Boomerang Fling – Handy Little App

Check out Boomerang, a handy little piece of fling from VMware Labs http://labs.vmware.com/flings/boomerang

It runs in the windows taskbar and allows you to add ESX/i and vCenter Servers to do some basic management of guest VMs without having to open the vSphere client. Using the app you can power off/on, suspend, or reset VMs. The app also allows you to quickly connect to a VM’s console using the VMware Remote Console. You can browse a list of VMs in inventory or you can “Favorite” VMs to keep them at the top of the list for quick access.

Couple of minor things that would be nice in a future release. First off the app shows templates as guests, would be nice to filter these out (especially if you have a number of templates) – this is easy to overcome by setting VMs you access frequently as Favorites. The second bigger issue is there is no quick way to tell what VMs are powered on or off, making the VM link a different color or adding a small image to indicate power would be extremely helpful.

Still pretty handy for quick access to VMs without needing to open the full vSphere Client. Download the Boomerang fling from here.

(The image above was borrowed from the Boomerang Fling page)