vcenter

In this post we will explore the Backup endpoints in the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) REST API

Let’s see how we can get information about the version updates in the VCSA and how to perform an update programatically

We’re always looking out for new ways to visualize our performance data. Most often to aid our troubleshooting, but sometimes most for fun. This is one of those times. Let’s check out how we can visualize our compute usage across the world!

In a previous post I described how we are setting up remote offices for a customer with two-node vSAN clusters. I meant to get this post out right after that previous one, but things happened… Anyways, here’s how we automated those two-node vSAN clusters. Currently we have 7 of these racks ready with more to come. As these will be installed at distant locations we are extra keen on knowing that they are all configured as they should, and that the configuration is the same cross these multiple locations.

I had the pleasure of giving a talk about how to do monitoring of the vCenter Server during the VMUG Oslo meeting in December. The session was an extension of what I presented during the VMUG meetings in May and the vBrownbag session during VMworld Europe. The demos showed how we can get health status and metrics from a vCenter Server Appliance utilizing the new REST APIs shipped in 6.5 and 6.

This post is a (late) follow-up on a previous post I did about exploring the monitoring endpoints of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), and an addition to the vSphere Performance blog series. Now we will add performance metrics and health status of the VCSA to our monitoring solution. We’ll utilize the REST APIs in vCenter and feed the data into our Influx database and visualize it in Grafana. In vCenter we have the Appliance Management page also refered to as the VAMI.

This week I’ve been playing in our vCenter lab and tested the upgrade to 6.7 U1 and also changing the deployment type to vCenter with embedded PSC. I must say that the vCenter team has done a great job on the upgrade process over the last year. Both our migration from the Windows vCenter to the VCSA as well as the upgrade of a VCSA works well and there are lots of great documentation.

Recently there was a new release of Telegraf, a monitoring agent from the guys that built InfluxDB. This new version, 1.8.0, comes with a plugin for vSphere which I’m pretty excited about! Previously I’ve been testing Telegraf for monitoring some Linux VMs and also my InfluxDB servers and the agent works as expected and it’s as easy to use as the other products in the TICK stack from Influx. If you’ve followed my blog series about building a monitoring solution for vSphere and other infrastructure components you know that I’ve pulled metrics with PowerCLI scripts.

The last months we have had several issues with ESXi hosts going in a “Not responding” status. The VMs are still active and online in this scenario, but the ESXi cannot be managed. This also affets backup as it won’t be able to reach the VMs through the APIs. Previously we have normally just restarted the management agents on the host and it has been able to connect to vCenter and after this we have managed to migrate the VMs off the host.

For a long time, actually since we migrated to the VCSA in 6.5 last year, I’ve wanted to utilize the REST API in the appliance to have some monitoring of them. For several reasons I’ve had to put that on hold, one of them being that there seems to be something wrong with the back-end authentication calls. I get authentication errors on certain calls no matter which user I am logged in with (also the vsphere.