How to Use the Inventory Snapshot for vSphere

 
How to Use the Inventory Snapshot for vSphere by VMware Labs..

Hi All,

After so many days i m updating my blog again which will be really helpful for those who wants to save there vcenter server settings or just planning to deploy there development vCenter enviroment to the Production. Using this tool you can snapshot your dev environment and recreate it on the production server, saving your time of createing cluster and resource pools adding host etc...

"inventory snapshot" is the latest tool from vmware labs is used for this. This free vSphere tool allows you to take a snapshot of an entire vCenter inventory and then reproduce that inventory on the same vCenter server or another vCenter server. Thus, you could reproduce a vCenter cluster on the same vCenter server or another server.


Downloading Inventory snapshot for vSphere.

To use the tool , you would need vSphere 4.1 (including vCenter). With your vSphere infrastructure already up and running, you can download the inventory snapshot here

Unzip the file and place it in an convenient location.

You'll also need the latest version of Java installed AND VMware's PowerCLI.

From the inventory snapshot ZIP file, you can run inventorysnaphsot.bat

Keep in mind that PowerCLI is required because inventory snapshot will be creating a PowerCLI script that you will be modifying and then using to recreate your entire vSphere infrastructure (or a piece of it) on the same or another server.


Using Inventory snapshot

Once you have met the requirements and have Inventory Snapshot ready to use run inventorySnapshot.bat to bring up the UI. In Linux and MacOS, you use the inventorySnapshot.sh shell script to bring up the graphical user interface.

You'll enter your vCenter hostname, username, password, and a path to store all the inventorysnapshot PowerCLI (PS1) snapshot files.

 

                                                  Figure 1 : This will run multiple PowerCLI scripts and brings up this screen:
 

                                                   Figure : 2


Notice the 4 tabs on the top. From here, you can review the actual code that will be used to recreate the vSphere inventory.

On the Host Info tab, you will configure the username and password for each ESXi server as passwords are not captured as part of the inventory snapshot.

                                                   Figure : 3

                                                    Figure 4

Finally, you'll create your PowerCLI script which will be used to recreate the inventory (and is modified based on the choices you selected here).

                                        Figure 5


That script should be called something like createInventory.PasswordModified.PS1. Now, connect to the new vCenter server where you want to recreate the captured inventory. With PowerCLI, you'll do this with Connect-VIServer.

Once connected, run the new script and you'll be able to recreate your vSphere infrastructure.

Now you can deploy your vcenter Environment in just some keystrokes.  :-)