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CJMills
Contributor
Contributor

vROps 6.2 - Creating a heatmap for all different Guest File Systems

We are wanting to build a heatmap that shows the many different guest file systems usage %. We have built alerts based off of usage % with different thresholds, but building a heatmap has proven difficult. We have many SQL servers with upwards of 25 mountpoints that we would like to show in the heatmap.

And if a heatmap isn't the correct display choice, some suggestions would be great.

Thanks,

Christopher

4 Replies
lannguyen
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Your best bet would to create a View.  When creating the view select the following for the wizard:  List, Virtual machines, Guest File System > C: > Free Space Remaining (GB) ... then create a filter to display when it is less than 5GB for example.  One thing to note is that Free Space Remaining for the C: Drive is no longer enabled by default.  You will need to follow the instructions in the link below to enable the hidden metric.  Once completed, repeat the process for D drive, E drive, etc.  

vROPS 6 – How to Enable Hidden Metrics and Properties | VM IGNITE

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sxnxr
Commander
Commander

The problem i have with heat maps is they can be a pain to configure and not very flexible.

I looked at creating a Metric Config so you could use an object list feeding into a scoreboard that uses the metric config but listing the drives (c: d: etc) is not a valid metric. I get "Failed to get attributeKeyId for = guestfilesystem:D:\\|percentage" the only valid ones that can be included in a config file in the first column below:

guestfilesystem|capacity

Guest File System Capacity (MB)

Total capacity on guest file system in megabytes.

guestfilesystem|freespace

Guest File System Free (MB)

Total free space on guest file system in megabytes.

guestfilesystem|percentage

Guest File System Usage (%)

Percent guest file system.

guestfilesystem|usage

Guest File System Usage

Total usage of guest file system.

guestfilesystem|freespace_total

Total Guest File System Free (GB)

Total free space on guest file system.

guestfilesystem|capacity_total

Total Guest File System Capacity(GB)

Total capacity on guest file system.

guestfilesystem|percentage_total

Total Guest File System Usage (%)

Guest file system space utilization.

guestfilesystem|usage_total

Total Guest File System Usage

Total usage of guest file system.

The only options i see you have are

1 The view in the above post

2 A heat map with a configuration for each mount point.

3 A scoreboard got each SQL server ( will have a scoreboard per SQL server.

2 & 3 are not ideal because if any new mount points are added the dashboard will need to be manually updated.

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CJMills
Contributor
Contributor

Iannguyen

Thank you for the response, and it was helpful but we are after more of the guest file system usage % as we have disk of varying sizes so alerting that the free space on 1 C: drive with 5GB might not work on another.

We try to use usage % as a better metric and then use 85/90/95% for alerting. Funny thing is we get alerts for that, on all drives and mountpoints, but we cannot find away to get that information on a dashboard, list, or heatmap. The biggest reason is that we are trying to give our Cells access to this information so they can better support their servers and applications.

We are working with a VM engineer for vrops on some other issues, but I was going to present this quandary to him also.

Thanks

Christopher

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lannguyen
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

If all you wanted is Usage % than that's even easier.  Follow the same steps and expand C: and select Guest File System Usage (%) (See picture below).  I was suggesting Free Space in GB because that gives me a more accurate picture of how much space i have left.  90% of a 1000GB drive basically means you have 100GB of space left, that to me doesn't indicate a problem, but it's up to you.  Also the creating a View gives you the ability to add it to a report and to also to add it to a dashboard as well.  

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