Standalone ESXi discovery

Standalone ESXi discovery supports discovery of individual ESXi servers that host virtual machines (VMs) and related components without a vCenter. Various CIs and relationships are discovered as part of a discovery schedule.

Required roles

Users with the itil and asset roles can access ESXi configuration item (CI) records. To run a standalone ESXi discovery, users must have the discovery_admin role.

VMware credentials

To run a standalone ESXi discovery, you need VMware credentials. Create the credentials by navigating to Discovery > Credentials > VMware Credentials.

If you use a domain account to access the ESXi host, specify the domain with the user name in the credential record in one of the supported formats, such as Domain\UserName.

Note:

The VMware credentials must have read-only role in the ESXi host.

Requirements

• Make sure the Discovery (com.snc.discovery) plugin is installed and activated and that you have upgraded to Xanadu or later.
• Activate the ESXi trigger probe. Navigate to the Trigger Probe [trigger_probe_m2m] table. The esxi record is inactive by default. Mark Active as true to enable Standalone ESXi discovery.
• Create a new Discovery schedule for the host with the appropriate IP address of the ESXi host.

Note:

If both SSH and ESXi are triggered, SSH is launched first and may cause Discovery to complete with the message "ESX Discovery is only supported through the vCenter." In this case, open the Unix - Classify probe and set ESX - OS inactive.

ESXi server Discovery components

Discovery identifies ESXi servers based on the correlation ID (BIOS UUID), when the hardware manufacturer is on a certified inclusion list. If the manufacturer is on the list, the correlation ID must be unique. If the manufacturer is not on the certified inclusion list, the Managed Object Reference ID (MORID) and Serial Number are checked as well.

After Shazzam runs, it checks for the port probe esxi. Discovery then launches the VMWare - Standalone ESXi Server probe, which then launches the probes that explore the ESXi server. Other existing Discovery probes are also launched. For the complete list of probes, see List of Discovery probes.

Table 1. ESXi server Discovery components

Component	Name	Description
IP Service	ESXi	IP Service ESXi - VMWare VM console is defined for the Port 902.
Port Probe	esxi	ESXi Server Appliance web user interface. It is triggered by the IP Service ESXi and it triggers the probe VMWare - Standalone ESXi Server.
Probe	VMWare - Standalone ESXi Server	Probe to get information about an ESXi server.
Probe	VMWare - vCenter ESX Hosts	Creates records for ESXi servers and host mounts. Triggers other probes. VMware - vCenter ESX Hosts Storage VMware - vCenter Datastores VMware - vCenter Networks VMware -vCenter VMs
Probe	VMWare - vCenter ESX Hosts Storage	Creates records for ESXi host hardware: network adapters, disks, HBAs, FC ports, iSCSI and FC disks. Creates relationships between DAS/iSCSI/FC disks and datastore disks.

Basic server data from ESXi hosts is collected by the VMware - vCenter ESX Hosts probe.

ESXi Standalone server data

Discovery uses multiple existing probes to collect this data from ESXi. The data is saved in various tables. Some of the CIs which have the "server" field have a reference to ESXi Host (for example, cmdb_ci_esx_server).

Table 2. VMware Virtual Machine Instance [cmdb_ci_vmware_instance]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Memory (MB)	memory
CPUs	cpus
Disks	disks
Network adapters	nics
Object ID	object_id
Server	server
State	state
Correlation ID	correlation_id
VM Instance UUID	vm_instance_uuid
Status	install_status

Table 3. VMware vCenter Datastore [cmdb_ci_vcenter_datastore]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Capacity (GB)	capacity
Free space (GB)	freespace
Accessible	accessible
Type	type
Object ID	object_id
Server	server
URL	url
Status	install_status

Table 4. VMware vCenter Network [cmdb_ci_vcenter_network]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Object ID	object_id
Server	server
Status	install_status

Table 5. VMware Network Adapter [cmdb_ci_vmware_nic]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
MAC Address	mac_address
IP Address	ip_address
Netmask	netmask
Configuration Item	cmdb_ci
Object ID	object_id
Mac manufacturer	mac_manufacturer
DHCP Enabled	dhcp_enabled
Status	install_status

Table 6. VMware Datastore HostMount [vcenter_datastore_hostmount]

Field label	Column name
VMware vCenter Datastore	datastore
ESX Server	esx_server
Accessible	accessible
Access Mode	access_mode

Table 7. Datastore Disk [cmdb_ci_vcenter_datastore_disk]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Manufacturer	manufacturer
Location	location
Description	short_description
Class	sys_class_name
Updated	sys_updated_on
Maintenance schedule	maintenance_schedule
Correlation ID	correlation_id
Datastore	datastore
Status	install_status

Table 8. ESX Resource Pool [cmdb_ci_esx_resource_pool]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
CPU reserved (MHz)	cpu_reserved_mhz
CPU limit (MHz)	cpu_limit_mhz
CPU shares	cpu_shares
Memory reserved (MB)	mem_reserved_mb
Memory limit (MB)	mem_limit_mb
Memory shares	mem_shares
Object ID	object_id
Server	server
Managed object reference ID	morid
Status	install_status

Table 9. ESX Server [cmdb_ci_esx_server]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Manufacturer	manufacturer
Model ID	model_id
Operating System	os
OS Version	os_version
Description	short_description
Class	sys_class_name
Status	install_status

Table 10. Network Adapter [cmdb_ci_network_adapter]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Mac Address	mac_address
Netmask	netmask
Configuration Item	cmdb_ci
Mac manufacturer	mac_manufacturer
DHCP Enabled	dhcp_enabled
Status	install_status

Table 11. Disk [cmdb_ci_disk]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Computer	computer
Size	size
Manufacturer	manufacturer
Model ID	model_id
Status	install_status

Table 12. Storage HBA [cmdb_ci_storage_hba]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Model ID	model_id
Computer	computer
WWNN	wwnn
Status	install_status

Table 13. Fibre Channel Port [cmdb_ci_fc_port]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
WWNN	wwnn
WWPN	wwpn
Speed	speed
Controller	controller
Computer	computer
Status	install_status

Table 14. iSCSI Disk [cmdb_ci_iscsi_disk]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Computer	computer
Size	size
Provided by	provided_by
IQN	iqn
Device LUN	device_lun
Storage type	storage_type
Status	install_status

Table 15. Fibre Channel Disk [cmdb_ci_fc_disk]

Field label	Column name
Name	name
Computer	computer
Size	size
Provided by	provided_by
Device LUN	device_lun
WWN	wwn
Status	install_status

Table 16. IP Address [cmdb_ci_ip_address]

Field label	Column name
IP Address	ip_address
IP version	ip_version
Netmask	netmask
Nic	nic
Status	install_status

Relationships

Figure 1. Standalone ESXi discovery relationships

Resource pools

Standalone ESXi discovery also fetches the resource pools on the host including the root resource pool. This root resource pool is always hidden for every ESXi host. The root resource pool may not be visible in the VSphere web client for the ESXi host, but you can view it using the mob browser.

Navigate to this URL: <domain name/or ip_address>/mob/?moid=ha-root-pool

The root resource pool groups the resources of that host. Other child resource pools can also be created from the root resource pool. The root is identified in the ESXi host with the Managed Object ID: ha-root-pool.

Forward migration

If you were using standalone ESXi discovery and now the same ESXi is part of vCenter, you can use vCenter discovery instead. Create a vCenter discovery schedule and trigger it. Triggering a vCenter discovery creates duplicate CIs in the following tables as the identifiers for the CIs are different when ESXi is standalone or part of vCenter:

• VMware VCenter Network [cmdb_ci_vcenter_network]
• ESX Resource Pool [cmdb_ci_esx_resource_pool]
• VMware VCenter Datastore [cmdb_ci_vcenter_datastore]
• Datastore Disk [cmdb_ci_vcenter_datastore_disk]

To avoid duplicates, you must mark the CIs created by standalone ESXi discovery in the above four tables as retired. When vCenter discovery is triggered, the vCenterESXHostsSensor script include checks for all the ESXi servers whether they were previously discovered as standalone ESXi server. If yes, it automatically triggers the ESXMigrationUtil script to mark all the previously discovered duplicate CIs as retired.

Note:

If you want to trigger migration manually, you can do so by executing the following script from the background script: // @params esx_sys_ids – array of sys ids of all the ESXi servers which need to be migrated.

ESXMigrationUtil. retireCIsForESXForwardMigration(esx_sys_ids)

Once an ESXi server is migrated to vCenter, triggering a standalone ESXi discovery schedule on the same ESXi host will result in an error. Discovery will be aborted with an error message that “This ESXi is part of vCenter <IP_address of Vcenter> discovery schedule. Aborting discovery”.

Related concepts

• Discovery for VMware vCenter
• VMware virtual machines
• Datastore Discovery

Related reference

• ESXi server discovery
• VM instance state and status fields