VMware vCenter Server

Plugin: go.d.plugin Module: vsphere

Overview

This collector monitors hosts and vms performance statistics from vCenter servers.

Warning: The vsphere collector cannot re-login and continue collecting metrics after a vCenter reboot. go.d.plugin needs to be restarted.

This collector is supported on all platforms.

This collector supports collecting metrics from multiple instances of this integration, including remote instances.

Default Behavior

Auto-Detection

This integration doesn’t support auto-detection.

Limits

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact

The default update_every is 20 seconds, and it doesn’t make sense to decrease the value. VMware real-time statistics are generated at the 20-second specificity.

It is likely that 20 seconds is not enough for big installations and the value should be tuned.

To get a better view we recommend running the collector in debug mode and seeing how much time it will take to collect metrics.

Example (all not related debug lines were removed)

[ilyam@pc]$ ./go.d.plugin -d -m vsphere
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:94 discovering : starting resource discovering process
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:102 discovering : found 3 dcs, process took 49.329656ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:109 discovering : found 12 folders, process took 49.538688ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:116 discovering : found 3 clusters, process took 47.722692ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:123 discovering : found 2 hosts, process took 52.966995ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:130 discovering : found 2 vms, process took 49.832979ms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:140 discovering : found 3 dcs, 12 folders, 3 clusters (2 dummy), 2 hosts, 3 vms, process took 249.655993ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] build.go:12 discovering : building : starting building resources process
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] build.go:23 discovering : building : built 3/3 dcs, 12/12 folders, 3/3 clusters, 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, process took 63.3µs
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] hierarchy.go:10 discovering : hierarchy : start setting resources hierarchy process
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] hierarchy.go:18 discovering : hierarchy : set 3/3 clusters, 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, process took 6.522µs
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:24 discovering : filtering : starting filtering resources process
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:45 discovering : filtering : removed 0 unmatched hosts
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:56 discovering : filtering : removed 0 unmatched vms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:29 discovering : filtering : filtered 0/2 hosts, 0/3 vms, process took 42.973µs
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] metric_lists.go:14 discovering : metric lists : starting resources metric lists collection process
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] metric_lists.go:30 discovering : metric lists : collected metric lists for 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, process took 275.60764ms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:74 discovering : discovered 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, the whole process took 525.614041ms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:11 starting discovery process, will do discovery every 5m0s
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] collect.go:11 starting collection process
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] scrape.go:48 scraping : scraped metrics for 2/2 hosts, process took 96.257374ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] scrape.go:60 scraping : scraped metrics for 3/3 vms, process took 57.879697ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] collect.go:23 metrics collected, process took 154.77997ms

There you can see that discovering took 525.614041ms, and collecting metrics took 154.77997ms. Discovering is a separate thread, it doesn’t affect collecting. update_every and timeout parameters should be adjusted based on these numbers.

Setup

Prerequisites

No action required.

Configuration

File

The configuration file name for this integration is go.d/vsphere.conf.

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config go.d/vsphere.conf

Options

The following options can be defined globally: update_every, autodetection_retry.

Name	Description	Default	Required
update_every	Data collection frequency.	20	False
autodetection_retry	Recheck interval in seconds. Zero means no recheck will be scheduled.	0	False
url	vCenter server URL.		True
host_include	Hosts selector (filter).		False
vm_include	Virtual machines selector (filter).		False
discovery_interval	Hosts and VMs discovery interval.	300	False
timeout	HTTP request timeout.	20	False
username	Username for basic HTTP authentication.		False
password	Password for basic HTTP authentication.		False
proxy_url	Proxy URL.		False
proxy_username	Username for proxy basic HTTP authentication.		False
proxy_password	Password for proxy basic HTTP authentication.		False
not_follow_redirects	Redirect handling policy. Controls whether the client follows redirects.	no	False
tls_skip_verify	Server certificate chain and hostname validation policy. Controls whether the client performs this check.	no	False
tls_ca	Certification authority that the client uses when verifying the server’s certificates.		False
tls_cert	Client TLS certificate.		False
tls_key	Client TLS key.		False

host_include

Metrics of hosts matching the selector will be collected.

Include pattern syntax: “/Datacenter pattern/Cluster pattern/Host pattern”.
Match pattern syntax: simple patterns.

Syntax:

host_include:
  - '/DC1/*'           # select all hosts from datacenter DC1
  - '/DC2/*/!Host2 *'  # select all hosts from datacenter DC2 except HOST2
  - '/DC3/Cluster3/*'  # select all hosts from datacenter DC3 cluster Cluster3

vm_include

Metrics of VMs matching the selector will be collected.

Include pattern syntax: “/Datacenter pattern/Cluster pattern/Host pattern/VM pattern”.
Match pattern syntax: simple patterns.

Syntax:

vm_include:
  - '/DC1/*'           # select all VMs from datacenter DC
  - '/DC2/*/*/!VM2 *'  # select all VMs from datacenter DC2 except VM2
  - '/DC3/Cluster3/*'  # select all VMs from datacenter DC3 cluster Cluster3

Examples

Basic

A basic example configuration.

jobs:
  - name     : vcenter1
    url      : https://203.0.113.1
    username : admin@vsphere.local
    password : somepassword

Multi-instance

Note: When you define multiple jobs, their names must be unique.

Collecting metrics from local and remote instances.

jobs:
  - name     : vcenter1
    url      : https://203.0.113.1
    username : admin@vsphere.local
    password : somepassword

  - name     : vcenter2
    url      : https://203.0.113.10
    username : admin@vsphere.local
    password : somepassword

Metrics

Metrics grouped by scope.

The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.

Per virtual machine

These metrics refer to the Virtual Machine.

Labels:

Label	Description
datacenter	Datacenter name
cluster	Cluster name
host	Host name
vm	Virtual Machine name

Metrics:

Metric	Dimensions	Unit
vsphere.vm_cpu_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.vm_mem_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.vm_mem_usage	granted, consumed, active, shared	KiB
vsphere.vm_mem_swap_usage	swapped	KiB
vsphere.vm_mem_swap_io	in, out	KiB/s
vsphere.vm_disk_io	read, write	KiB/s
vsphere.vm_disk_max_latency	latency	milliseconds
vsphere.vm_net_traffic	received, sent	KiB/s
vsphere.vm_net_packets	received, sent	packets
vsphere.vm_net_drops	received, sent	packets
vsphere.vm_overall_status	green, red, yellow, gray	status
vsphere.vm_system_uptime	uptime	seconds

Per host

These metrics refer to the ESXi host.

Labels:

Label	Description
datacenter	Datacenter name
cluster	Cluster name
host	Host name

Metrics:

Metric	Dimensions	Unit
vsphere.host_cpu_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.host_mem_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.host_mem_usage	granted, consumed, active, shared, sharedcommon	KiB
vsphere.host_mem_swap_io	in, out	KiB/s
vsphere.host_disk_io	read, write	KiB/s
vsphere.host_disk_max_latency	latency	milliseconds
vsphere.host_net_traffic	received, sent	KiB/s
vsphere.host_net_packets	received, sent	packets
vsphere.host_net_drops	received, sent	packets
vsphere.host_net_errors	received, sent	errors
vsphere.host_overall_status	green, red, yellow, gray	status
vsphere.host_system_uptime	uptime	seconds

Alerts

The following alerts are available:

Alert name	On metric	Description
vsphere_vm_cpu_utilization	vsphere.vm_cpu_utilization	Virtual Machine CPU utilization
vsphere_vm_mem_usage	vsphere.vm_mem_utilization	Virtual Machine memory utilization
vsphere_host_cpu_utilization	vsphere.host_cpu_utilization	ESXi Host CPU utilization
vsphere_host_mem_utilization	vsphere.host_mem_utilization	ESXi Host memory utilization

Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

To troubleshoot issues with the vsphere collector, run the go.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn’t working.

Navigate to the plugins.d directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that’s not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the plugins setting under [directories].
```
cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/
```
Switch to the netdata user.
```
sudo -u netdata -s
```
Run the go.d.plugin to debug the collector:
```
./go.d.plugin -d -m vsphere
```

Industry

Technology

Use cases