How does the VMware Event Collector work ?

[Aron Campbell]

Hi Experts,

We are running VMware discovery nicely for multiple vcentre instances and aim to configure the event collector.

Before i do, can an expert please describe how the event collector works? 

Does it poll a particular API ? If so how regularly ?

Does it register to receive events, if so by what mechanism.

The vAPI's can get busy and the compute team want to know the details of the mechanism before going ahead.

As much technical detail as possible please.  The online documentation is quite light for some detail.

Kind Regards,

Aron

PS Currently on Orlando Patch 7.

[CMDB Nerd]

Hi Aron,

You have to register your mid server as a event receiver on the vCenter on port 443. Once this is done, 44 events from vCenter will be received and transformed in servicenow to update CMDB or trigger discovery.

Regards

[bdubz7]

pretty sure it's the vSphere web services api.

I can't find the configuration, but on the event management side, it's polled every 120 seconds.

this is what's documented

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-servicenow-platform/page/product/mid-server/concept/c_VCenterEventProcessorExtension.html

[JF Muller]

The connector is based on an JAVA extension that connect to vcenter via /vim/vimService API.

The extension collects:

- eventName The event name we received.
- vmBiosUuid The BIOS UUID of the VM in the event. 
- vmInstanceUuid The Instance UUID of the VM in the event. 
- vCenterInstanceUuid The Instance UUID of the vCenter that sent the event.
- jsonData JSON object of all the data in the event.

Hope this helps

regards

Jef

[Ashutosh Munot1]

Hi,

Inshort: This event collector is used to update CMDB based on actions happening in that vCenter on a VM. For example: if a new VM is provisioned then a event is triggered and servicenow will scan that vm automatically by running auto discovery on that vm and update the cmdb,in this case we dont have to wait for scheduled discovery and everything is real time.

Second ex is when the VM is turned on or off, then the event is triggered and cmdb is updated for the same. Our experience so far is awesome and we are improving our it.

Thanks,
Ashutosh