The VMware ESX service console may be going away, but people still want to execute scripts and run agents on their hosts. VMware's VIMA allows you to do just that. For the many organizations that have been using VMware ESX for a while now, there is a certain level of familiarity and comfort with the ESX Service Console (COS). Unfortunately, with the introduction of ESXi and the forward-looking road map and direction of removing the COS from ESX as well, some may be wondering where this leaves them. After all, what happens to those scripts that you’ve worked on for years? What happens to the agents that were installed by third-party software? VMware has quietly released an answer to those questions. And it’s done so with a free download called VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant, or VIMA.VIMA is a virtual appliance packaged as OVF and includes pre-packaged software. It is distributed, maintained, and supported by VMware. The appliance is a 64-bit Linux distribution that administrators and developers can use to run scripts and agents in order to manage both ESX and ESXi systems. That’s right, it not only offers a solution for ESXi systems that don’t have a service console, but it also offers an alternative for existing ESX systems that do have a COS. VMware says VIMA is more secure than the service console and is therefore a good alternative solution for ESX servers. VIMA includes VMware Tools, Java JRE version 1.5, the VI Perl Toolkit, and the VMware Infrastructure Remote CLI. In addition, it also includes two new components: the vi-fastpass authentication component and the vi-logger logging component. The VMware Infrastructure authentication component (vi-fastpass) supports unattended authentication to an ESX/ESXi host. After vi-fastpass has been enabled, applications can use VI APIs through the Remote CLI, the VI Perl Toolkit, or the VMware SDK. vi-fastpass allows direct connection to established target servers by creating two users on the host server: vi-admin (with administrator privileges) and vi-user (read-only privileges). vi-logger consists of a logger daemon that allows you to collect logging information from ESX and ESXi hosts according to a specified log policy. It then stores that information on VIMA for analysis. You can find out more information and download VIMA from VMware’s Web site. This free download is available now. Software Development