders (with the subfolders). Free ISO Creator is one of the best solution to create ISO file.
MagicISO  Maker	MagicISO is a powerful CD/DVD image file creating/editing/extracting tool. It can open / create / edit /extract CD/DVD image files, and it can convert bin to iso and back.  as well as make ISO file from DVD/CD-ROM or hard disk, and handle bootable information at meanwhile.
Free WinISO Maker	Free WinISO Maker  is the first CD image file Editing tool , which allows you to open, edit, create, extract, and convert ISO files, and make bootable ISO files. It can be served as Free ISO Maker,
vSphere Plugin Wizard	vSphere Plugin Wizard allows you to create a tabbed plug-in of your favorite website or admin page.
VMware Lab’s ESXi Google Authenticator	Google Authenticator is a project that provides two-factor authentication by using both a PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module) module and a mobile application for generating one-time pass codes. In ESXi Google Authenticator, we modified the source code of Google-Authenticator to enable two-step authentication on ESXi (5.0, 5.1).
VMware Lab's I/O Analyzer	VMware I/O Analyzer is an integrated framework designed to measure storage performance in a virtual environment and to help diagnose storage performance concerns. I/O Analyzer, supplied as an easy-to-deploy virtual appliance, automates storage performance analysis through a unified interface that can be used to configure and deploy storage tests and view graphical results for those tests.
VMware Lab’s Statsfeeder	Statsfeeder is a tool that enables performance metrics to be retrieved from vCenter and sent to multiple destinations, including 3rd party systems.
vCenter 5.1 Pre-Install Check Script	This is a PowerShell script written to help customers validate their environment and assess if it is ready for a 5.1.x upgrade. The script checks against known misconfiguration and issues raised with VMware Support.
Auto Deploy GUI	Auto Deploy GUI is a front end interface to the Auto Deploy/Stateless infrastructure.
VMware Lab’s Makyo	Makyo lets you copy virtual machines and vApps from one vCenter Server to another using a wizard in the vSphere Web Client. The said copy operation from one vCenter Server to another is done by starting an OVF export operation on the source server and an import OVF operation on the target server. No intermediate files are created when you copy a virtual machine or a vApp. The fling is installed as a plugin to the vSphere Web Client
VMware Boomerang	VMware Boomerang is a radically simple client application that allows you to use multiple vSphere servers simultaneously. Simply select “Add a Server…” to connect and login to an ESX server, vCenter server, or View Connection Server and you will be presented with a list of all available virtual machines.
VMware Guest Reclaim	Guest Reclaim reclaims dead space from NTFS volumes hosted on a thin provisioned SCSI disk. The tool can also reclaim space from full disks and partitions, thereby wiping off the file systems on it. As the tool deals with active data, please take all precautionary measures understanding the SCSI UNMAP framework and backing up important data.
vCenter Inventory Snapshot	Inventory Snapshot 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.
ESX System Analyzer	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
VMware Onyx	Onyx is a standalone application that serves as a proxy between the vSphere Client and the vCenter Server. It monitors the network communication between them and translates it into an executable PowerShell code. Later, this code could be modified and saved into a reusable function or script.
VMware vBenchmark	vBenchmark provides a succinct set of metrics in these categories for your VMware virtualized private cloud. Additionally, if you choose to contribute your metrics to the community repository, vBenchmark also allows you to compare your metrics against those of comparable companies in your peer group. The data you submit is anonymized and encrypted for secure transmission.
VMware CloudFS	CloudFS is a prototype replicated and distributed storage system for the VMware ESX platform. It allows VMs to run using local storage, without any single points of failure. CloudFS has been described in the research papers “Lithium: Virtual Machine Storage for the Cloud” at SoCC 2010 in Indianapolis, and “Scalable virtual machine storage using local disks” in the December 2010 issue of ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review.
VMware vCenter Mobile Access	VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) is a fully configured and ready to run virtual appliance that is required to manage your datacenter from mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets (iPad). Using either a mobile browser or the native iPad application, administrators can now perform various troubleshooting and remediation activities in their VMware environments from anywhere in the world.
CloudCleaner	vCloud Director (vCD for short) relies heavily on the vCenter Servers and host machines it uses. And there may be times when you want to “uninstall” all traces of vCD from your servers and machines. CloudCleaner is a free product that helps restore these systems to a clean state. It selectively (or completely) removes all vCD-created virtual machines, resource pools, network pools, and networks. It can also unprepare  hosts that have been prepared by vCD.
PXE Manager for vCenter	PXE Manager for vCenter enables ESXi host state (firmware) management and provisioning. Specifically, it allows: Automated provisioning of new ESXi hosts stateless and statefull (no ESX) ESXi host state (firmware) backup, restore, and archiving with retention ESXi builds repository management (stateless and statefull) ESXi Patch management Multi vCenter support  and Much More…
VMware vCenter XVP Manager and Converter	VMware vCenter XVP Manager and Converter provides basic virtualization management capabilities for non-vSphere hypervisor platforms towards enabling centralized visibility and control across heterogeneous virtual infrastructures. It also simplifies and enables easy migrations of virtual machines from non-vSphere virtualization platforms to VMware vSphere.
VMware Guest Console	VMware Guest Console (VGC) can be used as Task Manager for Virtual Machines and can be used for Mass Deployment by copying and executing  scripts to multiple Guest OS ,File explorer,Snapshot Manager, VM Manager and Inventory.
ESXPlot	Esxplot is a GUI-based tool that lets you explore the data collected by esxtop in batch mode. The program loads files of this data and presents it as a hierarchical tree where the values are selectable in the left panel of the tool, and graphs of the selected metrics are plotted in the right panel.
IOBlazer	IOBlazer is a multi-platform storage stack micro-benchmark. IOBlazer runs on Linux, Windows and OSX and it is capable of generating a highly customizable workload. Parameters like IO size and pattern, burstiness (number of outstanding IOs), burst interarrival time, read vs. write mix, buffered vs. direct IO, etc., can be configured independently. IOBlazer is also capable of playing back VSCSI traces captured using vscsiStats. The performance metrics reported are throughput (in terms of both IOPS and bytes/s) and IO latency.
VMware SiteSurvey	VMware SiteSurvey Produces a report showing hardware compatibility and software configuration compatibility with advanced VMware features such as Fault Tolerance.
CPU Identification Utility	CPU Identification Utility displays CPU features for VMotion compatibility, EVC and indicates 64-bit VMware support.
VMware Support Toolbar	The VMware Support Toolbar gives you instant access to documentation, patches, live peer to peer chat and more
VMware vCenter Converter	VMware vCenter Converter Automates and simplifies physical to virtual machine conversions as well as conversions between virtual machine formats with VMware vCenter Converter. Use the intuitive wizard-driven interface of VMware vCenter Converter to transform your physical machines to virtual machines.
Free VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 5.1)	Get started with free virtualization. VMware vSphere Hypervisor is a production-ready hypervisor that lets you virtualize your servers, helping you save time and money on managing your IT infrastructure. Built on the world’s smallest and most robust architecture, VMware vSphere ESXi, the vSphere Hypervisor, sets the industry standard for reliability, performance and ecosystem support. Consolidate your applications onto fewer servers and start saving money through reduced hardware, power, cooling and administration costs.
VMware Player	VMware Player is the easiest way to run multiple operating systems at the same time on your PC. With its user-friendly interface, VMware Player makes it effortless for anyone to try out Windows 8, Windows 7, Chrome OS, the latest Linux releases, or create isolated virtual machines to safely test new software. VMware Player is free for personal use.
vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)	The vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) allows administrators and developers to run scripts and agents to manage ESXi hosts and vCenter Server systems. vMA is a virtual machine that includes prepackaged software, a logging component, and an authentication component that supports non-interactive login.
VMware vCenter Configuration Manager Free Compliance Checkers	Free Compliance Checkers are based on VMware vCenter Configuration Manager and can be used to manage configuration compliance requirements in your environment . Each free checker includes compliance assessment for a single standard and can only assess a small number of hosts or VMs (depending on checker) at the same time. To use any of the available checkers simply download the selected checker to a Windows desktop.
VMware vSphere PowerCLI	VMware vSphere PowerCLI is a powerful command-line tool that lets you automate all aspects of vSphere management, including network, storage, VM, guest OS and more. PowerCLI is distributed as a Windows PowerShell snapin, and includes over 370 PowerShell cmdlets for managing and automating vSphere and vCloud.
VMware VMmark	VMmark is a free tool that hardware vendors, virtualization software vendors and other organizations use to measure the performance and scalability of applications running in virtualized environments. Get an accurate measurement of your virtual datacenter performance with VMmark , the industry's first virtualization platform benchmark for x86-based computers.
VMware vCenter Support Assistant	VMware vCenter Support Assistant is a FREE plug-in for vCenter Server that provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop BOTH for creating and managing service requests AND generating and uploading logs.
VMware Posters	This page is dedicated to the VMware posters which were created by Technical Marketing and have been released at VMworld and VMUGs around the world, this is a central place to find the latest versions of the PDF versions which can be used for reference or printed off as needed.
VMware vCenter Update Manager Sizing Estimator	VMware vCenter Update Manager Sizing Estimator  will help you estimate the size of your VUM database, patch store and temporary disk space. It will also give you recommendations on where to place your VUM database and if you should install VMware Update Manager on your vCenter server.
ThinApp Factory	The ThinApp Factory is a virtual appliance that brings centralized administration and automation to the process of creating virtualized Windows applications with VMware ThinApp technology.
vBenchmark	vBenchmark provides a succinct set of metrics in these categories for your VMware virtualized private cloud. Additionally, if you choose to contribute your metrics to the community repository, vBenchmark also allows you to compare your metrics against those of comparable companies in your peer group. The data you submit is anonymized and encrypted for secure transmission.
Thinapped vSphere Client	No install, just download the EXE and double-click. Place the ThinApped vSphere client on any network share and it will automatically stream to any Windows PC with no installation, agents, drivers, or specialized servers required. Carry ThinApped vSphere client and your customization on USB stick and now your vSphere client is available on the GO!