Collecting, Searching, and Monitoring VMware Information
The GoToManage Crawler now includes a plugin that will collect rich information from VMware ESX, VMware ESXi, and VMware vCenter (Virtual Center). This information will be submitted to your company's GoToManage Search Index.
The GoToManage Community has a number of new Dashboards that present you with configuration and operational information about your deployed VMware hosts.
How to Configure the GoToManage Crawer VMware Plugin
In order for the GoToManage Crawler plugin to gather data from your VMware hosts you need to provide it with the correct credentials. You can do this by accessing the 'VMware' plugin under the 'Plugins' tab of your GoToManage Crawler instance inside the 'Crawlers' application in GoToManage:
By providing the VMware plugin the credentials to scan your VMware hosts, GoToManage will be able to gather and index the data. However, the GoToManage Crawler will only crawl these machines once a day. For better operational and historical data analysis you need to scan them more often. You should go to the 'Scheduler' tab in the Crawlers application and can click 'Create New Schedule' and set up the GoToManage Crawler to communicate with your key machines more frequently. Here you can see an example configuration probing the machine at IP address '10.10.20.41' every 5 minutes with the 'vmware_plugin'. And by gathering more data, GoToManage can display trend charts showing disk, cpu, and memory use in a more granular way over time:
NOTE: Be sure to save any changes you make in the 'Crawler' application for it to be saved and communicated with the GoToManage Crawler!
Community VMware Dashboards
In the GoToManage Community there are two Dashboards that have been created to give you an overview of some of the key configuration and operational characteristics of your installed VMware Hosts and VMware Guests. These GoToManage Dashboards are GoToManage Share-its. You can find them under the 'VMware Configuration' and 'VMware Operations' in the 'Dashboard Configurator' at the bottom of any GoToManage Dashboard page.
The VMware GoToManage Dashboards contain templated searches. Once the GoToManage Crawler has scanned the VMware Hosts you will be able to select which host you want to view the statistics and information on. Typically you will want to choose the host that you are running VMware vCenter or VMware Virtual Center on.
The VMware Configuration Dashboard shows you various information about your VMware Host and Guests. The Dashboard will display which ones are running, their state, and which VMware Host the VMware Guests are running on:
The VMware Operations Dashboard displays run time cpu, memory usage of VMware Hosts and their VMware Guests. You can also view the VMware client heartbeat status as a GoToManage Uptime chart:
Interpreting VMware Search Results
Because GoToManage is also a search index you can do simple text searches of your VMware configuration. In the following example, there is a VMware guest that is named 'vcenter.' By entering 'vcenter' in the GoToManage search box along with finding the actual device 'vcenter' we also find VMware's of the VMware Guest 'vcenter:'
Note the key search results for 'VMware Guest' and 'VMware Host.' These are key reference terms that VMware uses to define these entities. By clicking on, in this example, 'host-27' you would augment your search to find instances of both 'vcenter' and 'host-27' in your search index.
If you want to just find references to 'host-27' in your search index you can hold the control-key down while clicking on the key 'host-27.' This will give you a search just for 'host-27' in your GoToManage Search index:
As you can see in this example the search finds all references to 'host-27' which for VMware uniquely defines a VMware Host. Consequently, the search results returns the VMware Host and the VMware Guests that are on this VMware Host.
Integrate GoToManage directly with your VMware Infrastructure Client
To enable GoToManage integartion into VMware Infrastructure Client you must follow these steps and install the GoToManage to VMware Integration plugin. Users of VMware ESX and ESXi typically administrate their VMware installations via VMware's Infrastructure Client. The VMware Infrastructure Client supports plugins that allows GoToManage to integrate seamlessly into it. The VMware plugin for the GoToManage Crawler takes advantage of this capability and allows you to search and browse your VMWare information directly in the Infrastructure Client. When the GoToManage Crawler scans a host that supports VMware's APIs it will automatically register a plugin with VirtualCenter.
After the plugin has been registered with VirtualCenter you can then install it for active use from the 'Plugins' menu in your VMware Infrastructure Client. To do this select 'Manage Plugins...' menu item from the 'Plugins' menu on the VMware Infrastructure Client. This will bring up the 'Plugin Manager' window with two tabs 'Available' and 'Installed'. You will see 'GoToManage to VMware Integration' in the list of available plugins. To enable GoToManage integartion into VMware Infrastructure Client you must install this plugin.
When the plugin is installed this will add three features to your VMware Infrastructure Client:
- A 'GoToManage Search' item added to the VMware Infrastructure Client's toolbar
- A 'GoToManage Inventory' menu item to the VMware Host and VMware Guest elements in the Inventory tree.
- A 'GoToManage' tab to the view for VMware Hosts and VMware Guests.
The 'GoToManage Search' toolbar item loads the GoToManage website in to the main frame of your VMware Infrastructure client. This is an embedded web browser making it easier to reach GoToManage from inside of the VMware Infrastructure Client instead of launching a separate web browser.
The 'GoToManage Inventory' menu items for VMware Hosts and VMware Guests when select will launch a separate browser window. This browser window will be directed to the device entry in the GoToManage Inventory Application for the VMware Guest or Host that was selected.
The 'GoToManage' tab is similar in function to the 'GoToManage Inventory' menu items. However instead of launching a separate browser window the display the GoToManage Inventory application page for the VMware Host or Guest directly inside the VMware Infrastructure Client.
