Vmware Monitor

Use this skill for safe, risk-free queries of VMware infrastructure — code-level enforced safety means no destructive operations exist in the codebase. Directly handles: a one-glance cross-cluster health summary, object-centered VM/host/datastore investigation drill-downs (correlating surrounding infrastructure + recent events), a cross-vCenter "what needs attention now?" rollup, list VMs/hosts/datastores/clusters, active alarms, recent events, VM details. Always use vmware-monitor when the user asks to "list VMs", "check vSphere alarms", "show host status", "is anything on fire", "what needs attention now", "what is happening around this VM/host/datastore", "investigate this VM" — or needs read-only VMware info before making changes. Do NOT use for any write operations — this skill is code-level read-only and cannot modify, create, or delete any resource. For VM modifications use vmware-aiops, for networking use vmware-nsx, for metrics/capacity use vmware-aria. For load balancing/AVI/AKO use vmware-avi.

VMware Monitor (Read-Only)

Disclaimer: This is a community-maintained open-source project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by VMware, Inc. or Broadcom Inc. "VMware" and "vSphere" are trademarks of Broadcom. Source code is publicly auditable at github.com/zw008/VMware-Monitor under the MIT license.

Read-only VMware vCenter/ESXi monitoring — 27 MCP tools, zero destructive code.

Code-level safety: This skill contains NO power, create, delete, snapshot, or modify operations. Not disabled — they don't exist in the codebase. Companion skills: vmware-aiops (VM lifecycle), vmware-storage (iSCSI/vSAN), vmware-vks (Tanzu Kubernetes), vmware-nsx (NSX networking), vmware-nsx-security (DFW/firewall), vmware-aria (metrics/alerts/capacity), vmware-avi (AVI/ALB/AKO), vmware-harden (compliance baselines). | vmware-pilot (workflow orchestration) | vmware-policy (audit/policy)

What This Skill Does

All 27 tools are read-only.

Category	Capabilities
Cluster Triage	One-glance cluster_health_summary — cross-cluster Problems/Capacity/Health rollup with an opinionated status; customizable view
Object Investigation	"What is happening around this VM / host / datastore?" — one correlated drill-down bundle per object, plus cross_vcenter_attention — one ranked "what needs attention now?" list across every configured vCenter
Inventory	List VMs, ESXi hosts, datastores, clusters, networks
Health	Active alarms, recent events (filter by severity/time), hardware sensors, host services
Performance	Real-time host & VM CPU/memory/disk/network utilisation (PerfManager)
Capacity	Datastore thin-provisioning over-commit, resource-pool reservation/usage
Infra Health	ESXi certificate expiry, license usage/expiry, NTP configuration health
Snapshots	Inventory-wide snapshot aging & sprawl (flag old snapshots)
Activity	In-flight tasks, active login sessions
VM Details	CPU, memory, disks, NICs, snapshots, guest OS, IP
Scanning	Scheduled alarm/log scanning with Slack/Discord webhooks

Quick Install

bash

uv tool install vmware-monitor
vmware-monitor doctor

When to Use This Skill

• List or search VMs, hosts, datastores, clusters
• Check active alarms or recent events
• Get detailed info about a specific VM
• Set up scheduled monitoring with webhook alerts
• Any read-only VMware query where safety is paramount

Alarm/Event Output: suggested_actions Field

get_alarms and get_events results include a suggested_actions list. Each item is a ready-to-use hint naming the correct companion skill and tool call (e.g. "vmware-aiops: acknowledge_vcenter_alarm(entity_name=..., alarm_name=...)"), so agents — especially smaller local models — can follow them directly without reasoning about skill routing. Example payload: references/capabilities.md.

Use companion skills for:

• Power on/off, deploy, clone, migrate --> vmware-aiops
• iSCSI, vSAN, datastore management --> vmware-storage
• Tanzu Kubernetes clusters --> vmware-vks
• Load balancing, AVI/ALB, AKO, Ingress --> vmware-avi

Related Skills — Skill Routing

User Intent	Recommended Skill
Read-only vSphere monitoring, zero risk	vmware-monitor ← this skill
Storage: iSCSI, vSAN, datastores	vmware-storage
VM lifecycle, deployment, guest ops	vmware-aiops
Tanzu Kubernetes (vSphere 8.x+)	vmware-vks
NSX networking: segments, gateways, NAT	vmware-nsx
NSX security: DFW rules, security groups	vmware-nsx-security
Aria Ops: metrics, alerts, capacity planning	vmware-aria
Multi-step workflows with approval	vmware-pilot
Compliance baselines (CIS / 等保 / PCI-DSS), drift detection, LLM remediation advisor	vmware-harden (uv tool install vmware-harden)
Load balancer, AVI, ALB, AKO, Ingress	vmware-avi (uv tool install vmware-avi)
Audit log query	vmware-policy (vmware-audit CLI)

Common Workflows

Diagnostic investigations: Before running any "why is X failing / down / abnormal" workflow, follow references/investigation-protocol.md. It enforces the four root-cause completeness criteria (falsifiability / sufficiency / necessity / mechanism) and the up-to-three-rounds deepening loop. Since vmware-monitor is read-only, it serves as the data source — actuation belongs to companion skills like vmware-aiops.

Cluster Health Check ("is anything on fire?" / "what's wrong right now?")

Judgment: this is the 5-second triage glance, not an Aria replacement. One call rolls every cluster's hosts, VM power, live CPU/memory and alarms up, flattens the individual anomalies into a ranked top-N focus list (top_issues), and gives each cluster an opinionated status. On a big fleet, lead with the focus list — scanning per-cluster rows is too slow.

1. One glance --> vmware-monitor summary (MCP: cluster_health_summary). Read top_issues first (worst first, each with a drill-down next step); the per-cluster table is context. issues_total shows how many anomalies existed before the top-N cap
2. Tighten or widen the focus --> --top 5 for the 5 most urgent, --top 20 for more, --top 0 to hide the list and just see the table
3. Drill into what the list points at --> e.g. a host_down row → inventory hosts; an alarm row → get_alarms; a capacity row → perf hosts / capacity datastores; scope with --cluster prod-a
4. Reshape the view on request --> the output ends with a friendly hint; the operator can say "add datastore free space", "drop the DRS column", "only show clusters needing attention", or "save this as an HTML page". Default layout, columns, and thresholds live in references/health-summary-template.md and are meant to be edited
5. Save an offline snapshot --> vmware-monitor summary --html writes a self-contained HTML file (no external assets, nothing uploaded) to ~/vmware-health/cluster-health-<vc>-<timestamp>.html; --html-path <file> for an explicit path. The timestamped filename means a folder of them becomes a browsable point-in-time history. It is a snapshot, not a live page — re-run to refresh
6. On a very large fleet --> add --no-vms to skip the VM rollup pass when you only need host/alarm/capacity signals
7. If it returns zero clusters --> the target may be a standalone ESXi host (no clusters); use inventory hosts + health alarms instead

Daily Health Check

Judgment: alarms tell you what vCenter has decided is wrong, events tell you what happened. They diverge — an event burst with no alarms often signals a metric threshold miscalibration, not "everything is fine." Read both.

1. Check alarms --> vmware-monitor health alarms --target prod-vcenter — focus on Red severity AND alarms older than 1 hour (transient ones self-clear)
2. Review recent events --> vmware-monitor health events --hours 24 --severity warning — look for repeated events from the same entity (a single event is noise; 50 events in an hour is a pattern)
3. List hosts --> vmware-monitor inventory hosts — flag hosts disconnected, in maintenance mode unexpectedly, or memory > 90%
4. If connection fails --> run vmware-monitor doctor to diagnose config/network issues

Object-Centered Investigation ("what is happening around this VM / host / datastore?")

Judgment: this is the drill-down the operator wants after triage points at a problem — one call correlates the object with its surrounding infrastructure and recent history, so you explain the aggregated result in operational language instead of stitching five tools yourself. The tool aggregates; you never dump raw inventory into the conversation.

Offer the levels progressively — do not ask for details the environment already fixes:

1. Start at the top --> cross_vcenter_attention (CLI: vmware-monitor attention) for "what needs attention now?" across every vCenter. If only one vCenter is configured, skip straight to its cluster_health_summary — no need to ask which target
2. Offer to drill into an object the top-issues list points at. Ask which level only when it is genuinely ambiguous:
   • a VM --> vm_investigation_bundle (CLI: vmware-monitor investigate vm <name>) → VM state, recent events, snapshots, alarms & recent changes, the host it runs on, the cluster context, the datastores backing it, performance signals, and a correlated event timeline
   • a host --> host_investigation_bundle (CLI: investigate host <name>) → host state, cluster context, the VMs it runs, mounted datastores, alarms, performance, correlated timeline
   • a datastore --> datastore_investigation_bundle (CLI: investigate datastore <name>) → capacity/free, mounting hosts, VMs it backs, alarms, correlated timeline
3. Widen or narrow on request --> --hours 72 for a longer event window; the bundle ends with a hint listing what is adjustable
4. Make it tangible --> add --html to any investigate/attention command for a self-contained offline snapshot (drill-down sections collapse/expand natively, no JS, nothing uploaded) written to ~/vmware-health/
5. If the object name is unknown --> the tool returns a teaching error naming exactly how to list the objects (list_virtual_machines / list_esxi_hosts / list_all_datastores); get the exact name and retry
6. If a vCenter is unreachable (attention only) --> it is listed under unreachable with a reason and the rest still aggregate — surface the gap, don't fail the whole view

Performance Triage ("the cluster feels slow")

Judgment: inventory shows configured capacity (cores, GB); it cannot tell you what is actually hot. Use the real-time perf tools, then narrow.

1. Rank hosts --> vmware-monitor perf hosts — the busiest host floats to the top (sorted by CPU%)
2. Rank VMs on the suspect --> vmware-monitor perf vms --limit 25 — find the noisy neighbour
3. Check for hidden storage pressure --> vmware-monitor capacity datastores — over-commit % > 100 means a thin datastore can fill mid-run even with "free" space showing
4. Rule out snapshot drag --> vmware-monitor snapshots aging --only-old — old snapshots silently degrade I/O
5. If perf tools return empty --> the host/VM may be disconnected or powered off (no real-time provider); confirm with inventory hosts / inventory vms

Scheduled-Outage Pre-flight (certs, licenses, time)

1. Cert expiry --> vmware-monitor infra certs --warn-days 60 — an expired ESXi cert drops host management
2. License headroom --> vmware-monitor infra licenses — catch over-allocation before it disables features
3. Time sync --> vmware-monitor infra ntp — healthy: no breaks SSO/Kerberos/log correlation (note: live offset is not exposed by the SOAP API, only config health)

Set Up Continuous Monitoring

1. Configure webhook in ~/.vmware-monitor/config.yaml
2. Start daemon --> vmware-monitor daemon start
3. Daemon scans every 15 min, sends alerts to Slack/Discord

Usage Mode

Scenario	Recommended	Why
Local/small models (Ollama, Qwen)	CLI	~2K tokens vs ~8K for MCP
Cloud models (Claude, GPT-4o)	Either	MCP gives structured JSON I/O
Automated pipelines	MCP	Type-safe parameters, structured output

MCP Tools (27 — all read-only)

Tool	Description
list_virtual_machines	List VMs with filtering (power state, sort, limit, folder_filter); each VM includes folder_path
list_esxi_hosts	ESXi hosts with CPU, memory, version, uptime
list_all_datastores	Datastores with capacity, free space, type
list_all_clusters	Clusters with host count, DRS/HA status
cluster_health_summary	One-glance triage across all clusters — ranked top_issues focus list + per-cluster rollup with opinionated status. Params: cluster_filter, include_vms, top_n. Render per references/health-summary-template.md
vm_investigation_bundle	"What is happening around this VM?" — correlated drill-down with a merged, newest-first event timeline (contents listed in the workflow above). Params: vm_name, hours. Aggregated in the tool; explain, don't dump raw
host_investigation_bundle	Same correlated drill-down around an ESXi host. Params: host_name, hours
datastore_investigation_bundle	Same correlated drill-down around a datastore. Params: datastore_name, hours
cross_vcenter_attention	"What needs attention now?" across every configured vCenter — one globally-ranked top_issues list (each tagged with its vcenter) + per-target rollup; unreachable targets degrade gracefully. Params: cluster_filter, top_n
list_all_networks	Networks with attached VM count and accessibility
get_alarms	All active/triggered alarms — includes suggested_actions remediation hints
get_events	Recent events filtered by severity and time — includes suggested_actions hints
get_host_sensors	Hardware sensor status (temperature/voltage/fan) per host with green/yellow/red health
get_host_services	Host service status (running state and startup policy), optionally filtered by host
vm_info	Detailed VM info (CPU, memory, disks, NICs, snapshots)
vm_list_snapshots	Snapshot list for one VM with nesting hierarchy (read-only)
host_performance	Real-time host CPU/mem/disk/net utilisation (PerfManager); busiest first
vm_performance	Real-time VM CPU/mem/disk/net utilisation (top 25 by default); powered-on only
snapshot_aging	Inventory-wide snapshot sweep with age + sprawl; flags snapshots older than N days
certificate_status	Per-host ESXi management certificate expiry (days until expiry, expiring flag)
license_status	vCenter/ESXi license inventory with used/total and expiration
ntp_status	Per-host NTP config health (servers + ntpd state); live offset not in SOAP API
datastore_capacity	Datastore over-commit (provisioned vs capacity); thin-provisioning risk
resource_pool_usage	Resource-pool CPU/memory reservation, limit, and current usage
active_tasks	In-flight (and recently completed) vCenter tasks with progress/errors
active_sessions	Currently authenticated vCenter/ESXi sessions (who is logged in)
host_log_scan	Scan recent ESXi host syslog (hostd/vmkernel/vpxa) for error/warning patterns; returns only matching lines, optionally filtered to one host

All tools are read-only. No tool can modify, create, or delete any resource. Performance/capacity readings are point-in-time samples — this skill retains no history, so it never reports a fabricated "trend" or runway date.

List result shape

The 20 row-listing tools above return the family list envelope {items, returned, limit, total, truncated, hint}, not a bare array. Read truncated before summarising: true means more rows exist — never call items the whole picture; false states the result is complete — including when items is empty, which means "checked, found none", not "the call failed". A null total (get_events, host_log_scan) is deliberate. Aggregate tools return purpose-built objects instead — field table and example payload: references/capabilities.md.

Read-Only by Design

All 27 tools here are reads — there is no write, create, or delete surface at all. Running with local or small models? See references/agent-guardrails.md.

CLI Quick Reference

bash

vmware-monitor summary [--top 10] [--cluster <substr>] [--no-vms] [--html | --html-path <f>] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor inventory vms [--target <t>] [--limit 20] [--power-state poweredOn]
vmware-monitor inventory hosts [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor inventory datastores [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor inventory clusters [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor inventory networks [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor health alarms [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor health events [--hours 24] [--severity warning]
vmware-monitor health sensors [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor health services [--host <esxi>] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor perf hosts [--host <esxi>] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor perf vms [--vm <name>] [--limit 25] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor capacity datastores [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor capacity pools [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor infra certs [--warn-days 30] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor infra licenses [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor infra ntp [--host <esxi>] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor snapshots aging [--threshold 30] [--only-old] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor activity tasks [--active-only] [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor activity sessions [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor vm info <vm-name> [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor scan now [--target <t>]
vmware-monitor daemon start|stop|status
vmware-monitor doctor [--skip-auth]

Full CLI reference: see references/cli-reference.md

Troubleshooting

Alarms returns empty but vCenter shows alarms

The get_alarms tool queries triggered alarms at the root folder level. Some alarms are entity-specific — try checking events instead: get_events --hours 1 --severity info.

"Connection refused" error

1. Run vmware-monitor doctor to diagnose
2. Verify target hostname/IP and port (443) in config.yaml
3. For self-signed certs: set disableSslCertValidation: true

Events returns too many results

Use severity filter: --severity warning (default) filters out info-level events. Use --hours 4 to narrow time range.

VM info shows "guest_os: unknown"

VMware Tools not installed or not running in the guest. Install/start VMware Tools for guest OS detection, IP address, and guest family info.

Doctor passes but commands fail with timeout

vCenter may be under heavy load. Try targeting a specific ESXi host directly instead of vCenter, or increase connection timeout in config.yaml.

Should I set environment: on a read-only skill?

You can — add environment: production (or staging, lab, your own label) to each target in ~/.vmware-monitor/config.yaml. It's an optional label; this skill has zero write tools, so nothing it exposes is ever gated by it — reads are never gated. It matters for the write skills (vmware-aiops, vmware-storage, vmware-nsx) pointed at the same vCenter: an environment-scoped deny rule in ~/.vmware/rules.yaml can match on the label to block their writes (e.g. freeze production). A target with no label is simply not matched by such a rule. Config example: references/setup-guide.md.

Setup

bash

uv tool install vmware-monitor
vmware-monitor init      # guided: prompts for host/user/password, writes config + .env (chmod 600), then verifies

init stores the password grep-safe (obfuscated b64:, never plaintext) and locks .env to 0600. Prefer it over hand-editing; manual steps: references/setup-guide.md.

All tools are automatically audited via vmware-policy. Audit logs: vmware-audit log --last 20

Full setup guide, security details, and AI platform compatibility: see references/setup-guide.md

Audit & Safety

All operations are automatically audited via vmware-policy (@vmware_tool decorator):

• Every tool call logged to ~/.vmware/audit.db (SQLite, framework-agnostic)
• Policy rules enforced via ~/.vmware/rules.yaml (deny rules, maintenance windows, risk levels)
• Risk classification: each tool tagged as low/medium/high/critical
• View recent operations: vmware-audit log --last 20
• View denied operations: vmware-audit log --status denied

vmware-policy is automatically installed as a dependency — no manual setup needed.

License

MIT — github.com/zw008/VMware-Monitor