VM2630

Using Unnoc to Perform Monitoring of vCenter, ESX Servers, and Virtual Guests

The usual methods for gathering statistics for CPU, Memory, and Swap on a physical server do not always provide accurate results when they are used to gather statistics in a guest operating system in a virtual machine or an ESX server. Writing a plug-in that utilizes the Perl VI module to query the vCenter Server can be complicated. Writing a plug-in that would query the vCenter Server database directly is impractical since the schema for the database may change. Unnoc is a free and easy solution to this problem.
This session will go over how Unnoc gathers statistics from the vCenter Server and stores them in a consolidated and easy to query database. It will show how to add additional metrics to the Unnoc plug-ins and database, and how to query these statistics using monitoring tools. The session will share Unnoc setup instructions, customizations made to gather additional statistics, and custom plug-ins. If time permits the methods used to automatically add and remove ESX servers and virtual machines from Nagios Monitoring System and Fruity (a Nagios configuration management tool) when they are added or removed from vCenter Server will also be discussed.

Virtualization Management

Breakout Session

Unnoc, vCenter, ESX Servers, Guests

1 Hour

Kyle Martin, Monitoring Engineer, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Steve Royce, VMware Engineer, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints