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vincikb
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Displaying vCenter Ops in a NOC across multiple monitors/TV's - Need Ideas

Is anyone currently displaying vCenter Ops dashboards on TV's/monitors in their NOC / Data Center?  I am looking to display it across 4 large TV's at our DataCenter and was just looking for different ideas.  I was going to use Google Chrome and put it into full screen mode but for some reason it only allows you to put 1 of the Chrome instances into full screen mode.  Another problem I have found though is if you leave Chrome up and running for weeks on end eventually it consumes all of the RAM on the machine and it gets sluggish.  Thanks for any input or suggestions.

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LikeABrandit
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As far as separating your browser instances, why not use profiles in Firefox? You could split it out into separate isolated processes that way. Here's a great LifeHacker article on it: Geek to Live: Manage multiple Firefox profiles

Although I imagine that'll solve the problem with splitting windows, the curiosity in me wants to know what's causing the timeouts.

~Brandit

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LikeABrandit
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Maybe look at using Firefox if the issue is the browser? It can fullscreen multiple windows like you're asking about and I'm personally not familiar with any sluggishness in the new versions, they've made it leaner like the old days. As for the vCOPs setup I'd guess you're already doing this, but it would look best using custom dashboards for that kind of setup. As far as Chrome yeah I've had issues sometimes with it being sluggish (not running vCOPs though) but it's always been a plugin that's the culprit versus the browser. Typically it's been Flash or Reader plugins that cause issues for me.

~Brandit

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gradinka
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well, you can create a script which restarts the browser at a given interval.

By using a 'smart' language (like perl or python for example), the login process can be automated as well.

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vincikb
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Does anyone know if its possible to supply vCenter Ops a direct URL and have it open a specific dashboard tab?  For example I have 4 monitors and when they all load up I want each display to go to a specific tab?  Like: https://pvops01/vcops-custom/tab2 and https://pvops01/vcops-custom//tab2, etc.

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ServiceOptimi
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vincikb,

If you are putting things on the displays.... you may want to use two different display options. One is the Rolling metric graph.... this one scrolls thru the chosen objects and the key metric in a 5 second window.. adjustable... the other option is to have a user account created that has access/permission to a set of dashboards and set that user account to scroll thru each of the dashboards in xx seconds.

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vincikb
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Hi ServiceOptimi, I will give the rolling metric graph a try right now.  Here is my setup and my current problems with it:

I currently have 4 - 42" TV"s connected to a WYSE P45 zero client which is connected to a View 5.2 desktop

If I open Chrome and put a separate copy of Chrome full screen on each TV everything works fine for a few hours/days having each dashboard/widget refreshing every 5 minutes.  Eventually what will happen is the vCenter Ops data being displayed will show operation timed out or the data will stop displaying.  All that needs to be done is for me to hit reload on the Chrome browser at the data is back just fine.  But here is the problem, since all of the vCenter Ops dashboards rely on Javascrip whatever tab you click on sets that tab into memory across all 4 Chrome browsers.  If you set monitor 1 to a tab, and monitor 2 to a different tab, when you refresh monitor 1 you will get the tab from monitor 2.  If I were able to type in the URL directly for each tab I could then use Chrome auto refresh to refresh each webpage and go to a specific URL for each monitor and everything will be fine.  The only other solution I have found is to use Chrome on monitor 1, Firefox on monitor 2, IE on 3, and then I am one monitor short.  When I did this method each browser type has its on javascript settings so its not changing based on the last tab I selected.  Hopefully that makes sense and there can be some solution?  Thank You

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LikeABrandit
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As far as separating your browser instances, why not use profiles in Firefox? You could split it out into separate isolated processes that way. Here's a great LifeHacker article on it: Geek to Live: Manage multiple Firefox profiles

Although I imagine that'll solve the problem with splitting windows, the curiosity in me wants to know what's causing the timeouts.

~Brandit

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vincikb
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Your solution worked perfectly LikeABrandit.  By creating a seperate Firefox profile for each TV/Monitor this allowed the javascript variables to remain separate for each copy of Firefox.  I then installed the Firefox addon to auto refresh the tabs every 60 minutes just in case the vCenter Ops dashboard timed out.  Here is an example of what the screen's look like after they timeout.  Thanks so much!

Timeout.jpg

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LikeABrandit
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Awesome! Glad it worked out, and the auto-refresh on the page is perfect to avoid the timeout. I'm going to guess it really is just a session timeout, but what made me curious was the random timing you were reporting with it (hours/days). Maybe I'll play around with an instance on my end if I get the time. Either way, happy to hear it's working!

~Brandit

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