[Workflow] vCenter Error Report

[ullbergm]

I have posted a new workflow on my blog:

http://orchestrate-this.blogspot.com/2012/10/vcenter-error-report.html

This is another example of a powershell script turned workflow. Several years ago when we first started deploying VMware here I realized that nobody pays attention to the errors that are generated in vCenter unless they actually trigger alerts. This is my attempt at rectifying that.

This is what we are trying to create:

Since the basic idea of this is pretty simple, get all the events that have a category of 'error' from vCenter and send an email listing all the ones found i decided to make it a little fancier to make it interesting.
Here are some of the highlights:

• Uses a configuration object to keep the organization specific settings.
  
• Utilizes VcEventFilterSpec and createCollectorForEvents to get the events.
  
• Uses a array of Properties to pass data between actions and workflows.
  
• Basic regular expressions.
  
• There is a configuration workflow to configure the report, no need to edit the configuration object by hand.
  

And that is how you turn a simple task in to a complex but more interesting one... 🙂

Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions on how to better do things, I'm always looking to do things better.

Thanks,

Magnus

[Burke-]

I just worked on some event parsing workflows for vCenter and vCloud Director last week and you go and post this... Nice work Magnus

[tschoergez]

Great stuff indeed! Thanks for sharing!

[ullbergm]

Thanks.

I figure that the more people share the more the community will grow, like the PowerCLI one has exploded in the last few years.

I'm also looking for feedback if i did something dumb, so feel free to offer suggestions on what i could have done better.