Inventory VMware

Question

Our current VM infrastructure runs on VMware.  I'm curious if anyone knows of a way to inventory the ESXi Hosts.  I realize the SCCM Client wouldn't actually install on ESX to inventory directly, but the client does install on the windows server
which runs vCenter, and vCenter has all of the host details.  Is there a way to get that information into SCCM?
I know there is the v_GS_VIRTUAL_MACHINE view in the database, and it seems to list some information like Physical Host, but only for Hyper-V systems.
Has anyone been able to get this to work?  My guess would be that if the vCenter information were in a WMI class that a MOF edit could be made to get it into inventory.  It would be nice to get information like what physical host a VM is running
on, what are it's hardware specs, and possibly other details.

Answer 1

Last I heard (which granted, was over a year ago) there was no way that a client could tell you "i'm on ESX Host called "ServerBob"".  and you are right, v_gs_virtual_machine is only for hyper-v--because hyper-v clients will offer that information (VMware
clients don't)
That said... since you suspect the information is in vCenter, where on that system is recorded "and here are my clients, these clients are these specific computers in Active Directory called ..."  The last I heard about that (querying that) I wasn't
encouraged about 'the where' for that information--it was made to sound like it was virtually impossible to pull out.  Of course; the main problem was I don't have any rights to the ESX Hosts here, to poke around and find the information. 
You could try to approach VMware yourself; and see what they say.  Although perhaps instead of asking them "how to I get this information using ConfigMgr Inventory", what you need to ask is something like... "I would like a Powershell script to enumerate
that information".  <wink>  Once we have the powershell script; then possibilities open up.
Standardize. Simplify. Automate.