Configuration of VsanOverviewTest

A VMware vCenter server can manage more than one vSAN cluster. A single vSAN cluster consists of any number of physical server hosts from two to 64. Additional hosts can easily be added to an existing cluster in a matter of minutes for additional compute and storage capacity. vSAN aggregates all local capacity devices into a single datastore shared by all hosts in the vSAN cluster. The datastore can be expanded by adding capacity devices or hosts with capacity devices to the cluster.

To plan the needs of the virtual infrastructure and to determine whether/not additional capacity devices need to be added to the vSAN cluster to handle the current and anticipated load, administrators should keep track on the available resources on the vSAN clusters that are managed by the VMware vCenter server. This can be easily achieved using the vSAN Overview test. This test reports the count of datastores, vSAN clusters and hosts available in the VMware vCenter server.

Note:

This test is applicable only for the vSAN enabled clusters in the VMware vCenter server.

The default parameters associated with this test are as follows:

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• In the HOST text box, the host for which the test is to be configured has to be specified.

• In the PORT text box, enter the port number at which the target host being monitored listens.

• To connect to vCenter and extract metrics from it, this test should be configured with the name and password of a user with Administrator or Virtual Machine Administrator privileges to vCenter. However, if, owing to security constraints, you are not able to use the credentials of such users for test configuration, then you can configure this test 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, and 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 Infrastructures document.

  vCenter 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 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 on vCenter before it opens new sessions, then, instead of the ‘Read-only’ user, you can optionally configure the VC USER and VC PASSWORD parameters with the credentials of a user with permissions to View and Stop Sessions on vCenter. For this purpose, you can create a special role on vCenter, grant the View and Stop Sessions privilege (prior to vCenter 4.1, this was called the View and Terminate Sessions privilege) to this role, and then assign the new role to a local/domain user to vCenter. The steps for this have been discussed in the Monitoring VMware Infrastructures document.

• Confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

• By default, the vCenter server is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. This indicates that the eG agent will communicate with the vCenter server via HTTPS by default.

• By default, in most virtualized environments, vCenter listens on port 80 (if not SSL-enabeld) or on port 443 (if SSL-enabled) only. This implies that while monitoring vCenter, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 80 or 443, depending upon the SSL-enabled status of vCenter – i.e., if vCenter is not SSL-enabled (i.e., if the SSL flag above is set to No), then the eG agent connects to vCenter using port 80 by default, and if vCenter is SSL-enabled (i.e., if the ssl flag is set to Yes), then the agent-vCenter communication occurs via port 443 by default. Accordingly, the Webport parameter is set to default by default.

  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 vCenter in your environment listens, so that the eG agent communicates with that port for collecting metrics from vCenter.

• If multiple components of the same component type are awaiting configuration, then an APPLY TO OTHER COMPONENTS check box will appear in this page. Clicking on this check box will allow you to apply the configuration to all/selected components of that type.

• Once the necessary values have been provided, clicking on the UPDATE button will register the changes made.

When changing the configuration for specific servers, a “*” beside the text box corresponding to the parameter signifies that these values have to be manually configured by the user. The parameter values that require to be configured will typically be prefixed with a “$” or contain a series of “*”. A value of “none” in the parameter value indicates that the corresponding parameter value can be changed if required.