Export virtual machine list
Solution 1:
In the Windows VMware vSphere Client program --
Select your Datacenter, cluster or host.
Select the Virtual Machines tab.
Right click an empty area of the window and select "Export List".
Type a file name and click the "Save" button.
Done.
Note that the default file type when exporting the list is htm/html but you can change it to xls or csv (among others).
Solution 2:
PowerCLI:
Add-PSSnapin Vim.VMwareAutomation.Core
Connect-VIServer $vCenterServer
Get-VM | Select -Property Name | Set-Content listOfVMs.txt
Somthing similar to that should get you started.
Solution 3:
Edit: it's 2016 now and I still have to deal with these. I now think that cronjobs on the hosts are not reliable at all. The tool I now use to get lists and run basic tasks is govc, vmware's official open source project written in go (cross platform, single binary): https://github.com/vmware/govmomi/blob/master/govc/README.md
I have a cronjob doing this for me on a regular basis (ESXi comes with ESXi shell which might be more familiar for Linux users).
The command is
vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms | grep -v Vmid | awk "{print \$2}"
grep here just removes the header.
Both shell and ssh server should be enabled in order for this to work.
I also run this command before running ghettoVCB so that I always backup all of the machines, no matter if any of them had been migrated or created recently.
Solution 4:
In the bottom right of the main virtual machine screen there is an icon to export as a csv. you can select all the items or just one. it allows you to select the different columns for the export also.