vtui noclue

vTUI: VMware vSphere inventory in the terminal

vTUI is a terminal UI for browsing VMware vSphere inventory from vCenter and standalone ESXi hosts. It uses vim_rs and the vSphere PropertyCollector API to render live inventory data in a Ratatui interface.

Install

Homebrew

brew install noclue/tap/vtui

winget

winget install noclue.vtui

Command line

macOS and Linux:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/noclue/vtui/releases/download/v0.2.3/vtui-installer.sh | sh

Windows PowerShell:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/noclue/vtui/releases/download/v0.2.3/vtui-installer.ps1 | iex"

Supported Platforms

• macOS: Apple Silicon (aarch64) and Intel (x86_64)
• Windows: ARM64 (aarch64) and x64 (x86_64)
• Linux: ARM64 (aarch64) and x64 (x86_64)

Features

• Browse vCenter and standalone ESXi inventory directly in your terminal
• Real-time inventory updates using the PropertyCollector API
• Full-text search with /
• Sort columns by pressing the column index key (0-9)
• Drill into child collections with shortcuts: v VMs, h Hosts, n Networks, d Datastores, t Tasks, e Events (where shown in the footer)
• Events (e): live recent-events table; Enter opens a read-only JSON tree for the selected event payload (not a managed-object property view). History and Backspace work across resource, live property, and static event-detail panes.
• VM and Host tables: CPU and memory sparklines (PerformanceManager samples), refreshed about every 20 seconds and when the visible set changes (e.g. search)
• Connection/about line shows API version and transport (JSON or SOAP)
• VM power actions (x on the Virtual Machine list): open a menu of power operations gated by the server’s disabledMethod list. Inventory path is resolved (govmomi-style) before the menu opens. All actions except Power On / Start require a confirmation showing VM name, path, and action. The UI only starts each operation (no task-wait or success banner); the live grid reflects state, and t still opens tasks for the selected VM. API failures show an error dialog (dismiss with Esc or Enter).
• Inspect raw vSphere properties for any object
• Export object properties to a timestamped JSON file with j
• Navigate backward through browsing history with Backspace
• Switch resource types with r
• File logging to logs/vtui.log

Configuration

vTUI can connect to both vCenter and standalone ESXi hosts. vim_rs 0.4.1 adds XML support, and VIM_PROTOCOL defaults to auto, so vTUI can use the right transport for the target endpoint.

.env file

Create a .env file in your working directory:

VIM_SERVER=vcsa.example.com
VIM_USERNAME=administrator@vsphere.local
VIM_PASSWORD=your-password
VIM_INSECURE=true
VIM_PROTOCOL=auto
LOG_LEVEL=info

Environment variables

• VIM_SERVER - Address of the vCenter or ESXi host
• VIM_USERNAME - Username for authentication
• VIM_PASSWORD - Password for authentication
• VIM_INSECURE - Set to true to ignore TLS certificate validation
• VIM_PROTOCOL - Transport mode: auto, json, or soap (defaults to auto)
• LOG_LEVEL - Optional log level: trace, debug, info, warn, error, or off
  • With LOG_LEVEL=debug, VM action prefetch logs to logs/vtui.log under targets vm_actions (steps: name(), disabled_method(), resolve_inventory_path) and inventory_path (PropertyCollector retrieve + path build). The error popup also includes anyhow context naming the failing step.
  • At LOG_LEVEL=trace, vSphere wire logs can include embedded NUL bytes in SOAP payloads; vTUI writes those as the two-character escape \0 so the log file stays plain text–friendly.

Usage

After installing a release build:

vtui

To build and run from source, ensure Rust 1.85 or newer is installed and run:

cargo run --bin vtui

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please fork the repository and submit a pull request with your improvements.