Have you ever needed a quick way to discover any and all virtual machines in your environment that have a mounted ISO? An example of this would be you are going to be performing an ESXi or VXRail upgrade and need the ability to migrate VMs from one host to another as part of maintenance mode. Below I will walk you through creating a metric to identify VM’s with a mounted ISO and how to turn that metric into a report that can be run.
How to Create the Metric
Go to Dashboards > Views > New View
Provide the View a name and description to help find in the future.
Select list under Presentation
Under subject select vCenter Adapter > Virtual Machine
![Machine generated alternative text:
v 4 _ Data
Select data
Metrics
Virtual Machine
g] Capacity Analytics Generated
g] Configuration
g] Cost
> B] cpu
g] CPU Utilization for Resources
g] Datastore
g] Disk Space
g] Disk Space usage on Datastore
g] Guest
Guest File System
g] Memory
Memory usage on Host
Network
g] Physical Disk
g] Storage](https://i0.wp.com/digitalthoughtdisruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/6-1.png?resize=359%2C520&ssl=1)
Change Metrics to Properties
![Machine generated alternative text:
v 4 _ Data
Select data
Virtual Machine
Properties v
> g] Configuration
> B] CPU
> Memory
> g] Network
> g] Runtime
v Summary
> Configuration
> Custom Tag
Datastore(s)
v Guest System
Guest OS Full Name
Object Name 2
Object Name 3
Object Name 4
Object Name 5
Data
Data
Property Value 2
Property Value 3
Property Value 4
Property Value 5
Value 2
Value 3
Value 4
Value S
Value 2
Value 3
Value 4
Value S
Summary
Configuration
I - IS of IS items
Time Settings
Breakdown by
Transformation
Filter
Drag the data to include in the view.](https://i0.wp.com/digitalthoughtdisruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/7-2.png?fit=810%2C266&ssl=1)
Navigate to Summary > Guest Operating System > Guest OS Full Name
![Machine generated alternative text:
Select data
Virtual Machine
Properties v
> g] Configuration
> B] CPU
> Memory
> g] Network
> g] Runtime
v Summary
> Configuration
> g] Custom Tag
Datastore(s)
v Guest System
Guest OS Full Name
Guest OS IP Address
Hostname
Tools Running Status
Tools Version
Tools Version Status
> 5. Visibility
Object Name 4
Object Name 5
Data
Data
Property Value 4
Property Value 5
Value 4
Value S
Time Settings
Filter
Value 4
Value S
Summary
Breakdown by
Transformation
SummarylGuest Operating SystemlG„_ Current
Drag the data to include in the view.
Configuration
General:
Metric name:
Metric
units:
Sort order:
I - IS of IS items
SummarylGuest
Summary'Guest O
None
Transformation:
Current
No Timestamp
Show advanced settings
CANCEL
SAVE](https://i2.wp.com/digitalthoughtdisruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/8-2.png?fit=810%2C390&ssl=1)
Then drag and drop that property into the view plane
This section is good and next we click on Time Settings
I leave it at 7 days
I leave Breakdown by blank
We need to change Metrics to Properties
Navigate to Configuration > Security > Disconnect CD-ROM
Under Select put : is
Under Property Value type: false
Then click save
How to Turn Metric into Report
On the left plane you can click Reports
Select New Template
Give the Report a name and description
Filter for the keyword ISO and select the View we created earlier and drag it to the right plane
I select both PDF and CSV and click Save
Run the newly created report
Click Run
Select the Object – this could be a datacenter, cluster, vCenter or the entire vSphere World.
Then Click OK and the report will run
It will say Running until it completes then click on generated reports
Here is your report
You have the ability to download the PDF or CSV depending on how you like to perform your reporting. I always download both.
Summary:
As you can see there are a lot of parts to generate this custom report but it is worth it when it you need to pull this information rapidly. As always, I hope y’all found this helpful.