Auto-Refresh possible?

[Leffingwell]

Is there a way to have vCOPS automatically refresh the page?? Does it automatically refresh by default? If so - where are the options to change the interval at?  Thanks so much!

[critical3rr0r]

My vcops-vsphere UI does not auto-refresh.  I do not know of a way, without changing the code to auto refresh. There may be some tools out there that auto refresh webpages. I simply hit the refresh button or log back in. I believe the vcops-custom page (which I use most often) does not time out and does auto refresh.

[Leffingwell]

Thanks so much for your insight.  I'll have to look into wha tyou mentioned, leaving this topic open though until someone answers definitively if it's possible or not

[gradinka]

yes, this option was left out

what you can do is to increase the session timeouts, so that UI does not quickly log out, then you can manually refresh it when needed.

how to do this is described elsewhere in this forum, also in KB article

the widgets in allmetrics section have autorefresh though 😉

[ChaseHansen]

Pretty important feature to leave out of a product, a feature that was in v1.0. Hopefully an update comes soon that will address this issue.

[Leffingwell]

Thanks so much for the concise definitive answer (as well as to the others who posted) - very much appreciated and I will look into how to set the session timeout in the future.  Sorry to leave this topic open for so long after an appropriate answer - duty calls.

[ChaseHansen]

I know it takes some time to push an update but its sad to see that fixing a feature that used to be in 1.0 was left out of the most recent update.

[ChaseHansen]

Is there any plan to add an auto refresh back into the vCOPs dashboard? Makes it impossible to use the standard vCOPs dashboard in a monitoring type setup.

[Leffingwell]

Hey Chase!

I found a workaround for this .. or at least, I think it's a work-around.  I haven't done it myself yet but I did notice something:

If you have access to the custom UI.. you make a dashboard with only one widget (vcops health/environment view) and set that widget to auto-refresh at whatever interval you want.  I've started using the custom-UI for our App health over time, since it's a much better way to look at health than just the base vCops screen.

Let me know if you try it out, pretty sure it will work as expected.  Again - I noticed the heath widget (which is exactly what you get by selecting the world object, and the environment tab under operations) and I know widgets can auto-update, but haven't tried it myself

[Alexander_Dimi1]

It is in the queue but I cannot commit to a specific update/relese that will have it.

In the mean time you can use various plugins that automatically refresh a given web page in the browsers.

Quick Goolge search revealed the following options:

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-reload/ofojbjgaaddibdfpmmjeonahgbacejid

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-refresh/

IE: http://download.cnet.com/AutoRefresher-for-IE/3000-12512_4-10062693.html

[Leffingwell]

Alexander - do you know if the workaround I stated above would work as I thought?? Just curious!

[ChaseHansen]

Yes it's a valid workaround. I have been using it along with an auto refresh.

Using the custom UI works better as it only updates the sections needed where as a tool refreshes the entire page and includes more than it needs to and there for takes much longer.

I personally like the standard vCOPs dashboard at least for now, maybe in the future we will move more into the custom UI. I just wish the custom UI had everything the standard UI has when it comes to reporting. I know it can do it all but it seems I have to build them one by one.

[Leffingwell]

Cool - I'm with you on that one, putting in all of the Apps manually .. was an ENORMOUS pita, as we had 80+ apps..

But the visibility you have into each one is worth it.

Personally I view the custom UI as the tool that points out negative trends and it's easy to see at a glance the heatlh of our entire environment from an App level (we're a SaaS provider).

We've got it set with three columns of the scrolling health bar widget, sorted so the lowest health floats to the top, we can see very quickly from our NOC monitors if an app is looking unhealthy and then tab over to vCOPS to actually investigate via the all metrics tab.

Depends on your setup but if you're heavily App based, it's totally worth the time sink putting them into the custom UI

[ChaseHansen]

being a SaaS provider ourselves it would be nice to add our apps into vCOPs but I have a lot to learn before I can do that.

[Leffingwell]

If you ever want some help constructing your Apps in the custom UI let me know!  I'd love to lend a hand

[BankDelen · Accepted solution]

It's rather simple: just edit the following page: if you want a global refresh, use the index.jsp found under /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat/webapps/vcops-vsphere/.

If you need a specific frame refresh (say dashboard) edit the dashboard.jsp page found under /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat/webapps/vcops-vsphere/pages using vi and add the following rule: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="120"> to refresh every 2 minutes.

Put the line before <link ...dashboard.css>

[ChaseHansen]

Thanks for this info it worked great.

Just to save someone else the time, if you want to auto refresh the Operations > Environment > Health dashboard (or airplane seating chart as others in my office call it)

You need to eit the tabHierarchy.jsp page found within /vcops-vsphere/pages/

[Leffingwell]

Hey There,

Thanks Bank/Chase all good information - I've awarded the correct response to Bank though, unfortunately I didn't see option to mark your post as helpful Chase.  At last we have a solution to this, if ever there was something that needed to be a KB this is it.

Sidenote: I find it interesting that a few VMware employee's weren't even aware of this solution :smileymischief:

[ChaseHansen]

Just to add to this post, I'm actually working with VMware on another vOps issue. I told him about this thread and what was changed, we did see some errors in the logs that may or may not be related to the change that was made. He was going to check on that and if the errors were not related they were going to look at making a KB. Time will tell if this happens or not.         

[admin]

Our offering for monitroing apps is based on Hyperic. You can go down to SQL transactions per sec and monitor that with DT!

There is a Hyperic Adaptor for vC Ops and also a OS Agent(that agent also collects App stats). It is not just for VM's but also Physical servers(AIX, Linux, Windows...list is long).