VMware AIops

VMware AIops

For a read-only check of this skill with your model and agent host, use the shared model-fit self-test in the marketplace root.

Author: Wei Zhou, VMware by Broadcom — wei-wz.zhou@broadcom.com

This is a community-driven project by a VMware engineer, not an official VMware product.

For official VMware developer tools see developer.broadcom.com.

English | 中文

AI-powered VMware vCenter/ESXi VM lifecycle and deployment tool — 61 tools.

Companion skills handle everything else:

| Skill | Scope | Install |

|-------|-------|---------|

| [vmware-monitor](https://github.com/vmware-skills/VMware-Monitor) | Read-only: inventory, health, alarms, events, metrics | uv tool install vmware-monitor |

| [vmware-storage](https://github.com/vmware-skills/VMware-Storage) | Datastores, iSCSI, vSAN management | uv tool install vmware-storage |

| [vmware-vks](https://github.com/vmware-skills/VMware-VKS) | Tanzu Namespaces, TKC cluster lifecycle | uv tool install vmware-vks |

Need read-only monitoring only? Use VMware-Monitor — zero destructive code in the codebase.

Upgrading to 2.0

2.0 renames 38 of its MCP tools so every name starts with a verb (e.g. cluster_add_host → add_cluster_host, cluster_configure → configure_cluster, cluster_create → create_cluster). The full old → new table is in RELEASE_NOTES.md. Nothing else changes: same tools, parameters, safety gates and CLI commands. If an agent prompt, script or ~/.vmware/rules.yaml names a tool, update it (but not the action words in saved plan files — cluster_add_host, storage_rescan and the like are plan actions, not tool names, and keep their spelling) — though deny rules written with the old names keep working with vmware-policy ≥ 1.18 (vmware-audit policy lists any rule the renames widened), and vmware-pilot ≥ 1.13 translates old names in saved workflows. If an install older than 2.0 shares that rules.yaml, give it vmware-policy ≥ 1.18.2 too: it matches each rule against both the old and the new name, so one file serves both.

⚡ Quick Investigation Reports (read-only)

Triage → investigate → act, all in one conversation. Five opinionated read-only reports aggregate and correlate server-side and hand back a high-signal result (never raw inventory), so you can decide *where to look* before changing anything. Each renders a self-contained offline HTML snapshot with --html (no external assets; drill-down detail collapses in native , zero JavaScript). All delegate to the vmware-monitor library using AIops's own vCenter connection.

vmware-aiops attention                            # what needs attention now, all vCenters

vmware-aiops investigate vm web-01 --hours 72 # everything around a VM, then act on it vmware-aiops investigate vm web-01 --html # → offline snapshot in ~/vmware-health/

Via MCP these are the tools get_cluster_health_summary, get_cross_vcenter_attention, investigate_vm, investigate_host, investigate_datastore. (Requires vmware-monitor installed.)

Quick Install (Recommended)

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Trae, and 30+ AI agents:

# Via Skills.sh

npx skills add vmware-skills/VMware-AIops

Via ClawHub

clawhub install @zw008/vmware-aiops

PyPI Install (No GitHub Access Required)

# Install via uv (recommended)

uv tool install vmware-aiops

Or via pip

pip install vmware-aiops

China mainland mirror (faster)

pip install vmware-aiops -i https://pypi.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/simple

Offline / Air-Gapped Install (from source)

This project uses the modern PEP 517 build system (hatchling), so there is no `setup.py` by design — that is expected, not a missing file. If you cloned the source and hit ERROR: File "setup.py" or "setup.cfg" not found ... editable mode currently requires a setuptools-based build, your pip is older than 21.3 and cannot do an *editable* (-e) install with a non-setuptools backend. Editable mode is a developer convenience, not needed to run the tool — do one of:

# From the source tree — a normal (non-editable) install builds a wheel:

pip install . # NOT pip install -e .

...or upgrade pip first, and editable works too:

pip install --upgrade pip && pip install -e .

For a truly air-gapped host, build the wheels on a connected machine and copy them over — the target then needs no network:

# On a connected machine, collect this package + its dependencies as wheels:

pip wheel . -w dist # → dist/*.whl (or: uv build, for just this package)

Copy dist/ to the air-gapped host, then install offline:

pip install --no-index --find-links dist vmware-aiops

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Why this over other VMware MCP servers

Most open-source VMware MCP servers (e.g. bright8192/esxi-mcp-server, giuliolibrando/vmware-vsphere-mcp-server) are single-vCenter VM wrappers: list/power/snapshot a VM, basic monitoring, a confirm=True flag. They explicitly do not cover networking, storage, Kubernetes, ops analytics, load balancing, or compliance — and "logging is documented" is not an audit trail.

This is one skill in an 11-package family that covers the whole estate and runs every tool through a governed harness:

If you only ever power-cycle VMs in one vCenter, a single-file server is fine. If you run a real (regulated, NSX-segmented, multi-domain) VMware estate and need an AI operator an auditor can sign off on, that's what this family is for — see docs/compliance-ready.md.

Capabilities Overview

What This Skill Does

CLI vs MCP: Which Mode to Use

Rule of thumb: Use CLI for cost efficiency and small models. Use MCP for structured automation with large models.

Architecture

User (Natural Language)

↓ AI CLI Tool (Claude Code / Gemini / Codex / Aider / Continue / Trae / Kimi) ↓ reads SKILL.md / AGENTS.md / rules ↓ vmware-aiops CLI ↓ pyVmomi (vSphere SOAP API) ↓ vCenter Server ──→ ESXi Cluster ──→ VM or ESXi Standalone Host ──→ VM

Version Compatibility

pyVmomi auto-negotiates the API version during SOAP handshake — no manual configuration needed. The same codebase manages 7.0 / 8.0 / 9.0 / 9.1 environments seamlessly.

Official Broadcom References

• SDKs: https://developer.broadcom.com/sdks — VCF Python SDK (recommended for VCF 9+, bundles pyVmomi + vSAN SDK), vSphere Automation SDK for Python (REST APIs)
• REST APIs: https://developer.broadcom.com/xapis — vSphere Automation API, VCF API, SDDC Manager API
• CLI Tools: https://developer.broadcom.com/tools — PowerCLI 9.1, ESXCLI, OVF Tool

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Common Workflows

Deploy a Lab Environment

1. Browse datastore for OVA images → vmware-aiops datastore browse --pattern "*.ova"
2. Deploy VM from OVA → vmware-aiops deploy ova ./image.ova --name lab-vm --datastore ds1
3. Install software inside VM → vmware-aiops vm guest-exec lab-vm --cmd /bin/bash --args "-c 'apt-get install -y nginx'" --user root
4. Create baseline snapshot → vmware-aiops vm snapshot-create lab-vm --name baseline
5. Set TTL for auto-cleanup → `vmware-aiops vm set-ttl la