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

Important: Debug mode is not supported for data collection jobs created via the UI using the Dyncfg feature.

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

Getting Logs

If you’re encountering problems with the vsphere collector, follow these steps to retrieve logs and identify potential issues:

  • Run the command specific to your system (systemd, non-systemd, or Docker container).
  • Examine the output for any warnings or error messages that might indicate issues. These messages should provide clues about the root cause of the problem.

System with systemd

Use the following command to view logs generated since the last Netdata service restart:

journalctl _SYSTEMD_INVOCATION_ID="$(systemctl show --value --property=InvocationID netdata)" --namespace=netdata --grep vsphere

System without systemd

Locate the collector log file, typically at /var/log/netdata/collector.log, and use grep to filter for collector’s name:

grep vsphere /var/log/netdata/collector.log

Note: This method shows logs from all restarts. Focus on the latest entries for troubleshooting current issues.

Docker Container

If your Netdata runs in a Docker container named “netdata” (replace if different), use this command:

docker logs netdata 2>&1 | grep vsphere

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