Running a VM Inventory Report in vRealize Operations

I was just curious about this myself – of course we can use vCenter to get a quick list of virtual machines, but as I haven’t used vRealize Operations to perform such a simple task before, it got me wondering how one would do it.

I am sure others have already had occasion to do this themselves, but I decided to write up a quick blog on it anyways. As it turns out, it is relatively simple – and though you can obtain a list of virtual machines from vCenter more quickly, there are several advantages of the reporting capabilities of vRealize Operations:

• the ability to get a report on anything / everything you are collecting on – including non-vSphere stuff (physical servers, networking equipment, storage arrays, etc).
• report on current or predicted resource needs
• report on current or predicted utilization trends
• scheduling those reports
• full ability to customize reports
• create report templates
• etc.

To get started, from the home screen, select “Environment.”

In the Environment Overview, select the group you would like to browse – for example “vSphere Hosts and Clusters.”

Using the navigation pane, select the vSphere cluster / folder / resource pool containing the virtual machines you would like to run an inventory report on, then select “more…” to view the Reports tab.

Click on “Reports.”

In the Reports view, you can filter to find your report quickly. In my case I simply typed “Inventory” to filter the reports and see inventory report templates.

Highlight / select the report you would like to use, and you can run the report immediately, or click “Schedules” to see and manage scheduled reports.

To view any reports that have already been generated, simply click on “Generated Reports.”

Use the icons on the far right to download a CSV or PDF copy of the report.