Step-by-step guide
From RVTools to your licensing report
About 15 minutes end to end, using a tool your VMware team probably already runs. Nothing to install on our side, nothing agent-based.
- 1
Download RVTools — from the official site only
RVTools is a free VMware reporting tool by Dell. Download it only from the official site: robware.net. If your VMware team already has RVTools installed, skip to step 2.
In 2025, attackers distributed a trojanized RVTools installer through lookalike domains and search ads. Type the address directly, don't click ads, and verify the installer's checksum against the one published on the official site before running it.
- 2
Run RVTools against your vCenter
Launch RVTools and connect with a read-only vCenter account — it needs nothing more. It will enumerate your clusters, hosts, and VMs in a few minutes, even for large environments.
- 3
Export all tabs to Excel
Use File → Export all to Excel and save the .xlsx file. We read the vInfo tab (VMs: name, CPUs, memory, guest OS, host, cluster) and the vHost tab (hosts: sockets, cores per socket, memory, cluster). Exporting all tabs is fine — we ignore the rest. Powered-off VMs and templates are excluded automatically during analysis.
- 4
Review before you upload (optional, encouraged)
Open the file and look at what's in it — that's your data and you should know what you're sharing. We don't read annotation or notes columns, but we encourage deleting them anyway; RVTools annotations often contain ticket numbers and owner names. What we use is listed field-by-field on our security page, and our terms commit that your data is never disclosed to Microsoft, resellers, or auditors.
- 5
Enter your agreement details (recommended)
Before uploading, take five minutes on the License Agreements page in your dashboard: agreement start date, term, and owned license counts from your Microsoft CPS. With it, your report uses your real prices and your true-up calendar instead of list-price estimates — and shows owned-vs-required for every product. You can skip this and add it later; reports recalculate.
- 6
Upload and get your report
Sign in, go to your dashboard, and upload the .xlsx. Your report generates immediately: current-state licensing for every host first, then consolidation suggestions you can accept, reject, and export as a migration plan. If the upload fails, send us the error message via the Support tab — during the pilot, upload issues get fixed same-day.
What RVTools can't tell us
RVTools doesn't carry SQL Server editions — SQL findings from an RVTools-only upload are marked as inferred. Our winsqlscan collector reads editions directly from each SQL host's registry and turns those inferences into evidence. The strongest audit uses both: RVTools for the VM-to-host topology, the collector for SQL truth.