vCenter Discovery

[Sanket Shinde2]

Hello All,

I learnt that discovery automatically triggers a probe for vCenter discovery when it finds that some Windows machine has vCenter application/software installed on it.

On the same lines I have a few questions:

For example:

1. I have a vCenter instance available in the CMDB, how can I figure out which Windows machine has a particular instance of vCenter installed on it, so that I can run a discovery on that particular machine and get the details of all the datacenters, clusters, ESX Servers and VM instances.

Also, I found out that VMWare has a vCenter web app also. So how to figure out whether the vCenter is istalled on a Windows machine or was discovered from web app?

2.I see even in Orlando release, ServiceNow uses a probe for vCenter discovery and there is no pattern available.How can I get all the information that is available for VM instances in the probe and will it be wise to customize this OOTB probe keeping in mind the automatic upgrade of probes from ServiceNow.

3. How can I fetch additional details about a VM instance which already is not available OOTB.

For example:

If we add a field to VM instance machine table and we want value in the field to be auto-populated through discovery?

Please let me know if you have any information on the above queries.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Sanket Shinde

[Ashutosh Munot1]

HI,

You are right:

1) vCenter discovery happens when we see that on a server port 9443 and 5480 is open, if it finds those ports are open then it will automatically run the v|Center discovery and use the windows credentials if the vCenter is hosted on windows machine. If on linux then you need vmware credentials with readonly rightss.

Then if servicenow see that on server we have running process as vmapp_https (5480)and vmapp6_https(9443) then it triggers vcenter probes as below:

2) When the vCenter runs on the Linux host and you try to discover that host it will show you vCenter only has discover device and not the host.

Thanks,
Ashutosh

[Sanket Shinde2]

Hi,

Please comment on the below:

• How can I discover the updated values in Linux server, becoz now in this host linux server all the related lists are blank, as discovery is not running the linux server probes only vmware probe.
• Also, if I want to write a discovery schedule for all the vcenters (don't want to use vCenter event collector), will I have to use the IP addresses in the schedules? 

Regards,

Sanket

[Ashutosh Munot1]

HI,

You can use IP address in schedule or let it run based on host discovery.

Do you have SSH credentials to discover the LINUX host?

Thanks
Ashutosh

[Sanket Shinde2]

Hi Ashutosh,

Yes, the SSH credentials are in place. The linux server was discovered first time, its only that its not getting updated now as the device discovered is vCenter.

Do you see any peculiar thing that might be wrong?

Also, one general question:

If you remember, I once had a query on discovery patterns, where I wanted to know if I am adding an extension section on an OOTB pattern, will the OOTB pattern be eligible for auto-upgrades and to which the answer was yes as we do not directly customize the OOTB pattern.

Is there something similar in probes, where we can add something like an extension section to the OOTB probes so that we do no customize the OOTB probes directly and we do not risk the auto-upgrade eligibility of the OOTB probes?

Regards,

Sanket

[Ashutosh Munot1]

HI Sanket,

You can create a different probe and sensor script but there is nothing like extension in probe. It will cause issue if there is upgrade in future for that probe. We are moving towards pattern but for vCenter not yet.

When you discover the linux server can you see any unix linux probe trigger?

Check Ecc queue.

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=7a33ba85db2697408e7c2926ca96...
Thanks,
Ashutosh