Monitoring VMWare VCSA Services
Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:59 am
I am in the process of migrating some vCenters into VCSA Linux appliance (v 6.7).
I'm wondering what others are doing for simple monitoring of these VMs without a product like vRealize Operations manager.
We are using Nagios/Opsview monitoring, and have the vmware perl SDK installed.
I have achieved the basics of what I need with the SDK and the opspack for vmware by monitoring the VCSA as a guest VM.
I would ideally like to get some service checks in for the vpxd service etc. I also have SNMP configured on the VCSA, but it seems impossible to poll for the status of this service.
From this KBID: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2145018?lang=en_US
Each process in the system can be tracked for CPU and memory use. Starting with the process list in hrSWRunTable, hrSWRunName provides the process name and process id.
For example:
HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrSWRunPath.27982 = STRING: "[vpxd]"
HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrSWRunPath.30696 = STRING: "/bin/snmpd"
You see that vpxd is process id 27982 and the snmpd process id is 30696. These do not change frequently. If you see these process IDs changing frequently on the order of minutes to hours, it is recommended to collect a support bundle and submit a support request with this KB article ID in the SR description for review by VMware Support. To upload a bundle see the links in the Additional Information section.
So it makes sense that I can poll for this service with the OID HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrSWRunPath.27982 but the above advice says this does not change frequently, beyond minutes/hours... Which I interpret as it can and does change, possibly daily or on each boot.
I can't use this for an SNMP service check as we may have to change the check for the correct process ID each time the VCSA boots.
I tried this nagios plugin https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... sh/details
After configuring everything and pointing it at my VCSA 6.7, it returns a bunch of (n/a) responses to the relevant health checks instead of green/amber/red etc so I guess the API has changed at some point since this was written.
Any ideas on how to monitor the services, specifically the vpxd?
I'm wondering what others are doing for simple monitoring of these VMs without a product like vRealize Operations manager.
We are using Nagios/Opsview monitoring, and have the vmware perl SDK installed.
I have achieved the basics of what I need with the SDK and the opspack for vmware by monitoring the VCSA as a guest VM.
I would ideally like to get some service checks in for the vpxd service etc. I also have SNMP configured on the VCSA, but it seems impossible to poll for the status of this service.
From this KBID: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2145018?lang=en_US
Each process in the system can be tracked for CPU and memory use. Starting with the process list in hrSWRunTable, hrSWRunName provides the process name and process id.
For example:
HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrSWRunPath.27982 = STRING: "[vpxd]"
HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrSWRunPath.30696 = STRING: "/bin/snmpd"
You see that vpxd is process id 27982 and the snmpd process id is 30696. These do not change frequently. If you see these process IDs changing frequently on the order of minutes to hours, it is recommended to collect a support bundle and submit a support request with this KB article ID in the SR description for review by VMware Support. To upload a bundle see the links in the Additional Information section.
So it makes sense that I can poll for this service with the OID HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrSWRunPath.27982 but the above advice says this does not change frequently, beyond minutes/hours... Which I interpret as it can and does change, possibly daily or on each boot.
I can't use this for an SNMP service check as we may have to change the check for the correct process ID each time the VCSA boots.
I tried this nagios plugin https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... sh/details
After configuring everything and pointing it at my VCSA 6.7, it returns a bunch of (n/a) responses to the relevant health checks instead of green/amber/red etc so I guess the API has changed at some point since this was written.
Any ideas on how to monitor the services, specifically the vpxd?