Snow Software Commander may be configured to scan your guests to retrieve information about their resources. For all guests, the following information is retrieved:

• Free Disk Space (%)
• Free Disk Space (GB)
• Logical Disk Size (GB)
• Physical Disk Size (GB)
• Unallocated Disk Space (GB)
• Unpartitioned Disk Space (GB)

Commander also pulls disk space properties for Windows and Linux VMs directly from VMware tools. The exceptions to this rule are Linux and FreeBSD VMs with XFS partitions. In this case, VMware Tools do not calculate disk space values.

Additionally, the following information is retrieved for Windows guests:

• Installed Applications and Hotfixes
• Windows Services
• Last Deployed
• Last Logon Time
• Last Logon User
• Memory Limit (GB)
• Powered off Since
• Used Storage (GB)

In order to gather this information, Commander connects to each guest on demand or as part of a scheduled task. You can confirm the success of the scheduled task manually, or schedule a saved search to deliver an audit of the failures via email.

Manually Auditing Scan Failures

Whenever you run a guest OS scan manually, the Tasks pane shows you the results. A Status of Failed indicates that, for at least one of the guests, no data was retrieved.
 

Double click the row to view the details. The Description field provides details on why no data was retrieved. This most typically occurs when VMs are powered down or there are authentications issues that need to be resolved.
 

Automatically Auditing Scan Failures

You can also schedule a saved search showing the results to be delivered following each scheduled guest OS scan.
 

To do so, follow the steps below.

1. Select Search under the Tools menu.
2. Using the Help Me Find slider, choose Events.
3. Select an appropriate Location for your needs. To receive results across your entire infrastructure, leave the default choice Global selected.
4. Set up the filters Type > equals > Guest OS Scan Fail, Description > doesn’t contain > isn’t powered on, and Time > during > Last 24 Hours.
5. Click Search.
6.  A positive result indicating all scans are completing successfully, excluding those VMs that were not available during the scan, is indicated by 0 Events Found.
   
7. Click Schedule.
8. Enter a Name and choose a category for the scheduled search. Click Next.
   
9. On the Notifications page, provide the recipients for the email and choose which options you want for the email. Click Next.
10. On the Results Details page, click Next.
11. On the Scheduling page, choose when the saved search will be run. Make sure you are scheduling it to follow your scheduled guest OS scans within 24 hours. Click Next.
12. Click Finish.