Whether you use VMware ESX or ESXi, free VMware command-line and scripting -- with such tools as vMA, Power CLI and vSphere Health Check -- help configure virtual machines VMs), better manage VMware vSphere infrastructure and automate administrative tasks from the command-line. VMware offers three tools for VMware command-line and scripting, and these tools share similarities.
In this section of our best free virtualization tools guide, we cover the management and VM automation capabilities provided by VMware vMA, vCLI, PowerCLI and vSphere Health Check.
VMware vMA: VSphere Management Assistant
When VMware released its ESXi hypervisor, which lacks a supported command-line interface, the
virtualization provider had to offer a solution for admins who accustomed to using CLI and for
those who had agents running in the ESX service console. VMware released VIMA - Virtual
Infrastructure Management Assistant (VIMA)- as an appliance that runs Linux and that had the same
command-line options as the ESX console. Other than a way to run VMware command line tools, VIMA
offered Perl scripting
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When vSphere 4 was released, VIMA was renamed vMA, and it is still the same effective and free CLI management appliance for a VMware virtual infrastructure.
For more information on vMA, read my article on using the VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA).
VMware vCLI : The vSphere Command-Line Interface
The same VMware command line tools can be installed in your Windows or Linux workstation. VMware
called these tools the vSphere Command Line Interface (or vCLI). The vCLI allows you to run the
traditional VMware tools such as esxcfg-nics or vicfg-nics right on your PC.
Just as with vMA, there are tons of contributed scripts available for vCLI (more information below).
To learn more about vCLI and download it (for free), just visit VMware's vCLI homepage.
VMware PowerCLI: The PowerShell command-line Interface
Instead of using Perl as your VMware tool scripting engine, those accustomed to Microsoft
PowerShell, can use VMware offers PowerCLI, which is a PowerShell-based tool to manage VMware
infrastructure.
Like vCLI and vMA, there are tons of contributed scripts available for PowerCLI.
To learn more about PowerCLI and download it (for free), just visit VMware's PowerCLI homepage.
VMware's Contributed Script Repository and vSphere Health Check Script
It may be nice to have Perl and PowerShell scripting options but it is a whole lot nicer to have a
library of useful scripts at your command. Thankfully, many VMware admins have contributed the
scripts they created to the VMware community. For example, the vGhetto script repository is
one of the best and largest such repositories for VMware scripts. In particular, it contains one of
the best scripts I have seen: the vSphereHealthCheck script. This single script can query ESX hosts, vCenter
servers, and clusters and return a wealth of information - offering a clear and organized report on
your vSphere infrastructure. To run this script, you need either vMA, vCLI, or PowerCLI (if you use
the PowerShell version of vSphereHealthCheck).
Return to guide's main page for more on the best free virtualization tools .
About the author
David Davis is the director of infrastructure at TrainSignal.com -- the global leader in video training for IT pros. He has
several certifications including vExpert, VMware Certified Profession (or VCP), CISSP, and CCIE
#9369. Additionally, Davis has authored hundreds of articles and six video training courses at
Train Signal, where one of the most popular course is the VMware vSphere 4
video training course. His website is VMwareVideos.com. You can follow Davis on Twitter or connect with him at David on LinkedIn.
This was first published in November 2009