Presentation detailing how to monitor VMware ESX with Opsview

2. Monitoring VMware ESX/vSphere with Opsview
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3. Introduction
This presentation takes you through the steps required to
monitor VMware ESX and VM’s running on ESX using Opsview.
If you don’t already have Opsview installed, visit our website and
download Opsview Atom (free), Opsview Pro (30 day trial) or
request a trial to Opsview Enterprise.
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4. Initial Setup
• In order to monitor VMware ESX and VM’s running on ESX, we
will need to download and install a few items of software
listed below, namely the VMware vSphere SDK for Perl and a
Nagios plugin for checking ESX.
• Firstly, we will need to get a terminal onto our Opsview server
(via ssh, for example). Once on, “su –“ into root (if not
already) and “cd /tmp”.
• Once on, we will need to download the VMware SDK
(mentioned earlier) from the VMware website; link here. This
will require you to have login access to www.vmware.com.
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5. Initial Setup
• The file will be downloaded to the machine you are
using to connect to your Opsview system, so we will
need to either using ssh:// or WinSCP (depending on
platform) to copy to the Opsview system. The file will
resemble the following name:
VMware-vSphere-Perl-SDK-5.0.0-422456.x86_64.tar.gz
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6. Initial Setup
• Once you have copied the file to your /tmp, as root
we will need to install a few packages depending on
your distribution:
RHEL/Centos:
yum install cpan openssl-devel perl-Class-MethodMaker perl-SOAP-
Lite perl-XML-LibXML perl-uuid
Ubuntu/Debian:
apt-get install cpanmin libdata-dump-perl libsoap-lite-perl
libclass-methodmaker-perl libxml-libxml-simple-perl libssl-dev
libarchive-zip-perl libuuid-perl
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7. Configuration
• We will also need to run the following, due to
idiosyncrasies within the VMware SDK:
export http_proxy=
export ftp_proxy=
Once installed, “cd /tmp” and run the following commands:
tar zxvf VMware-vSphere-Perl-SDK-5.0.0-422456.x86_64.tar.gz
cd vmware-vsphere-cli-distrib/
./vmware-install.pl
Once you run the vmware-install.pl command, you will be asked
to read and confirm you agree with the user agreement. Once
done, the SDK will be installed
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8. Configuration
• That is the sum of the command line portion of
setting up Opsview to monitor VMware, Next we will
add our VMware hosts via the GUI. To do this, login
to Opsview and navigate to “SETTINGS > HOSTS” and
click on the green ‘plus’ icon in the top left, to add a
new host.
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9. Configuration
• You will need to populate the fields
accordingly, i.e. host address, description, etc
as below:
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10. Configuration
• The main part on this “HOST” section of
adding a new host, is at the bottom – “Host
Templates”. We have 2 host templates for
VMware monitoring Opsview 4.1 onwards:
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OS – VMware ESX – Guest
Use this host template for your virtual
machines running on the ESX server.
OS – VMware ESX – Host
Use this host template for your ESX server
itself, which is hosting virtual machines.

11. Configuration
• Select the host template appropriate for your host, i.e. “OS –
VMware ESX – Host” and click the arrow to move it into the
left box, and finally click next.
• Next, you can optionally configure your notifications, or add
extra monitors, but in order for monitoring to work we will
need to navigate to “ATTRIBUTES” and specify the values for
“ESXUSER”, “ESXPASSWORD” and “DATASTORE” (the name of
the datastore we wish to monitor):
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12. Configuration
• Click “SUBMIT CHANGES”, and our new VMware host is
added. We must now go to “SETTINGS > APPLY CHANGES”,
and reload configuration. After 8-10 seconds your Opsview
will be reloaded and your new host is being monitored, as
below:
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13. Configuration
• You can also add, duplicate and customise the service checks
via going to “SETTINGS > SERVICE CHECKS”, and
modify/duplicate accordingly (i.e. if you want to monitor
multiple datastores, etc).
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14. About Opsview
Opsview delivers a single unified view of the health of all your distributed physical,
virtual and hybrid cloud systems.
We give DevOps staff all the tools they need to get their jobs done faster, easier and
for less.
• Opsview Enterprise offers large enterprises (+100 devices) and MSPs a certified,
professionally supported system with enhanced functionality such as dynamic
dashboards and reports
• SMEs looking for feature-rich dashboards to monitor the performance of their on-
premise, virtualized or cloud apps choose Opsview Pro
• Opsview Atom is our free, enterprise level monitoring tool for up to 25 devices
www.opsview.com
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