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raidzero
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vROps - Guest File Space Utilization - monitoring and customization

I've seen a few articles and posts on this before but am having a difficult time as a light user of vROps trying to get this figured out.

The problem is simple - there are some VMs in a larger environment (say 20-30 out of 800 VMs)which need an exclusion on a drive for capacity alerting purposes.  These drives will always be >95% utilization with no chance that they can grow. 

My first question is, can I see guest file system utilization in vROps and if so where?  I can see the specific drive utilization stats in the alert but I don't see the utilization in the VM object itself.  E.g. if the alert is on the E: drive, I can see the E: drive utilization in the alert, but I can't find E:, C:, 😧 utilization in the VM object.

Second, is there a sane way to exclude a specific drive in alerting without impacting the other drives, and other VMs in the environment.  I'm assuming this has to do with groups but the only thing I've done with groups is applying a policy to it.  This makes sense if I want to change the metrics of a group but I don't see how I can exclude subobjects here.

This would seem to be a really common issue so I'm guessing there is a simple solution here but for the life of me I can't find it.  The posts and blogs I've seen seem to attempt to solve this problem in a few different ways but are either extremely manual and tedious, or they must be applied globally for all VMs instead of a subset.

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raidzero
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I think I have made some progress, although it is still a little murky and painful to create.  There is part of the manual (https://pubs.vmware.com/vrealizeoperationsmanager-6/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vrealize-operations-... ) that discusses some customization based on CPU utilization.

1. Content > Symptom Definitions > Metric / Property Symptom definitions.  Green plus.  Base object type > vCenter Adapter > Virtual Machine.  In the lower left pane, expand Guest File System Stats.  For each drive you want to monitor, expand and drag the Guest File System Usage (%) to the right hand side.  Give each of them a symptom name (e.g. "C: drive low on capacity") that you can find later, adjust the criticality, and then enter a threshold value on the end.  When done, save.

2. Content > Alert Definitions.  Green plus.  Enter a custom name that you can find later, and optional description.  Base Object type Virtual machine again.  Set Alert impact as you see fit.  I chose Risk, Immediate, Applicaton : Capacity, 1, 1.  For Symptom Definitions, choose Defined on Self, make sure the symptom type is metric/property and then use the filter below to find symptom name (e.g. from above "low on capacity").  Drag all of them into the same Symptom (not separate symptoms) and make sure exhibits is set to "any" instead of "all".  optionally add a recommendation

3. Environment > Groups Tab.  Green plus. Give group a custom name, choose default policy (overridden in step #4), then select the VMs below however you please.  I chose to do object name is and match the name of specific VMs but you can also do name contains, etc.  Use preview in lower left to verify membership before creating.

4. Administration > Policies > Policy Library tab.  Green plus.  Give policy a name and optional description.  For "Start with" choose your standard default policy.  Click 6. Alert / Symptom definitions.  Use filter to find alert created in #2 and enable.  Use filter "file system" to find the default "One or more virtual machine guest file systems are running out of disk space" and disable it.  Click 8. Apply policy to groups and choose group created in #3.

After just a minute the objects should update and you shouldn't get the capacity alerts on the excluded drive. 

Moving forward simply dropping new VMs into the custom group should make them stop alerting on the excluded drive.

The manual made it seem like you could disable all alerts and just enable the custom one in the custom policy, but I'm not sure this will work?  Seems like this would override every alert in the default policy. I don't have a way to test this at the moment.

chdrei
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Hello raidzero,

I don't which version of vROM you're using, mine is 6.6.1

you can see the specific drive utilization stats when you have look at

a specific VM, choose "All Metrics"

then open up:

All Metrics

- Guest File System Stats

here you can see the file systems

cheers

chdrei

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