We've had vShield 5.1.2 become disconnected from our new vCenter 5.1.0 server more than once. And, we need to know when that happens. In the configuration screen, we see Last successful inventory update was on m/d/Y I:M:S p (Z). But, I could not find this information in the API. Does anyone know where I can grab this? Or, should I just use the API to synchronize the vShield Manager with vCenter server every once in a while? I strongly prefer monitoring it so that I can know exactly when it breaks and how often.
I don't think getting a vShield heartbeat (though cool) will help me to be sure that the vCenter connection checks out.
The vShield API Programming Guide has a some nice samples; but it's incomplete. I'd love to have a reference document like vCloud has.
Thanks for any help!
Hi,
Do you receive any event/error in vCenter when this occurs? If so, you could simply create a custom alarm on VC that sends an SNMP trap, or email (or several other actions) when the event in question is detected.
I'm currently looking into the same issue and was also trying to use the API to retrieve the last sync time with no luck.
Have you tried 5.1.2a? I've deployed this to two sites and one site has disconnected but the other is still connected after nearly a week.
http://www.vmware.com/support/vshield/doc/releasenotes_vshield_512a.html
I have a call open with vmware about the disconnect so will let you know if they suggest anything else to fix it.
In my opinion vShield Manger needs a '/status' call like an edge to confirm that it has access to vCenter, SSO etc
We haven't noticed anything in the vCenter logs. I got pretty far with digging into the AMF (Action Message Format) calls by discovering them with Firefox GreaseMonkey (or maybe Chrome Inspect) and mimmicking the requests with curl. But, I can't get my script to parse out / deserialize just the right fields.
I was trying to do the same with AMF but haven't had much luck yet with the login process.
I'm using Charles Web Proxy which has a built display for AMF which shows the request to https://<vsm>/messagebroker/amfsecure with a 'destination' of VsmConfigFacade which returns the data. The AMF data is displayed in an XML tree style format in Charles so the field we want is under VsmConfigFacade.getVcConfig - /Results/body/vcInventoryLastUpdateTime.
The Value is a number in milliseconds that needs adding to 1/1/1970 00:00. So 1362658800715 becomes 07/03/2013 12:20 (English Data Format)
I'm working in Powershell v3 and just found this which may be useful: http://velemental.com/2012/01/31/powershell-and-adobe-amf3/
With a sample script for vmware view here: http://velemental.com/2012/02/04/unofficial-advanced-vmware-view-powershell-cmdlets/
Chris
Ignoring the monitoring for a moment and concentrating on why vShield stops updating from vCenter. Are you using the Nexus 1000v distributed switch by any chance. We are and vmware support have found some errors in the logs.
Chris
Installing the support bundle for 5.1.2a on 5.1.2 solved the issues I was having with vShield Manager not syncing with vCenter.
