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VMWare vSphere
StackState Self-hosted v4.5.x
This page describes StackState v4.5.x. The StackState 4.5 version range is End of Life (EOL) and no longer supported. We encourage customers still running the 4.5 version range to upgrade to a more recent release.
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
Data flow
The VMware StackPack collects all topology data for the components and relations between them as well as telemetry and events.
- StackState Agent V2 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 V2 pushes retrieved data and events to StackState:
- 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.
To set up the StackState VMWare vSphere integration, you need to have:
- StackState Agent V2 installed on a single machine with HTTPS connection to both vSphere vCenter and StackState.
- A running vSphere vCenter instance.
The VMWare vSphere StackPack can be installed from the StackState UI StackPacks > Integrations screen. You will need to provide the following parameters:
- VSphere Host Name - The VMWare vSphere host name from which data will be collected.
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.
- # Section used for global vsphere check configinit_config:instances:- name: <name> # for example main-vcenterhost: <host_name> # for example vcenter.domain.comusername: <username>password: <password>
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.Once the Agent has restarted, wait for the Agent to collect the data and send it to StackState.
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 | Yes | Default false . Set to true to collect every metric. This will collect a LOT of metrics that you probably do not need. When set to false (default), a selected set of metrics that are interesting to monitor will be collected. |
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. |
To check the status of the VMWare vSphere integration, run the status subcommand and look for vSphere under
Running Checks
:sudo stackstate-agent status
The VMWare vSphere integration retrieves the following data:
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 will not 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
The metrics retrieved from VMWare vSphere can be configured in the Agent check configuration file using the configuration item all_metrics. For details see how to configure the VMWare vSphere check.
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.
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.
The VMWare vSphere integration does not retrieve any traces data.
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.The code for the StackState VMware vSphere check is open source and available on GitHub at:
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.
VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.3.1 (2021-04-12)
- Improvement: Common bumped from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1
VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.3.0 (2021-04-02)
- Improvement: Changed synchronization's merge strategy from 'merge, prefer theirs' to 'merge, prefer mine'.
- Improvement: Enable auto grouping on generated views.
- Improvement: Update documentation.
- Improvement: Common bumped from 2.2.3 to 2.5.0
- Improvement: StackState min version bumped to 4.3.0
VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.2.1 (2020-08-18)
- Feature: Introduced the Release notes pop up for customer
VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.2.0 (2020-08-04)
- Improvement: Deprecated StackPack specific layers and introduced a new common layer structure.
- Improvement: Replace resolveOrCreate with getOrCreate.
VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.1.0 (2020-04-10)
- Improvement: Updated StackPacks integration page, categories, and icons for the SaaS trial
VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.0.1 (2020-04-03)
- Improvement: Upgrade the requirement of vSphere to use AgentV2 now.
VMWare vSphere StackPack v2.0.0 (2019-10-30)
- Feature: Gathers Topology from your vSphere instance and allows visualization of your vSphere components and the relations between them.
Last modified 7mo ago