vCenter Support assistant 5.5 was realeased by VMware Yesterday 29th January, 2014.
This support assistant is one of those should have tools in VMware environments. It accelerates the support process and also provides proactive alerting about the things that might go wrong with your environment.
Its is a free vSphere Web Client plug-in that can collect support bundles on а regular basis, analyzing your environment and sending you alerts and recommended fixes for potentially emerging problems.
Imagine how easier it will be if you could identify( actually the vCenter support Assistant will proactively identify) issues and create a SR right from your vCenter using the vSpher client or the web client. Its one of the most useful tool all the critical production environments should have. The data that is sent to the VMware support engineers is protected and safe.
This latest release builds on the previous release’s ability to open and manage support requests directly in the vSphere Web Client. vCenter Support Assistant 5.5 introduces new functionality that automates the process of collecting and uploading ESXi and vCenter Server support bundles, and matches this data to a continuously updated list of known customer issues to provide you with proactive alerts and recommended fixes. Furthermore, diagnostic support data is transmitted over either HTTPS or FTP and is sent directly to VMware without going through intermediaries.
The download is available at vCenter Support Assistant 5.5 Download
The User Guide for vCenter Support Assistant can be downloaded here
The Installation and configuration guide can be found here
Every Vmware administrator should be deploying this support assistant to save time in creating SR’s and also to stay alerted about any issue that is going to pop out uninformed.