activity monitoring doesn't show any observed VMs

[hongjun]

I can't get activity monitoring working so far.

I have two windows2k8r2 VMs installed on VNI, vmtools is up to date for vsphere 5.5u2.

I enabled activity monitoring under VM monitor tab, also put these VMs into security group and then have built-in Activity Monitoring Data collection SG include the web SG these VMs in.

I also installed vmtools guest introspection option(do we need it for basic activity monitoring?)

both VMs and NSX managed joined AD domain. On VMs, I tried to browse some web and connect to some remote CIFS servers.

I expect that at least both VMs should be under list of observed virtual machines and I should see some flows under Activity Monitoring but the whole table/list is empty always.

Which part did I miss?

Thanks

Hongjun

[hongjun]

any thoughts?

[hongjun]

3rd try. I didn't expect it's a hard question. I thought I missed some configuration?

[rbenhaim]

In order to leverage Activity Monitoring you need to do the following

• Successfully Install NSX and execute Host preparation.
• Deploy Endpoint Service to any cluster that will be monitored.
• Have updated version of VMware Tools installed on Virtual Machines WITH Endpoint component installed.
• Configure Active Directory Domain for Security Group population. Also required if you want to build “Directory Group” based Identity Firewall Rules.
• Configure SAM data collection on Virtual Machines
• Use NSX Security Group – Activity Monitoring Data Collection group
• Configure as Virtual Machine property (VM–Manage–Settings–Data Collection)

Note:

Activity Monitoring requires Updated VMware Tools installed on the target Virtual Machines and the vShield VMCI Drivers must be installed

[hongjun]

I enabled VMCI drivers in vmware tools already. My vmtools is latest 9.4.10.209.2844 version. but still it doesn't work

MY AD based security group is working with DFW already.

[rbudavari]

In addition to adding the domain to NSX, two things to confirm:

1) Under Installation -> Service Deployments have you deployed the Guest Introspection Service for the cluster you want to perform activity monitoring on ?:

2) It should occur automatically when you add the VMs to the Activity Monitoring Data Collection Security Group, but confirm in the Summary page of the VM that Virtual Machine Data Collection is enabled:

With these enabled you should start to see data under the VM Activity tab of Activity Monitoring:

[hongjun · Accepted solution]

Thank you Ray. I was missing installing Guest Introspection service on the cluster. Roie also mentioned it in his post but I wasn't sure what is "endpoint service" in the reply.

got it working right after guest introspection cluster service deployment. My vmtools has already enabled guest introspection and vm data collection is on.