Datastores - ESX Test

How often should the test be executed

The host for which the test is to be configured

The port at which the HOSTlistens. By default, this is NULL.

In order to enable the test to extract the desired metrics from a target ESX server, you need to configure the test with an ESX USER and ESX PASSWORD. The user credentials to be passed here depend upon the mechanism used by the eG agent for discovering the VMs on the target ESX server and collecting performance statistics from it. These monitoring/discovery methodologies and their corresponding configuration requirements have been discussed hereunder:

• VM discovery using the web services interface of the ESX server: Starting with ESX server 3.0, a VMware ESX server offers a web service interface using which the eG agent discovers the guest operating systems on a physical ESX host. The VMware VI SDK is used by the agent to implement the web services interface. To use this interface for discovering the VMs, this test should be configured with an ESX USER who has “Read-only” privileges to the target ESX server. By default, the root user is authorized to execute the test. However, it is preferable that you create a new user on the target ESX host and assign the “Read-only” role to him/her. The steps for achieving this have been elaborately discussed in Creating a New User with Read-Only Privileges to the ESX Server.

  ESX servers terminate user sessions based on timeout periods. The default timeout period is 30 mins. When you stop an agent, sessions currently in use by the agent will remain open for this timeout period until ESX times out the session. If the agent is restarted within the timeout period, it will open a new set of sessions. If you want the eG agent to close already existing sessions before it opens new sessions, then you would have to configure all the tests with the credentials of an ESX user with permissions to View and Terminate Sessions. To know how to grant this permission to an ESX user, refer to Creating a Special Role on an ESX Server and Assigning the Role to a New User .

VM discovery using the vCenter in the target environment: By default, the eG agent connects to each ESX server and discovers the VMs executing on it. While this approach scales well, it requires additional configuration for each server being monitored. For example, separate user accounts may need to be created on each server for read-only access to VM details. While monitoring large virtualized installations however, the agents can be optionally configured to perform guest discovery using the VM information already available in vCenter. In this case therefore, the ESX USER and ESX PASSWORD that you specify should be that of an Administrator or Virtual Machine Administrator in vCenter. However, if, owing to security constraints, you prefer not to use the credentials of such users, then, you can create a special role on vCenter with ‘Read-only’ privileges.

Refer to Assigning the ‘Read-Only’ Role to a Local/Domain User to vCenter to know how to create a user on vCenter.

If the ESX server for which this test is being configured had been discovered via vCenter, then the eG manager automatically populates the ESX USER and ESX PASSWORD text boxes with the vCenter user credentials using which the ESX discovery was performed.

Like ESX servers, vCenter servers too terminate user sessions based on timeout periods. The default timeout period is 30 mins. When you stop an agent, sessions currently in use by the agent will remain open for this timeout period until vCenter times out the session. If the agent is restarted within the timeout period, it will open a new set of sessions. If you want the eG agent to close already existing sessions before it opens new sessions, then you would have to configure all the tests with the credentials of a vCenter user with permissions to View and Terminate Sessions (from vCenter 4.1, this is called the View and stop sessions permission). To know how to grant this permission to a user to vCenter, refer to Creating a Special Role on vCenter and Assigning the Role to a New User. When the eG agent is started/restarted, it first attempts to connect to the vCenter server and terminate all existing sessions for the user whose credentials have been provided for the tests.

This is done to ensure that unnecessary sessions do not remain established in the vCenter server for the session timeout period.  Ideally, you should create a separate user account with the required credentials and use this for the test configurations. If you provide the credentials for an existing user for the test configuration, when the eG agent starts/restarts, it will close all existing sessions for this user (including sessions you may have opened using the Virtual Infrastructure client). Hence, in this case, you may notice that your VI client sessions are terminated when the eG agent starts/restarts.

Confirm the password by retyping it here.

By default, the ESX server is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. This indicates that the eG agent will communicate with the ESX server via HTTPS by default. On the other hand, if the eG agent has been configured to use the VMPerl API or CLI for monitoring (i.e., if the ESX USER parameter is set to none), then the status of the SSL flag is irrelevant.

Like the ESX sever, the vCenter is also SSL-enabled by default. If you have chosen to use the vCenter for monitoring all the ESX servers in your environment, then you have to set the SSL flag to Yes.

By default, in most virtualized environments, the ESX server and vCenter listen on port 80 (if not SSL-enabled) or on port 443 (if SSL-enabled). This implies that while monitoring an SSL-enabled ESX server directly, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 443 of the ESX server to pull out metrics, and while monitoring a non-SSL-enabled ESX server, the eG agent connects to port 80. Similarly, while monitoring an ESX server via an SSL-enabled vCenter, the eG agent connects to port 443 of vCenter to pull out the metrics, and while monitoring via a non-SSL-enabled vCenter, the eG agent connects to port 80 of vCenter. Accordingly, the WEBPORT parameter is set to 80 or 443 depending upon the status of the ssl flag.  In some environments however, the default ports 80 or 443 might not apply. In such a case, against the WEBPORT parameter, you can specify the exact port at which the ESX server or vCenter in your environment listens so that the eG agent communicates with that port.

If the eG manager had discovered the target ESX server by connecting to vCenter, then the IP address of the vCenter server used for discovering this ESX server would be automatically displayed against the VIRTUAL CENTER parameter; similarly, the ESX USER and ESX PASSWORD text boxes will be automatically populated with the vCenter user credentials, using which ESX discovery was performed.

If this ESX server has not been discovered using vCenter, but you still want to discover the guests on the ESX server via vCenter, then select the IP address of the vCenter host that you wish to use for guest discovery from the VIRTUAL CENTER list. By default, this list is populated with the IP address of all vCenter hosts that were added to the eG Enterprise system at the time of discovery. Upon selection, the ESX USERand ESX PASSWORD that were pre-configured for that vCenter server will be automatically displayed against the respective text boxes.

On the other hand, if the IP address of the vCenter server of interest to you is not available in the list, then, you can add the details of the vCenter server on-the-fly, by selecting the Other option from the VIRTUAL CENTER list. This will invoke the ADD VCENTER SERVER DETAILS page. Refer to Adding the Details of a vCenter Server for VM Discoverysection to know how to add a vCenter server using this page. Once the vCenter server is added, its IP address, ESX USER, and ESX PASSWORD will be displayed against the corresponding text boxes.

On the other hand, if you want the eG agent to behave in the default manner -i.e., communicate with each ESX server for monitoring and VM information - then set the VIRTUAL CENTER parameter to ‘none’.

If the target vSphere/ESX server is being monitored via vCenter, then, you can set this flag to Yes to instruct the test to monitor both shared and local datastores, or set it to No so that, only the local datastores are monitored.

However, if the target vSphere/ESX server is not monitored via vCenter, then the test will report metrics for all shared and local datastores, regardless of the status of this flag.