Monitoring Technology Dashboard for VMware vSphere

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Monitoring Technology Dashboard for VMware vSphere

    The VMware vSphere Monitoring Technology Dashboard allows ServiceNow customers to monitor the health and performance of their VMware vSphere infrastructure. It highlights the configuration items (CIs) and servers with the highest metrics over the past six hours and displays the 50 most recent active alerts in the environment.

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    Key Features

    • The dashboard presents five CIs and servers with the highest metric readouts within a specified time frame.
    • Access the dashboard via All > AIOps Dashboards > Monitoring Technology Dashboards and selecting VMware vSphere Monitoring.
    • Includes various tabs for different metrics:
      • VirtualMachine: Graphs top VMs by metric type.
      • ESX Server: Graphs top ESX servers by metric type.
      • Datacenter: Graphs top datacenters by metric type.
      • Datastore: Graphs top datastores by metric type.
      • Alerts: Displays the 50 most recent alerts related to your system.
    • Filtering options include time range and CIs for more targeted data display.
    • Customization options for widget appearance and alert timeframes are available.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing the VMware vSphere Monitoring Technology Dashboard, customers can effectively monitor their infrastructure's performance, quickly identify issues through alerts, and tailor their dashboard views to suit specific monitoring needs. This enhances operational efficiency and aids in proactive system management.

    Prerequisites

    • Create a VMware vSphere credential and Discovery schedule.
    • Ensure you are in the Agent Client Collector Monitoring scope in your ServiceNow instance.
    • Activate necessary roles such as agentclientcollectoradmin and dashboardadmin.
    • Enable Metric Intelligence on the MID Server and ensure relevant metrics policies are active.
    • Ensure the clotho plugin version 1.1.0 or above is enabled.

    With the VMware vSphere Monitoring Technology Dashboard, you can monitor the health and performance of your VMware vSphere infrastructure. By using the dashboard, you can identify the configuration items (CIs) and servers with the highest metric readouts, and view the most recent active alerts on those CIs and servers.

    Monitoring Technology Dashboard for VMware vSphere overview

    The VMware vSphere Monitoring Technology Dashboard shows the five CIs and servers with the highest metric readouts during the past six hours. The dashboard also shows the 50 most recent active alerts in your VMware vSphere environment.

    To view the dashboard, navigate to All > AIOps Dashboards > Monitoring Technology Dashboards and select VMWare vSphere Monitoring.

    Using the Monitoring Technology Dashboard for VMware vSphere

    Before using the Monitoring Technology Dashboard for VMware vSphere:
    • Create a VMware vSphere credential and use it to create a Discovery schedule. For details on creating VMware vSphere credentials, see VMware Cloud Discovery.
    • Create a Discovery schedule, using the credential created in the previous step. For details on creating a Discovery schedule, see VMware discovery.
    • Ensure that you’re working in the Agent Client Collector Monitoring scope in your ServiceNow instance.
    • Ensure that the agent_client_collector_admin and dashboard_admin roles are enabled.
    • Enable Metric Intelligence on the MID Server.
    • Ensure that the VSphere Datacenter Metrics, VSphere Datastore Metrics, VSphere ESX Server Metrics and VSphere VirtualMachine Metrics policies are enabled.

      Enabling these policies activates metric to CI mapping.

    • Ensure that the clotho plugin version 1.1.0 or above is enabled.
    • After upgrading from a previous version, follow the procedure described in the ACC-M Dashboard Filters are not working when upgraded from Tokyo/Utah to Vancouver [KB1438042] article in the NOW Support Knowledge Base.
    The VMware vSphere Monitoring Technology Dashboard contains the tabs listed in the following table.
    Table 1. VMware vSphere Monitoring Dashboard tabs
    Tab Description
    VirtualMachine Displays graphs of the top VMware vSphere VMs by metric type.
    ESX Server Displays graphs of the top VMware vSphere ESX servers by metric type.
    Datacenter Displays graphs of the top VMware vSphere datacenters by metric type.
    Datastore Displays graphs of the top VMware vSphere datastores by metric type.
    Alerts Displays the 50 most recent alerts that are associated with the URLs in your system. Alerts help you to remediate your system by providing information on problematic behavior.

    On the right side of widgets displaying a single metric, you can select the More options icon (More options icon) and select Change group by. Select the category you want to view the metric by: Host name, Class, Operating System, or OS Version.

    Point to the relevant widget to view a specific datapoint and all of its details in a pop-up window.

    You can filter the dashboard data according to the following filters:
    Table 2. Dashboard filters
    Time range filter The time range for which you want metric data to display on the dashboard.
    Metrics by selected CI filter The CIs for which you want metric data to display on the dashboard.

    You can customize the appearance of the individual widgets on the VMware vSphere Monitoring Technology Dashboard. For example, you could change the timeframe for which the alerts appear. You can also include customized widgets when you are creating a custom dashboard. For more information, see Customize the Monitoring Technology Dashboard.