Foglight for VMware 5.6.16 - User and Reference Guide

Foglight™ for VMware uses the VMware Performance Agent to collect information from monitored environments. Creating a VMware Performance Agent instance creates the agent process on the Agent Manager host. Activating the VMware Performance Agent starts that agent process while starting an agent instance’s data collection enables the agent to start collecting data from the monitored vCenter® and to send it to Foglight for VMware.

When the VMware Performance Agent package is successfully deployed, create one or more agent instances, activate them, and start their data collection. To perform these steps in a single operation for one or more monitored hosts, use the Agents view on the Administration tab.

Each VMware Performance Agent monitors a single Virtual Center. When you create a VMware Performance Agent instance and the Agent Setup wizard determines that the Virtual Center was not previously monitored by this Foglight instance, it starts importing historical data into Foglight. This data is not immediately available as it takes some time to collect it. This process can import data collected over 30 days or less, depending on the amount of data available in the Virtual Center. This allows you to explore VMware metrics as soon as the data is imported, instead for waiting for the agent to collect some data from the Virtual Center. The Metric History column in the Agents table indicates the progress of the historical data import. Historical data is intended for charting, trending, and general presentation purposes. It does not cause any alarms to fire.

To import vCenter historical data, the minimum recommended vCenter Statistics Levels must be at least 2 in the samples that are collected for one month for the agent to populate 30 days of historic collections. The following table lists the minimum Statistics Levels for all collection frequencies. For more information about vCenter Statistics levels, see your VMware® documentation.

Table 2. Statistics Levels for all collection frequencies
Collection Interval	Collection Frequency	Statistics Level
1 Day	5 Minutes	1
1 Week	30 Minutes	1
1 Month	2 Hours	2
1 Year	1 Day	1


	IMPORTANT: Before creating your first VMware Performance agent, you must configure a Virtual Center user with sufficient privileges. For more information, see “Enabling VMware Performance Agents to Collect Data from a Virtual Center” in the Foglight for VMware Installation Guide.

To create, activate VMware Performance Agent instances, and start their data collection:

On the navigation panel, under Dashboards, choose VMware > VMware Environment

On the VMware Environment dashboard that appears in the display area, open the Administration tab.

Figure 10. VMware Environment Administration tab

Launch the Agent Setup Wizard. In the Agents area, click Add.

The Agent Setup Wizard appears with the Select an Agent Host page open.

Figure 11. Agent Setup Wizard

Select the host machine running the Agent Manager that you want to manage the VMware Performance Agent you are about to create, and click Next.

The Agent Setup Wizard refreshes, showing the Select Virtual Center page.

Figure 12. Select Virtual Center page

Specify the Virtual Center that you want to monitor.

In the Virtual Center box, type the fully qualified name of the host on which the Virtual Center is running.

In the Port box, type the port number of the host running the Virtual Center that will be used by the VMware Performance Agent to connect to the Virtual Center.

If you want to enable the VMware Performance Agent to collect the Foglight Storage data, select the Enable Storage Collection check box. Foglight Storage can help you optimize the VMware environment by monitoring virtual storage and its underlying physical storage components. For more information about this product, see the Managing Foglight Manager Storage User and Reference Guide.

If you want to import historical data, select the Enable Historical Metric Data check box. This data is not immediately available as it takes some time to collect it. This process can import data collected over 30 days or less, depending on the amount of data available in the Virtual Center. Selecting this option allows you to explore VMware metrics as soon as the data is imported, instead for waiting for the agent to collect some data from the Virtual Center.

Click Next.

The Agent Setup Wizard refreshes, showing the Credential Verification page.

Figure 13. Credential Verification

Specify user credentials the VMware Performance Agent needs to log into tho Virtual Center host. Select one of the following options:


	IMPORTANT: The Virtual Center user account must have sufficient privileges. For more information, see “Enabling VMware Performance Agents to Collect Data from a Virtual Center” in the Foglight for VMware User and Reference Guide.

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Add vCenter(s) to a new credential: Select this option if you want to create a new credential for the selected vCenter. Click Next and continue to Step 8.

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Add vCenter(s) to an existing credential: Select this option if you want to use an existing credential for the selected vCenter. This option is suitable if an existing credential has the information needed to access the vCenter. Click Next and continue to Step 9.

For complete information about Foglight credentials, see the Administration and Configuration Help.

Creating a new credential only.

Figure 14. Create New Credential

Specify the following information:

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Credential Name: Type a name that uniquely identifies the credential.

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User: Type the vCenter user name.

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Password: Type the vCenter password.

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Confirm Password: Type the vCenter password.

Select a lockbox in which you want to keep the credential. A lockbox can be used to group credentials for access and/or security. In smaller Foglight installations, you can use the default System lockbox.

Click Next.

The Summary page appears.

Figure 15. Summary

Click Finish.

The Agent Setup Wizard closes, and the Agents area refreshes, showing a newly created VMware Performance agent instance.

Using an existing credential only.

Figure 16. Select Existing Credential

Select an existing credential that you want to use to access the vCenter.

Click Next.

The Summary page appears.

Figure 17. Summary

Click Finish.

The Agent Setup Wizard closes, and the Agents area refreshes, showing a newly created VMware Performance agent instance.

Viewing the Overall System Status

The VMware VirtualCenters dashboard has just one view that displays a Status view for each vCenter that exist within the virtual infrastructure. This dashboard and its embedded status views can be used to take a quick look at the status of each of the vCenters within the infrastructure.

Figure 18. VMware VirtualCenters dashboard

Each vCenter Status view provides an alarm summary for the objects contained within the vCenter. If you click any of the alarm indicators in the alarm summary, an Alarms popup appears showing a list of alarms for the object type that is associated with the alarm indicator.

To access this dashboard, from the navigation panel, under Dashboards, choose VMware > VMware VirtualCenters.

For reference information about the data appearing on this dashboard, see VMware VirtualCenter Views .

Exploring Your VMware Environment

A typical virtual environment contains a set of ESX® host and virtual machines. An ESX host can be a part of a cluster, and can have one or more virtual machines associated with it. Other components of a Virtual Center include datacenters, resource pools, and data stores. You can view the overall state of these components on the VMware Environment dashboard.

Selecting an object or group of objects, such as clusters, servers, or virtual machines, shows additional information about your selection. For example, selecting all ESX hosts identifies the top three consumers of CPU, memory, network, and disk resources and shows the related alarm states. Selecting a specific ESX host shows the CPU, memory, network, and disk usage for the selected ESX host, along with high-level hardware and software configuration.

Figure 19. VMware Environment dashboard

When you navigate to the VMware Environment dashboard for the first time, the Monitoring tab appears open. This tab provides an overall summary of your virtual environment. Other tabs are also available. This topic describes the Monitoring tab. For information about other tabs, see the following topics:

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FAQts

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Exploring Frequently Asked Questions

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Reports

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Generating reports

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Administration

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Setting the Alarm Sensitivity Level

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Creating OS Mapping Rules

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Reviewing object instances and limits

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Configuring Monitoring Agents for Data Collection

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Choosing a specific virtual environment from the list in the top-right shows the information about the selected environment.

Figure 20. Service selection

The list shows a list of services. Each service can contain a different combination of monitored components.


	NOTE: The VMware Environment dashboard is service-based. The VMware service created by Foglight for VMware for a particular vCenter does not contain template virtual machines (VMs). The VMware Explorer dashboard is inventory-based. The VMware Explorer dashboard counts all VMs, including template VMs, for each vCenter. Therefore, the number of VMs for a particular vCenter is different when you view it through the VMware Environment dashboard than the number that appears when you view it through the VMware Explorer dashboard.

The VMware Environment dashboard is made up of the following views: the Virtual Environment Overview and Quick-View. Selecting an object type and its alarm state in the Virtual Environment Overview shows the summary information for your selection in the Quick-View. For reference information about the data appearing on this dashboard, see VMware Environment Views .

For example, when you select the Normal state on the ESX Hosts tile, the ESX Hosts that are in the Normal state are listed in the ESX Hosts view, and summary information for those ESX Hosts appears in the ESX Hosts Summary view.

In the example below, the ESX Hosts tile is selected. The ESX Hosts view is populated with all monitored ESX Hosts regardless of their alarm state. Summary information for those ESX Hosts appears in the ESX Host Summary view.

From there, clicking a specific object instance on the left shows additional summary information about the selected object. The Inventory view, for example, shows all of the objects related to the selected object, along with their respective alarm state counts. All objects in the object relationship hierarchy, including the selected object, are shown in the Inventory view, so that you see the entire relationship hierarchy for the selected object. Each level in the hierarchy is labelled with the corresponding object type name. When there is only one object at a particular level in the hierarchy, the object name is displayed instead of the object type name.

The next example shows a number of virtual machines that are associated with a selected Virtual Center. Clicking that number shows a popup with the list of virtual machines. You can click any object in the popup list to quickly navigate to the VMware Explorer dashboard, and review detailed information about that particular object.

Figure 21. Virtual Center Summary