vSphere monitoring, Application monitoring, Hardware monitoring, Operating System (OS) monitoring, vROps can do it all! This blog will explore OS monitoring, which in the case of vROps is done by an in-guest agent, the Telegraf Agent. The Telegraf Agent for Windows and Linux pulls data from the OS via Input Plugins.
We'll perform remote deployments here, but local installs are also supported and documented later in this blog. Assuming your vROps environment is up and running and you've deployed the necessary Cloud Proxy/s, let's get started.
All screenshots shown here will be from vROps 8.6.2. I'm going to show a Windows VM and a Linux VM, but here is the list of all supported distributions.
Go to Home - Configure - Application Monitoring - MANAGE Agents. Select the VM/VMs on which you'd like to install the Telegraf Agent and click the three dots next to VM ACTION.
Select Install. This is where you'd perform other Telegraf Agent actions as well, like Start/Stop.
Common username and password should be used for single VM installs or when all VMs you are installing on have the same credential. The second option should be used for lists of VMs with different credentials. Click NEXT.
Provide the necessary credentials, lots of great in product detail provided here! Click NEXT.
Confirm the VM/s you're installing and click INSTALL AGENT. Your VM will now show as Install in Progress.
Once complete, it'll look like this.
The install was successful, the Telegraf Agent should now be running. If we RDP into this Windows VM and explore services we should see three new services running.
The process for installing on a Linux VM is exactly the same and once complete, you'll see three new processing running.
Now that we've deployed our Telegraf Agents, what do they look like? They manifest as an object, in this case child objects of the VM they are installed on.
Here you can see the Windows VM we installed the Telegraf Agent on. The Windows VM object is in the center, with the Windows OS object (discovered by Telegraf) below it. If you select the Windows OS object, you can then explore the metrics and properties the Telegraf Agent has captured.
This looks similar for the Linux OS we are monitoring on the Linux VM.
The Telegraf Agent will capture data based on its Input Plugins and its Configuration file, documentation can be found here. We've done remote deployments via the vROps UI, but local installs (ie physical servers) are also supported. Documentation for Linux VMs can be found here. Documentation for Windows VMs can be found here.
Now that we have OS metrics, we can use them to troubleshoot problems. An all-encompassing dashboard exploring OS metrics, Application performance, Hardware alerts, and vSphere behavior might look something like this.
For more information and a potential vROps trial, go here!