How to get the specs of a server?

Question

I have a virtual machine and boss says "Hey, get me the specs on that server." Presumable because she wants to acquire a comparable one and will ask me to set it up from a backup of our current one.

What's a simple easy way to get the relevant specs?

The VMWare vSphere Client's Summary tab for the virtual machine is completely useless. It truncates all the strings such as the processor name and provides no way to see the whole string. Other settings provide only generic information such as the number of CPU cores.

I also don't know what "specs" she wants in particular, so your guess is as good as mine... whatever would be relevant for setting up a comparable virtual machine. I suppose as much information about the CPU type and speed as possible, network card and speed, OS, memory, disk sizes, etc.

I wish there was just a "getspecs" command I could run at the command line.

Answer 1

Coworker just recommended running "dxdiag" from the command line. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool pops up with a "System Information" group on the main tab, which displays:

• Computer Name: ~omitting~
• Operating System: Windows Server 2012 Datacenter 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200)
• Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
• System Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.
• System Model: VMware Virtual Platform
• BIOS: PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
• Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 0 @ 2.2GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
• Memory: 4096MB RAM
• Page file: 3579MB used, 1220MB available

But it doesn't show disk sizes or anything else.

Answer 2

My favorite way to do this is with RVtools. It is free and trusted, it connects to your vCenter server. It is easy to install connect and extract data for an number of VMs.

Helpful hints for RVtools find the view\filter at the top. You can highlight the data wanted and use cntl + c to copy or go to file and export. strong text

Also note that from Windows cmd C:\systeminfo is helpful for finding what you need.

Answer 3

Interesting question from your boss, but one that's largely irrelevant in the world of virtualisation.

The specification of your host servers is more relevant, that is, maintaining compatible processor families in your DRS cluster(s), e.g.: compatible EVC modes. Moving on from here, the next most relevant question is how much resource headroom you have; with RAM more often than not being more important that CPU bandwidth, disk I/O or network I/O.

So, if it's a capacity management exercise your boss is trying to address, I'd dig out the host specs (server make/model, #sockets, #cores, hyper-threading setting, EVC mode, physical RAM, #NICs, #HBAs), and their associated loadings, over, say a seven day period.

If it's merely a VM spec she's after, then guest O/S, RAM allocation, number of vCPUs, CPU shares/limits, memory shares/limits should suffice.

All of this is available through vCenter, although not in one place. My preference here is PowerCLI - you can quickly gather all of the above using the VMware cmdlets, such as Get-VMHost, Get-VM. Further information can be gathered using the ".NET views", e.g.:

Connect-ViServer -Server "vcenter-host";
$objGuest = Get-VM -Name "myguestname";
$objGuestView = Get-View -id $objGuest.id;
$objGuest | Format-List;
$objGuestView | Format-List;

The above code is a simple example. Shout if you'd like more info.

Answer 4

I would recommend exporting a list. Filter as needed, export to Excel, email to boss and call it a day. And, of course, there are scripts and tools that do essentially the same thing, but I can't imagine why an exported list such as from that link wouldn't be sufficient for the boss.