RVTools, and what its spreadsheet is actually telling you
Almost every VMware estate assessment starts the same way: someone runs RVTools, exports a workbook with thirty tabs, and then stares at it. This is the reference we wanted when we were doing that, what the tool is, what each tab means, and which twelve columns actually decide how hard your migration will be.
What RVTools is
RVTools is a free Windows utility that connects to VMware vCenter Server (or directly to an ESXi host) through the vSphere web services API, walks the entire inventory, and writes it out as an Excel workbook. One worksheet per object type: virtual machines on vInfo, physical hosts on vHost, virtual disks on vDisk, snapshots on vSnapshot, and roughly two dozen more.
That is the whole product. There is no agent, no database, no server component, and no scheduled service unless you build one. You run an executable, type in a vCenter address and credentials, and get a spreadsheet. Its usefulness comes entirely from completeness: it captures fields that the vSphere Client shows only one VM at a time, which turns questions that would take a week of clicking into a filter and a pivot table.
It is read-only by design. RVTools issues query calls against the API and has no code path that writes, reconfigures, or powers anything. This is why it is one of the few third-party tools that infrastructure teams will generally allow against production vCenter, and why a read-only service account is enough to run it.
Who maintains it, and why that changed
Rob de Veij wrote RVTools and maintained it independently for around fifteen years, distributing it free from robware.net. In 2023, Dell Technologies acquired the tool, with Rob continuing to support it as part of the Dell team. Dell said at the time that it intended to keep RVTools available as a free public download, and it has remained free since.
This matters for two practical reasons. First, the authorized download sources are now Dell's own site alongside robware.net and rvtools.com; anything else is a lookalike, and lookalike RVTools domains have been used to distribute malware. Second, an ownership change on the de facto standard VMware inventory tool is the kind of thing worth knowing about if your organization has a software-approval process. We cover both in is RVTools safe to run.
Primary reference: the tool's own home at robware.net ↗ and Dell's RVTools page ↗. Download only from those, and verify the file hash before you run it.
Why an inventory tool became a migration tool
RVTools was built for capacity planning and health checks, not for leaving VMware. It became a migration tool by accident, because after Broadcom's licensing changes the first question every team had to answer was "what exactly do we have, and how much of it is Broadcom going to bill us for?" Both answers are in an RVTools export.
The licensing answer lives on vHost: physical cores per host, summed across the estate, is the number per-core subscriptions bill against (subject to the per-CPU core minimum). The difficulty answer is scattered across vInfo, vDisk, vSnapshot, vUSB and vCD, because the things that break a migration are configuration edge cases: raw device mappings, shared-bus disks, fault-tolerant pairs, USB passthrough, independent-mode disks, and open snapshot chains. None of those show up in a VM count. All of them show up in the export, if you know which column to look at.
That is the gap this reference fills. Reading the export is a skill, and it is the difference between "we have 900 VMs" and "we have 900 VMs, 14 of which will need a maintenance window and a storage engineer."
The rest of this reference
- How to run RVTools against vCenter. Prerequisites, the read-only service account you should be using instead of an admin login, and the command-line switches for scheduled exports.
- Reading the RVTools export, tab by tab. What each of the ~30 tabs actually answers, which columns matter, and the handful of fields that decide how hard a migration will be.
- When the export fails. Login failures, TLS handshake errors, empty tabs, timeouts on large estates, and the Excel row ceiling, with the cause behind each.
- Is RVTools safe to run?. The read-only question, the May 2025 trojanized-installer incident, how to verify what you downloaded, and how to handle the export itself.
If you already have an export and want the blocker list without doing the reading, drop the file into the RVTools analyzer. It parses the workbook in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and it returns the licensing core count and a prioritized list of the VMs that will fight the migration.
Frequently asked
What is RVTools used for?
RVTools connects to vCenter Server or a standalone ESXi host and dumps the entire inventory to a spreadsheet: every VM, host, datastore, network, snapshot, and disk, with their configuration. Administrators use it for capacity reporting, licensing audits, health checks, and, increasingly, for scoping a migration off VMware.
Is RVTools free?
Yes. It has always been distributed free of charge, and Dell stated when it acquired the tool that it intends to keep RVTools available as a no-cost public download.
Who makes RVTools now?
Rob de Veij wrote and maintained RVTools independently for roughly 15 years. Dell Technologies acquired it in 2023, and Rob continued supporting the tool as part of the Dell team. It is still distributed free.
Does RVTools change anything in my environment?
No. RVTools authenticates against the vSphere web services API and issues read calls only. It has no write path: it cannot power a VM on or off, edit a configuration, or delete a snapshot. The practical risks are the credentials you hand it and the sensitivity of the spreadsheet it produces, not the tool modifying your estate.
Does RVTools work without vCenter?
Yes. You can point it directly at an individual ESXi host, though you then get only that host's inventory and lose the cluster, DRS, and vCenter-level objects. For anything beyond a single host, connect to vCenter.
What file does RVTools produce?
An .xlsx workbook (or CSV files) with one worksheet per inventory area, named vInfo, vHost, vDisk, vSnapshot and so on. That workbook is the input our analyzer reads.