How does eG Enterprise Monitor VMware vCenter?

eG Enterprise is capable of monitoring VMware vCenter servers running on Windows systems, and VMware vCenter server appliances, which are preconfigured Linux-based virtual machines that are optimized for running vCenter Server and associated services.

Regardless of how VMware vCenter is configured in an environment - whether as a Windows server application or as a Linux appliance - eG Enterprise monitors vCenter in an agentless manner, by default. In this case, a single eG agent deployed on a remote Windows host in the environment connects to the web port of vCenter, runs vCenter REST API commands, and pulls metrics from it.

To enable the eG agent to connect to the vCenter server and collect the desired metrics, you need to first make sure that the following pre-requisites are fulfilled:

  1. Make sure that the eG agent is configured with the correct web port of the vCenter server. Use the WEB PORT parameter of the tests for this purpose.
  2. For running the vCenter REST API commands, the eG agent should connect to the vCenter server as a user with Administrator or Virtual Machine Administrator privileges to vCenter. This user should also be granted with Use the VC User and VC Password parameters of eG tests to configure the credentials of such a user.

    In some environments however, owing to security constraints, you may not able to use the credentials of administrator users for monitoring purposes. In such a case, you can configure the eG agent with the credentials of a user with Read-only rights to vCenter. For this purpose, you can assign the ‘Read-only’ role to a local/domain user to vCenter. Additionally, this role should be granted with the Diagnostics permission. Then, specify name and password of this user against the VC User and VC Password text boxes. The steps for assigning this role to a user on vCenter have been detailed in the Monitoring VMware Infrastructureschapter.