Good news in today's economic crisis: It doesn't take a large budget to stock your virtualization administrator tool belt with the proper utilities needed to arm yourself. Sure, there are plenty of solutions and applications out there that cost money and do a fantastic job of helping you with your virtual environment; but not everything has to hit you square in the wallet. There are quite a few free tools out there that can help you with your day-to-day job functions.
[ VMware finally announced a list of new features with VMware vSphere 4 | Read InfoWorld's full coverage of the VMware vSphere announcement. ]
Personally, I've always been a fan of free software tools that can help me do my job more efficiently. And before the USB stick came along, I would carry these tools around with me on CD-ROM. (No, I won't admit to using floppy disks, let's just leave it at CD-ROM, shall we?)
In order to find out what other VI admins are using in the wild, I spoke with a few recently named VMware vExperts to see what free tools made it into their utility belts. I was lucky enough to catch up with folks like Rich Brambley, owner and author of the virtualization blog site VM/ETC, and Stephen Beaver and Jason McCarty, my co-authors of "VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center."
When I asked Brambley about using free tools as a virtual administrator, he laughed and said of course he does. "If there are free tools that can help me with necessary VI admin and monitoring, why wouldn't I keep them in my toolbox? Why wouldn't I introduce them to clients?"
He added, "Sure, there are drawbacks in lack of support and slower development cycles, but they often perform one task really well and that is usually all that is needed. And that one task is usually a necessary function that is needed on a regular basis."
So what free tools do these VMware vExperts carry with them? Tools like:
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