When you have to kind of oversee all things VMware vSphere it helps to know what’s out there on your network. Typically in a large organization if someone installs ESX, there is going to be a vCenter to manage it. And up until vSphere 5, vCenter would be installed on a Windows server. Here is one way to at least find those vCenter servers on your network and your duty is to know. This could be because you deal with all the licenses, have to audit, you possibly have to enforce standards, all the above, etc.
Now assuming you have SCCM from Microsoft with group policies to enforce all windows systems have the agents and are in SCCM running a report to find vCenter installations is a snap. Going to the reports viewer page which looks like this.
From here your going to want to find “Custom Software - Companies and Products” and expand the report group. Next find and select “Computers with specific software registered in Add Remove Programs (including version/accepts wildcards)” as shown below.
Now the right side of the above screen “Report Information” will change to look like whats shown below.
Now we need to fill in “Software Title” with “VMware%Center%Server” without the quotes. Then click the “Values..” button for the “Collection ID” and find the “All Windows Server Systems” and select it or take note of the Collection ID and place it in the appropriate field as shown below.
Now just click the “Display” icon link to generate the report. This should produce a report similar to whats shown below that can be exported to excel or printed out.
Now your on the way to getting more visibility to what you have on your network that pertains to VMware vSphere. Now whether you have access or not will be another question.
