💠VMWare vSphere

StackState Self-hosted v5.1.x

Overview

The VMWare vSphere StackPack is used to create a near real-time synchronization with VMWare vSphere. This StackPack provides functionality that allows monitoring of the following resources:

• Hosts

• VirtualMachines

• ComputeResources

• ClusterComputeResources

• DataStores

• DataCenters

VMWare vSphere is a StackState core integration.

Data flow

The VMware StackPack collects all topology data for the components and relations between them as well as telemetry and events.

• StackState Agent V3 connects to the configured VMWare vSphere instance:

  • Topology data and tags are retrieved for the configured resources.

  • Metrics data is retrieved for the configured resources.

  • The Agent watches the vCenter Event Manager for events related to the configured resources.

• StackState Agent V3 pushes retrieved data and events to StackState:

  • Topology data is translated into components and relations.
  • Tags defined in VMWare vSphere are added to components and relations in StackState. Any defined StackState tags are used by StackState when the topology is retrieved.
  • Metrics data is automatically mapped to associated components and relations in StackState.
  • Events are available as a telemetry stream in StackState.

Setup

Prerequisites

To set up the StackState VMWare vSphere integration, you need to have:

• StackState installed on a single machine with HTTPS connection to both vSphere vCenter and StackState.
• A running vSphere vCenter instance.

Install

The VMWare vSphere StackPack can be installed from the StackState UI StackPacks > Integrations screen. You will need to enter the following details:

• VSphere Host Name - The VMWare vSphere host name from which data will be collected.

Configure

To enable the VMWare vSphere check and begin collecting data from your vSphere vCenter instance:

1. Edit the Agent integration configuration file /etc/stackstate-agent/conf.d/vsphere.d/conf.yaml to include details of your vSphere vCenter instance:

   • name - aA unique key representing your vCenter instance.

   • host - The same as the VSphere Host Name used when the StackPack was installed.

   • username - The username to use when connecting to VMWare vSphere.

   • password - Use secrets management to store passwords outside of the configuration file.

     # Section used for global vsphere check config
     init_config:
     
     instances:
     - name: <name> # for example main-vcenter
     
       host: <host_name> # for example vcenter.domain.com
     
       username: <username>
       password: <password>

2. If required, you can customise the integration using the advanced configuration options.
3. Restart StackState to publish the configuration changes.
4. Once the Agent has restarted, wait for the Agent to collect the data and send it to StackState.

Advanced configuration

The advanced configuration items described below can optionally be added to the VMWare vSphere check configuration file. Further details can be found in the example configuration file (github.com).

Options	Required?	Description
all_metrics	No	Default false. Set to true to collect every metric. This will collect a LOT of metrics that you probably don't need. When set to false (default), a selected set of metrics that are interesting to monitor will be collected. Note that when using both all_metrics and collection_level setting all_metrics will be ignored.
collection_level	No	Specify the metrics to retrieve using a data collection level (docs.vmware.com) (a number between 1 and 4). Note that when using both all_metrics and collection_level setting all_metrics will be ignored.
ssl_verify	No	Set to false to disable SSL verification when connecting to vCenter.
ssl_capath	No	The absolute file path of a directory containing CA certificates in PEM format.
host_include_only_regex	No	Use a regex pattern to only fetch metrics for these ESXi hosts and the VMs running on them.
vm_include_only_regex	No	Use a regex to include only VMs that match the specified pattern.
include_only_marked	No	Set to true, if you would like to only collect metrics on vSphere VMs that are marked by a custom field with the value StackStateMonitored. To set this custom field with PowerCLI, use the command: `Get-VM
collect_vcenter_alarms	No	set to true to send vCenter alarms as events.

Status

To check the status of the VMWare vSphere integration, run the status subcommand and look for vSphere under Running Checks:

sudo stackstate-agent status

Integration details

Data retrieved

The VMWare vSphere integration retrieves the following data:

• Events
• Metrics
• Tags
• Topology

Events

VMWare vSphere events are sent to StackState in a telemetry stream. These can be mapped to components and relations in the StackState topology, however, they won't be visible in the StackState Events Perspective.

The VMWare vSphere check watches the vCenter Event Manager for the events listed below and makes these available in StackState in the generic events topic telemetry stream:

• AlarmStatusChangedEvent:Gray

• VmBeingHotMigratedEvent

• VmReconfiguredEvent

• VmPoweredOnEvent

• VmMigratedEvent

• TaskEvent:Initialize powering On

• TaskEvent:Power Off virtual machine

• TaskEvent:Power On virtual machine

• TaskEvent:Reconfigure virtual machine

• TaskEvent:Relocate virtual machine

• TaskEvent:Suspend virtual machine

• TaskEvent:Migrate virtual machine

• VmMessageEvent

• VmSuspendedEvent

• VmPoweredOffEvent

Metrics

The metrics retrieved from VMWare vSphere can be configured in the Agent check configuration file using the configuration items collection_level and all_metrics. For details see the section advanced configuration of the VMWare vSphere check (above) and the vmware docs on Data Collection Levels (docs.vmware.com).

Tags

All tags defined in VMWare vSphere will be retrieved and added to the associated components and relations in StackState.

The VMWare vSphere integration also understands StackState common tags. These StackState tags can be assigned to elements in VMWare vSphere to influence the way that the resulting topology is built in StackState. For example, by placing a component in a specific layer or domain.

Topology

The VMWare vSphere integration retrieves the following topology data:

• Components

• Relations

The VMWare vSphere integration understands StackState common tags. These StackState tags can be assigned to elements in VMWare vSphere to influence the way that the resulting topology is built in StackState. For example, by placing a component in a specific layer or domain.

Traces

The VMWare vSphere integration doesn't retrieve any traces data.

REST API endpoints

The VMWare vSphere integration connects to VMWare vSphere using the VMWare vSphere client library and Python modules pyvim and pyVmomi. No API endpoints are used.

Open source

The code for the StackState VMware vSphere check is open source and available on GitHub at:

https://github.com/StackVista/stackstate-agent-integrations/tree/master/vsphere

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting steps for any known issues can be found in the StackState support Knowledge base.

Uninstall

To uninstall the VMWare vSphere StackPack and disable the VMWare vSphere check:

1. Go to the StackState UI StackPacks > Integrations > VMWare vSphere screen and click UNINSTALL.

   • All VMWare vSphere specific configuration will be removed from StackState.

2. Remove or rename the Agent integration configuration file, for example:

    mv vsphere.d/conf.yaml vsphere.d/conf.yaml.bak

3. Restart StackState to apply the configuration changes.

Release notes

VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.3.3 (2022-06-03)

• Improvement: Updated documentation

VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.3.2 (2022-04-20)

• Improvement: Added collection level setting info.

VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.3.1 (2021-04-12)

• Improvement: Common bumped from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1

See also

• StackState
• Secrets management
• StackState Agent integrations - VMWare vSphere (github.com)
• Example VMWare vSphere check configuration file (github.com)
• Data Collection Levels (docs.vmware.com)