Foglight 5.9.5 - User Guide

This section provides instructions for logging in to Foglight and describes the Welcome page you see when you log in with the Operator or Advanced Operator role. It also introduces you to navigating the Foglight browser interface and discusses best practices for navigation.


	NOTE: Your Administrator may have configured Foglight so that the actual displays are different from those described in this chapter. The following information is intended as a general guide.

Perform these steps before following the instructions in this section:

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Obtain your Quest Foglight user name and password from your Administrator.

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Ensure that your Web browser has JavaScript functionality enabled.

Logging in to Foglight

This topic describes how to log in to the Quest Foglight browser interface.

To log in to Quest Foglight:

Open a Web browser instance.


	NOTE: For a list of browsers supported by Foglight, see the System Requirements and Platform Support Guide.

Navigate to a URL that uses the following syntax:

http://localhost:8080/

where localhost is the name of the machine that has a running instance of the Management Server.

The Quest Foglight login page appears.

Enter your user name and password in the login page.

This guide assumes that you are a user with the Operator or Advanced Operator role, in which case the Welcome to Quest Foglight page is the first dashboard you see when you log in to Quest Foglight.


	NOTE: The appearance of the Welcome page and the range of dashboards you can access from this page vary depending on your user role. If you have Administrator-level permissions, you can access advanced dashboards and configuration workflows. See the Administration and Configuration Guide. Users with the Operator role (but not the Administrator role) have permission to access a smaller set of dashboards. If you are a user who has a role or a role combination assigned to you that does not provide sufficient privileges to do anything useful in Foglight, a warning page is displayed. Contact your Quest Foglight Security Administrator to get additional roles assigned to your account or to request that a different home page be configured for you.

Starting from the Welcome Page

Foglight Users:

An Operator’s welcome page lists the following commonly-performed tasks:

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View, Acknowledge, and Clear Recent Alarms: View the state of all alarms across the entire Quest Foglight installation in the Alarms dashboard so you can take immediate action on them. The Alarms dashboard shows alarm counts by time, allowing you to identify excessive alarm counts or outage events. This link takes you to the Alarms dashboard. Another way to access this dashboard is by choosing Alarms under Homes on the navigation panel. See Viewing, Acknowledging, and Clearing Alarms on page 46.

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View Enterprise Health Organized by Monitoring Domain: View an end-to-end, top-level summary of all domains in the Domains dashboard and drill down to view their managed instances. This link takes you to the Domains dashboard. Another way to access this dashboard is by choosing Domains under Homes on the navigation panel. See Monitoring Your Domains on page 52.

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View the Health of Critical Services: Choose a level of service as a focal point by subscribing to services of interest and viewing their dependencies. This link takes you to the Service Operations console. Another way to access this dashboard is by choosing Services Operations Console under Homes on the navigation panel. For more information, see Monitoring Your Services on page 55.

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View the Health of the Monitored Hosts in Your Enterprise: View alarms and a high-level summary of performance on your monitored hosts. This link takes you to the Hosts dashboard. Another way to access the Hosts dashboard is by choosing Hosts under Homes on the Navigation panel. For more information, see Monitoring Your Hosts on page 62.

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Report on Your Enterprise: View reports that are scheduled, run a report using a report template, create a custom report, schedule a report to run at a specific time, and manage reports. This link takes you to the Reports dashboard. Another way to access this dashboard is by choosing Reports under Homes on the navigation panel. For more information on reports, see Reporting on Your Enterprise on page 66.

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Tap into the Foglight Community: Takes you to the foglight.org Web site, which discusses topics related to Application Management and Foglight.

The Welcome to Foglight page is your default home page. For instructions on changing your home page to a dashboard of your choice, see Choosing a Home Page.

Foglight Evolve Users:

When you log in to Foglight Evolve for the first time, the Getting Started tab of the Environment Overview page appears in the display area.


	NOTE: The General Access role is required to see the Foglight Welcome page.

This tab displays tiles based on the products that are installed.

From this tab, you can quickly perform a number of activities:

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Explore Hyper-V—access the Hyper-V Environment Overview page.

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Explore VMware—access the VMware Environment Overview page.

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Add Monitoring—add Hyper-V or VMware agents to your environment.

You can also obtain information about the status of your license for Quest Foglight. This status is indicated by messages displayed on the tile of the installed products. For more information on licenses, see the Administration and Configuration Guide.

In addition, the Getting Started provides several video tutorials and the Evaluation Guide which is intended for anyone who wants to perform a quick evaluation of the power and ease-of-use of Quest Foglight.

To access the Perspective views for any of the installed vFoglight cartridges, open the navigation panel, expand the Dashboard module, and click Perspective Selector > Perspective.

The Perspective dashboard provides a summary view of the different parts of your environment. Each perspective summarizes the key information related to a particular area of interest. Each perspective contains a section on the right side that shows the total number of alarms for each severity. Most perspectives also include a detailed view that list the number of objects (VMs, Hosts, and so on) within that environment, broken down by the entity’s alarm status. If a single object has multiple alarms, each alarm is counted. For this reason, the total number of alarms frequently exceeds the total number of objects with alarms.

Each perspective contains an Explore button. Click Explore to investigate the full details displayed in the VMware Environment dashboard.

Navigating Foglight

In addition to the links on the Welcome page, use the navigational aids described in the sections below to navigate Foglight.


	NOTE: Foglight displays dynamic data that is updated regularly. For this reason, avoid using your browser’s navigation buttons, as this may display cached views or result in an error message. Use the links in the navigation panel and display area instead.


	TIP: Visit http://eDocs.quest.com to watch our learning videos. See Introduction to the Foglight User Interface.

Using the Navigation Panel

Use the left-hand navigation panel to move between dashboards. This panel lists all dashboards that are available to you based on your roles. Expand a module and select a dashboard to view it in the display area (for example, Dashboards > Services > Service Levels).

Quest Foglight remembers the state of the navigation panel between logins, so if you collapse the navigation panel when you log out, it is collapsed the next time you log in.

Using the Breadcrumb Trail

The name of the current dashboard is displayed in bold at the top of the dashboard, at the end of a path called the breadcrumb trail.

Figure 1. An example of the breadcrumb trail.

When you move directly from one dashboard to another, the names of the previous dashboards are displayed in a breadcrumb trail.

Use the links in the breadcrumb trail to return to previously-viewed dashboards in a workflow or series of drilldowns.

Using Drilldowns

Use the graphical and text links in views to drill down to additional details that help you diagnose problems. Depending on the link, you drill down to a different dashboard or a smaller view called a popup that appears above the dashboard you are currently viewing.

You can drill down from many different parts of a view, including names of monitored components (such as hosts or services), the Explore links in a popup, and items like charts, tables, cylinders, and icons.

For example, in the Service Operations Console dashboard, click the icon in the Host tier column that indicates that the tier is in a fatal state (). An Outstanding Alarm(s) popup appears that lists the hosts in the tier. Drill down further into a host’s health or alarms to diagnose problems.

Using Bookmarks

Use bookmarks to keep track of dashboards and views that you want to revisit or access quickly, without having to drill down several levels. A bookmark can be a snapshot of data that is “frozen” at a specific point in time, or it can be updated with current data when you access it. For example, you could create a bookmark to quickly access the System Overview on a particular host from last Wednesday.

You create a bookmark by navigating to the dashboard you want to bookmark, selecting Bookmark from the action panel, and then selecting options from the Bookmark dialog box. See the online help for the Bookmark dialog box for details.

Figure 2. The Bookmark dialog box.