Not planning to do this module? You can skip to the next one... |
This module consists of the following exercises:
Module | Description | Time required |
---|---|---|
Add Your vCenter Server | Use Auto Discovery to import a VMware vCenter Server and its inventory of ESX servers and VMs. | 1 slice |
Validation Step 1: Explore the Monitored Inventory | Understand how up.time organizes an imported and synchronized vCenter Server inventory. | 1 slice |
Validation Step 2: View the vCenter Server Inventory | Understand how up.time allows you to focus on the parts of the vCenter Server that you actually want to monitor. | 1 slice |
Validation Step 3: View Metrics for the vCenter Server and a VM | View metrics available on a summary page for a vCenter server, as well as a VM. | ½ slice |
By default, the Collect up.time Agent data and Collect WMI Agentless data check boxes are clear. This means the metrics up.time retrieves for each monitored VM is what the vCenter Server itself collects and provides to up.time. For these "basic VMs", their metrics are a subset of what can be collected from the guest operating system using the up.time agent or using WMI. For simplicity in this guide, we will work with a "basic" vCenter Server inventory. You can learn more about agent- and WMI-based data collection in the next module, where you are adding physical servers. |
After adding the vCenter Server and closing the Add System window in the previous section, the main UI window is displaying the My Infrastructure view:
If you look at your up.time inventory, you can see that part of the vCenter Server import process included the automatic creation of two top-level Element Groups (which are folders and subfolders used to organize up.time Elements): Discovered Hosts and Discovered Virtual Machines. These Element Groups respectively include the ESX hosts and virtual machines managed by the vCenter Server, and these contents can be further rearranged in up.time, for example, by platform or server function.
Alongside this pair of Infrastructure Groups, the vCenter Server itself appears as a top-level Element in My Infrastructure. It includes the hierarchy of objects that comprise the vCenter Server inventory. Click the + icon beside your vCenter Server to expand its view.
Consider this example vCenter, which includes a datacenter:
In the above example, the datacenter's cluster of ESX hosts is organized into two resource pools, along with their component virtual machines. Hosts and virtual machines can be moved elsewhere in My Infrastructure, but the hierarchy remains intact as a reflection of the vCenter Server:
Depending on the size of your vCenter Server inventory, importing one could exceed your up.time license. If this were to happen, you might see the following:
In this scenario, you need not worry. up.time has in fact imported these; it is simply ignoring them. We will learn more about this in the next section. |
This validation step can be particularly enlightening if your vCenter Server import exceeded your license, and resulted in ESX hosts and VMs being automatically excluded from the monitored inventory in up.time.
In the left menu, the Info tab is active. Click Inventory Detail.
This displays a list of all of your vCenter Server's inventory, grouped hierarchically. It is divided into two main groups: Elements that are monitored by up.time, and Elements that are currently ignored. Initially, during the vCenter Server import, hosts and VMs that were imported after the up.time license was exceeded were placed in the Ignored Elements section. You can use this Inventory Detail view to ignore monitored Elements, and begin monitoring currently ignored Elements.
You can also use this Inventory Detail view to Enable Monitoring for a vCenter Server Element. This can be done when an up.time agent is installed on a VM, allowing up.time to collect metrics that are more detailed than what is provided by the vCenter Server. |
In this module, if the inventory imported from vCenter Server exceeds open slots in your license, some of the inventory will have been ignored, and you will have no space left to add Elements to your monitored inventory. In the next two tracks In this Getting Started Guide, you will be adding servers and network devices. If you plan on following either or both of these tracks, you need to anticipate the number of servers and network devices you will add. To follow the server track, you'll need at least 2; to follow the network device track, you'll need at least 1. The easiest way to free up space is to manually ignore VMs; each VM you ignore opens a license spot for a new Element. Return to the Inventory Detail view for the vCenter (My Infrastructure > gear icon > View > Inventory Detail). Select VMs, ESX hosts, or even an entire cluster, then click Add Selected Elements to Ignore. That number of spots will be freed up in your license, which you can verify by clicking Config > License Info. Alternatively, you can also contact uptime software Customer Support to look into increasing the size of your license. |
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