Foglight for VMware 5.8 - User and Reference Guide

Exploring VMware alarms

The vmAlarms dashboard is a simple dashboard that shows the alarms that have been triggered but not cleared within Foglight for VMware. It can be used to isolate alarms specific to the virtualized environment.

To access this dashboard, from the navigation panel, under Dashboards, choose VMware > vmAlarms. For reference information about the data appearing on this dashboard, see VMware Alarms views .

Filtering alarms

The vmAlarms dashboard provides some filtering controls. Use it to isolate alarms related to a specific bottleneck or issue in your virtual environment. The Search box appears in the top-right corner of the alarm list.

Type a text string and press ENTER. The list of alarms refreshes, showing only those alarms that match that filter.

For more advanced filtering, click the down-facing arrow, and in the list that appears, click Advanced Search. A dwell appears.

To search on a Foglight for VMware object name, select Match all of the following rules, and in the Icon box below, type a full or partial name of the object you want to search for, and then click Search. The Alarms List refreshes, showing only those alarms that are generated against the specified object type. For a list of icons and the related object names, see Virtual Infrastructure View Object Icons .

If you want to search on an alarm severity or rule name, or to combine different search criteria, update or add one or more rules in the Match all of the following rules area. For example, to search for alarms generated against a specific object type and have a specific severity, create one rule to specify the object type, and one for the rule severity.

To search for alarms generated during a specific time, create a Time rule and specify the time range.

To search for a specific alarm message, create an Alarm Message rule and specify the message you want to search for.

To remove the filter, delete the search string and press ENTER. The list of alarms refreshes, showing all the generated alarms.

For more information on filtering lists in Foglight for VMware, refer to the Foglight for VMware User Guide.

Setting the alarm sensitivity level

The Administration tab on the VMware Environment dashboard enables you to configure the level of alarm sensitivity. The Foglight® for VMware alarm sensitivity reflects the level of alarms the system stores and displays.

Administering monitored ESX hosts and virtual machines

A VMware® environment typically includes one or more Virtual Centers. A Virtual Center includes a collection of datacenters, clusters, ESX® hosts, resource pools, and virtual machines. Data centers are typically used to define physical boundaries within which ESX hosts exist, while resource pools enable an administrator to fine-tune resource allocations within a cluster. A cluster can have one or more ESX hosts associated with it, and one or more virtual machines can run on each ESX hosts. Each virtual machine is allocated a portion of the ESX host’s resources, including disk, CPU, memory, and network resources. A virtual machine has its own machine name and IP address, and it runs a guest OS (for example, MS Windows XP), along with other applications.

Additionally, VMware implements the concepts of virtual machine snapshots and ESX host workflows. A virtual machine snapshot is a virtual machine image that you can return to at any point in time. A workflow, on another hand, is a way to automate ESX host tasks, and re-run them using a different set of parameters. For example, you can use an existing virtual machine creation task, change some of its resource allocation parameters, and run it again.

These actions require that you set up credentials for the virtual center on the Automation Configuration dashboard. To do that, on the navigation panel, under Dashboards, choose VMware > Automation Configuration. On the Automation Configuration dashboard that appears, in the Virtual Infrastructure view, select a virtual center, click Assign Credential, and provide host credentials in the Assign Host Credentials Dialog box. Failing to configure host credentials results prevents the automated tasks from being executed.

The VMware Explorer’s Administration tab provides access to most of these administration tasks. Use it to shut down or reboot physical ESX hosts and virtual machines, or to create virtual machines and edit their resource allocation. This tab also provides quick access to creating and editing virtual machine snapshots and ESX host workflows.

To open the navigation panel, click the right-facing arrow on the left.

TIP: Use the Topology tab to quickly switch between object instances and display their details in the VMware Explorer. For more information about this view, see Virtual Infrastructure view .