Monitoring vSphere

This article will help you get the Vsphere plugin for sd-agent configured and returning metrics

Installing the vsphere plugin package

Install the vsphere plugin on Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install sd-agent-vsphere

Install the vsphere plugin on RHEL/CentOS:

sudo yum install sd-agent-vsphere

Read more about agent plugins.

Configuring the agent to monitor vSphere

1. Configure /etc/sd-agent/conf.d/vsphere.yaml

init_config:

instances:
  # name must be a unique key representing your vCenter instance
  # mandatory
  - name: main-vcenter

    # the host used to resolve the vCenter IP
    # mandatory
    host: vcenter.domain.com

    # Read-only credentials to connect to vCenter
    # mandatory
    username: serverdensity-readonly@vsphere.local
    password: mypassword

• You'll need to create a read-only user in vCenter, then use those credentials in `vsphere.yaml`

2. Restart the agent

sudo /etc/init.d/sd-agent restart

or

sudo systemctl restart sd-agent

Verifying the configuration
Execute info to verify the configuration with the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/sd-agent info 

or

/usr/share/python/sd-agent/agent.py info

If the agent has been configured correctly you'll see an output such as:

vsphere
-----
  - instance #0 [OK]
  - Collected * metrics

You can also view the metrics returned with the following command:

sudo -u sd-agent /usr/share/python/sd-agent/agent.py check vsphere

Configuring graphs

Click the name of your server from the Devices list in your Server Density account then go to the Metrics tab. Click the + Graph button on the right then choose the vsphere metrics to display the graphs. The metrics will also be available to select when building dashboard graphs.

Monitored metrics

Metric	Values
vsphere.cpu.extra Milliseconds of extra CPU time.	millisecond / None Type: float
vsphere.cpu.ready Milliseconds of CPU time spent in ready state.	millisecond / None Type: float
vsphere.cpu.usage Percentage of CPU capacity being used.	percent / None Type: float
vsphere.cpu.usagemhz Total megehertz of CPU being used.	megahertz / None Type: float
vsphere.disk.commandsAborted Number of SCSI commands aborted.	occurrence / None Type: float
vsphere.disk.deviceLatency Average amount of time it takes to complete an SCSI command from physical device.	millisecond / None Type: float
vsphere.disk.deviceReadLatency Average amount of time it takes to complete read from physical device.	millisecond / None Type: float
vsphere.disk.deviceWriteLatency Average amount of time it takes to complete write to the physical device (LUN).	millisecond / None Type: float
vsphere.disk.queueLatency Average amount of time spent in VMkernel queue (per SCSI command).	millisecond / None Type: float
vsphere.disk.totalLatency Sum of average amount of time (in kernel and device) to process an SCSI command issued by the Guest OS to the vm.	millisecond / None Type: float
vsphere.mem.active Kilobytes of memory that the VMkernel estimates is being actively used based on recently touched memory pages.	kibibyte / None Type: float
vsphere.mem.compressed Kilobytes of memory that have been compressed.	kibibyte / None Type: float
vsphere.mem.consumed Kilobytes of used memory.	kibibyte / None Type: float
vsphere.mem.overhead Kilobytes of memory allocated to a vm beyond its reserved amount.	kibibyte / None Type: float
vsphere.mem.vmmemctl Kilobytes of memory allocated by the virtual machine memory control driver (vmmemctl).	kibibyte / None Type: float
vsphere.network.received Number of kilobytes received by the host.	kibibyte / None Type: float
vsphere.network.transmitted Number of kilobytes transmitted by the host.	kibibyte / None Type: float