Possible to get a Big Fix report to show installed instances of vCenter including version number, installation hostnames, etc

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1

Hello All,

Is it possible to get a Big Fix report to show installed instances of vCenter including version number, installation hostnames, etc.

Thanks
Mayank

2

If “vCenter” is an installed application, and the computer it is installed on is running BigFix, then you should be able to get that information from BigFix.

If you have subscribed to the “BES Inventory and License” content, there is any Analysis that will pull back all of the installed software with the version.

Otherwise, you would need to create an Analysis that looks for the Uninstall Key for “vCenter” and return the Version that is installed. This would then be available via WebReports.

When you say “Installation HostNames” do you mean the computer where vCenter is installed?

3

Assuming vCenter is installed on a Windows computer, create an Analysis with the following …

Relevance:

  • (Windows of Operating System)
  • (Exists Key whose ((Exists Value "DisplayName" of it) AND ((Value "DisplayName" of it) as string contains "Console")) of Keys "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" of (x32 Registry; x64 Registry))

Create a Property in the Analysis:

  • vCenter Version
  • Value "DisplayVersion" of Key whose ((Exists Value "DisplayName" of it) AND ((Value "DisplayName" of it) as string contains "Console")) of Keys "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" of (x32 Registry; x64 Registry)

After an appropriate period of time you should then be able to create a WebReport that shows you the computers where “vCenter Version” - “Contains” - “.” and add the “vCenter Version” property to the Column List.

Click the “Apply Filter” button and you should see only computers where vCenter is installed and what version is installed.

4

Are you talking about VMWare VCenter (management server of VMWare ESX Hosts), or do you mean the actual hypervisors running ESX? I don’t know that was clear from the question…

5

Yes i am talking about the management server that is installed to manage VM ESXi hosts within a Windows environment.

I need to know the machines names on which it is installed and the version number.

Thanks
Mayank

6

@JasonWalker : Hi Jason ,

Please help me in this regard

Yes i am talking about the management server that is installed to manage VM ESXi hosts within a Windows environment.

I need to know the machines names on which it is installed and the version number.

Thanks
Mayank

7

Thanks Tim for your advice…

8

Minor point, but you can skip the exists value and just use plurality instead:

exists values “DisplayName” whose (it as string as lowercase contains “console”) of keys “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall” of (x32 registry;x64 registry)

Also, I personally think “console” is too wide of a range; if you’re specifically looking for vCenter you might as well just look for that directly instead of sorting by name after generating a bunch of rows in your DB tables.

Since vCenter comes in both Server and Converter versions, I would instead use the following relevance:

exists values “DisplayName” whose (it as string as lowercase contains “vcenter server”) of keys “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall” of (x32 registry;x64 registry)

As a final recommendation, I would argue that this is a good use case for BigFix Query; if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, it can be useful to query for information to help you narrow down your search as opposed to creating properties that has to populate the database before you can perform some kind of filtering.

In this case, you could issue a BigFix Query through WebUI looking for all DisplayName products where Publisher = VMWare:

(values “DisplayName” of it, values “DisplayVersion” of it) of keys whose ((it contains “vmware”) of (values “Publisher” of it as string as lowercase)) of keys “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall” of (x32 registry;x64 registry)

This would give you a better idea of the possible returns, allowing you to more accurately create a property containing just the data you want.

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