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ChaseHansen
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Trying to build a custom dashboard around storage

So I'm trying to duplicate a screen that my boss uses all the time within vCenter.

Often he uses the Datastores and Datastores Cluster view to look at the performance data of the datastore and each VM usage on that datastore.

is there any way I could build a dashboard like this using something other than heatmaps?

Sure people know the screen I'm talking about but just in case its attached to this post.

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hank-ger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes that is possible.

You can create in the "vcops custom UI" a dashboard with all the things you want to monitor.

take a look here http://velemental.com/2012/04/12/tutorial-building-custom-dashboards-in-vcops/

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Yes you can do this.

You will have to use the Metric Graph Widget.

See my Screenshot of one I have created. You can basicly select any metric that vCenter/esx/vm/datastore has and create this dashboard.

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ChaseHansen
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So I should be able to use the Metric Graph and map hit the split graphs button.

What about the decisioning on what VM's show up, like in vCenter its picking what looks to be the top 10 VM's/Hosts

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

You can use the TopN Widget for this. You can select a Metric and it will show the top N of that metric.

In addition you can alos look at using Interactions. This is usefull when you have a Widget that "feeds" data to another. Thus you can select a VM on the one widget and it will then show more data/info/metrics on another widget.

Hugo

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ChaseHansen
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I will check out the TopN Widget. do you have an example?

I'm using the interactions now to graph VM data along with root cause rankings and thats working well.

I'm looking for something that I can select the Datastore resource, this feeds data into another widget that charts the top VM's hitting that datastore for a selected metric.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Attched another screenshot of my Lab's MGMT Cluster Disk stats.

I think this point is that if you apply creativity...you can build any meaning full dashboard.

hank-ger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

could you post an example of your "mgmgt-Cluster-Stats" configuration (upper right) widget please.

THX a lot

Hank

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ChaseHansen
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Guess I just need to keep playing around, I dont think I can give the data in the same way that its presented in vCenter but hopefully I can come close.

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ChaseHansen
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Maybe this use case will help try to figure out this dashboard.

I have a datastore that all of a sudden is using 5 times the amount of disk i/o as all the others.

I can easily see what VM's that are on that datastore using the VC Relationship widget

What widgets could I use to select the datastore as a resource, then select a metric, then graphic that metric for all VM's on that datastore.

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