esxRanger is a product from VizionCore that allows you to create backups of a virtual machine's vmdk file while it is running. You run the product from a Windows machine which makes it very easy. Check some of the screenshots below:

The product can be used entirely from the GUI or command line.

We did some tests with the product and it works as advertised. We only had one issue: the rights to the restored vmx file were not properly set. The root user did not have execute rights on the file, which prevented us from opening a remote console.

There are built-in scripts and other free scripts on the net that can do the same thing but using those requires a bit more knowledge. The advantage of VizionCore (over free tools from the net) is of course that there is a support structure behind it which makes it more suitable for enterprise use.

Technorati : esx, vmware

VMWare ESX has the vmkusage tool to collect and display performance data. When vmkusage is configured with vmkusagectl install, it will schedule cron jobs to get the performance data and to generate graphs. You can see the performance data using http://esxserver/vmkusage.

The freeware tool vmktree uses the same performance data but displays it better (screenshot). While the graphs in vmkusage are generated every 5 minutes, the graphs in vmktree are generated real-time. An interesting feature is realtime stats. It shows the result of esxtop in a browser window every x minutes.

Technorati : vmware virtualization