ESXi Health Monitor Plugin

Well it’s finally here, the plugin we have all been waiting for, Vmware ESXi Health Monitor plugin for Labtech. This plugin installs into your Labtech system as a Location plugin to monitor the CIM data available in most hardware. Easy to configure controls and full view of the CIM data collected is just part of what this plugin can do. We have incorporated new functions into this plugin that are stark differences from our earlier version 2 and version 1 ESXi Health Monitors. We are now supporting multiple usernames and passwords per location for ESX hosts and only require 1 probe system to monitor all the ESX hosts at a single location. I could talk all day about the plugin but maybe it’s better if I show you.

Here is the main view of the ESXi Health Monitor plugin.

The hosts get listed with status face based on current status and when you select a host the CIM data is displayed so you can see all the reported statuses of the hardware.

This is the ESXi host configuration tab of the ESXi health Monitor plugin.

This is where you will add and edit your host systems to monitor, you can set the system you want to be responsible for probing the ESXi hosts for the CIM data. Then you select a system and “Set” it as the probe the plugin will launch a script against the probe to prep it for monitoring automatically. You will not need to “install” the probe software manually as this is handled by the plugin when the probe system is selected.

The ESXI Health Monitor plugin uses a custom group to locate all the probes available by using a custom search to locate all systems with the EDF of “VMware Master CIM Scanner” selected as seen it the example below. You will find this setting under the Info tab -> VMWare on any system console. Just checking it will not install probe software so you must “Set” the probe via the plugin.

The Custom group should look like this and have the custom search setup as seen in this example.

The custom group also has a scheduled script to run every 2-4 hours and I use the exclude time range as I do not need this data so bad that I can’t sleep with out it running every hour or 2. This is just my personal preference but saves on CPU cycles during backup windows and maintenance schedules. You will need to reset this when you import your group as this seems to always get rest to nothing during imports.

You can see your probe run on the system by watching the script logs on the probe systems console. This helps when troubleshooting common issues.

This version is in Beta! this is the first release of this plugin and as such may have odd behavior issues and or may not work for you as expected. I seriously doubt you will have any issues but as this is Beta expect a few minor glitches. We are actively working on updates and with your help we can make this a great plugin!

You can run the version 2 and version 3 side by side and they will not effect each other.

Updates:
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Changes in New Version 0.3.0.3

Changed Version number back to what it should of started at. It was a typo starting with (3)
Added Internal monitor called CIM – VMWare ESXi Health Monitor
Added Client View and Global View of System Statuses
Corrected a few minor coding mistakes
Added Linux Probe Support
Updated the data views

Changes in New Version 0.3.0.5

Added Last Scan Time Stamps
Added color coded data views
Added new images

Changes in New Version 0.3.0.6

Fixed Scan Time not updating

Changes in Version 3.0.7

Updated Python Packages to 2.7.8
Fixed several SQL issues with table creation.
Minor enhancements

Changes in Version 3.0.8

Added new instant host probe from the configure tab
Fixed minor issues in plugin
Fixed issues with installer script

Changes in Version 3.0.9

Fixed CIM Monitor in LT
Fixed Versioning context
Fixed password bug when resaving the same password for esx probe.

Changes in Version 3.0.10

Fixed Issues with Installer where latest PY script requires several new Python modules.

New Client Level View

This view give you a look at all systems under the clients control. you can select the system and review the CIM data returned.

This plugin monitors the condition all the systems and will alarm when a system is found to be in error. You can customize the alarms and the methods of alerts received through the Monitors management interface in Labtech .

You can download the latest version here.

Version 3.0.10 Now Available

If you like what we are doing then please donate to our cause, help keep our software free.

How to install plugin

Please post here any comments and issues you may have so we can get them fixed and out in the next release.

Enjoy

Cubert 😎

NEW ->LabTech ESXi Hardware Monitor v2.1

Squidwork’s ESX Hardware monitor is a set of scripts, a custom group and search for Labtech that will monitor the CIM data provided through the VMWare API for ESX 4 and 5. The probe will launch hourly and report back to Labtech any hardware failure or warning. The script will email an alarm to any email address you would like. The script can be modified to also set an alarm, create a ticket or anything else Labtech scripting will let you do.

New in version 2.1:

We added several checks for false alarms and socket errors to prevent alarms and emails on non failures.

We added alarm flood control, once a email goes out it will not send another until the system has reported a “all OK” then alerts are reset to go out on next fail.

Added extra EDFs to control processes.

Here is how it works:

Download the zip file, extract and import the XML files into your Labtech system.

Addendum Update:

After you import “all” scripts in Version 2.1 Download this zip and import this script. This script should then be used in your group scheduled script probe instead of the v2.1. This v.2.2 of that one script. Download update here

Download extra files directly if import fails for any reason here.

After the import you should have a VMware script group that has 3 scripts in it.

Script #1 (The Installer) will install the monitor to a Windows system. You will need to provide the FQDN or IP of the ESX host you want to monitor when you execute the installer script. When the scheduler pops up make sure to add your ESX host. The only thing you should need to do is execute the installer on a Windows system. The installer will configure the system and add the system to the custom group and search. You do not need to configure anything else at this point. The ESX user and password will be fetched from the Locations password menu for VMWare.

The next script (The Monitor) is assigned to the custom group “Systems that monitor ESX hosts” to run every hour. You can modify this to run at what interval you like. The Monitor will query your “Locations” passwords database table and retrieve the VMWare user listed just like the original Labtech probes do. The monitor get the CIM health data and returns it to Labtech, It also looks to see if we are “Not OK” and fires off a email if failures are picked up.

After the Monitor runs you should see data on the Info Tab -> VMWare sub tab

You will need to edit the monitor script updating the email address that it reports to when failures are found, you can also modify monitor script to create a ticket, fire off an alarm, set an alert or anything your heart desires. Line 39 of the script ESX Hardware Monitor V2-1 needs to be edited and the example@example.com email changed to the email you want to get the alerts.

The 3rd script is a updater script that will fetch the latest build of the Nagios Plugin:”check_esxi_hardware.py” script maintained by www.claudiokuenzler.com You can run this script against any Windows box that has the monitor installed and it will get the latest version of this script and deploy it to that system. This way you can keep up with all the fixes they do to this script. You may want to run this script on the group once or twice a year just to make sure you have the latest fixes and updates.

Enjoy

Cubert 😎

Tag: CIM

LabTech & ConnectWise VMWare ESXi Heath Monitor Plugin v3