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dbutch1976
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Monitoring the vCenter appliances services from within VROPs 6.6

Hi guys,

We have had a lot of success monitoring services on VMs using the EPO agent on Windows machines.  We have issues with some of our 6.0 vcenters webservices going down while the fat clients continue to work.  I would like to monitor the webserver components for these appliance but I do not have a strong Linux background so I'm not sure what is entailed.  Does anyone happen to have a link to a step by step document?

Thanks,

19 Replies
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

You should really look into the SDDC Management Health management pack for vROps as it can monitor all the vCenter 6.0 services plus other components of the SDDC.

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dbutch1976
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Excellent, thanks for your suggestion, will give this a try.
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sxnxr
Commander
Commander

We tried this and found it limiting compared to teh EPO agent.

In the EPO you could add all the services and monitor if they went offline or not but the SDDC MP does not seem to monitor all the services. For example we use the VCSA 6.5 backup function but it fails of the statsmonitor is offline. The SDDC still shows the VCSA as green even of this service is stooped. and i cant find a way to monitor this service using the MP

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

It is limited, you're right, but I've talked with the product team and passed on a whole bunch of feedback (including the things you mentioned) and they are looking at heavily enhancing it. EpOps agent still works better, but it's not officially supported and I've never tried installing it in vROps itself.

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dbutch1976
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I'm also leaning towards installing the EPO agent on the vcenter appliance, but the problem is I'm not an Linux user and I don't even think it is a vaniila version of Linux.  Do you know where I can find instructions on how to install the EPO agent on the appliance?  Is it basically the same as any other Linux VM?
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sxnxr
Commander
Commander

take a look at https://www.vmguru.com/2016/02/monitor-vcenter-server-with-the-end-point-operations-agent/ 

One thing to be aware of. 6.5 VCSA is now photon and vmware as far as i know does not support the install of the EOPS agent ( even the photon agent) into the 6.5 vcsa

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

And the vCenter plug-in for EpOps hasn't been updated for 6.5, so some services aren't monitored, and some things don't work properly. VMware have stated that API is going to be the go-forward method to properly monitor the vCSA.

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MeImNot76
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I've installed SDDC Management Health Management Pack 4.0, my vCenters are all VCSA 6.5 in HA so I'm not risking an EP OPs install on them..is there a way to monitor services on the VCSAs?

If you guys could point me to any good documentation that I could go through to do this ussing the SDDC management pack or any other way, I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you!

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

The SDDC health documentation should have all this. It monitors the various VCSA services.

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MeImNot76
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I wasn't able to monitor the VCSA services, even though they are mentioned as metrics being collected in the documentation, I cannot see them. I have opened an SR with VMware last week, hoping that they have an answer for this.

Thank you

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Alfredj1204
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I think the epops agent is supported with photon, see Supported Operating Systems for the End Point Operations Management Agent

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sxnxr
Commander
Commander

You are correct EOPS agent is supported and works on photon OS but is is still not suported on the VCSA even tho it runs on photon.

I have been told on several occasions from GSS and our TAM that VMWare do not support any agents on the VCSA. The reasion i have been told is because they dont want to support any 3rd party agents they cant support any of there own so it is a blanket no to all agents. What frustrates me is that there is no public documents that states it but internal they dont support it

GeeWBee
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, Is this enough for you as public document KB2090839 ?

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wreedMH
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

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wreedMH
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Vmware support told me this today.
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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

That's pretty funny, actually. While it is technically possible to get support for this, it usually has to be done under the RPQ process. Regardless, using the EpOps agent on vCSA, while it does work, hasn't been kept up-to-date with regard to vCenter processes. SDDC Health pack is probably more along the lines of what you want.

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wreedMH
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I gotcha, by no means was saying I was going to use it yet, but when I asked the question to Vmware support last night, that was response I got today. Just sharing it.

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Yeah, understand. I mean, it does work. I've used it several times albeit not in production. It gets the job done and I've not seen any issues. That said, it's not really the "way forward" especially now that there's fairly decent API coverage of the services and core appliance health. That's really where SDDC Health tries to pick up where EpOps left off.

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wreedMH
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I am loading SDDC health PAK into my test vROPS 7.0 at home now!

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