vSphere is a cloud computing virtualization platform. Several virtual machines (VMs) reside in this platform, having different operating systems, e.g Windows, Linux etc.
The performance of these machines is determined through a set of metrics, like CPU usage, disc, memory, network, etc. These machines are resources, whose optimum deployment requires continuous monitoring and enablement of vSphere metrics. They can have any number of applications running on them which is responsible for affecting the metrics.
Instana is an enterprise application performance management tool, through which we can monitor the vSphere metrics. Through Instana we can gain full infrastructure monitoring and observability in dynamic environments. We can see visualizations and get a real-time understanding of component impact. Instana utilizes artificial intelligence through which we can understand all factors to remove bottlenecks, resolve issues faster and improve the end-user experience.
Enabling the monitoring of vSphere metrics in Instana would mainly help Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) and Business Users to track their metrics
- SRE - SREs main objectives are to create highly reliable and scalable software systems.
- Business Users - Business users mostly analyze statistics and see visualizations.
This blog describes the step by step instructions to enable vSphere monitoring in Instana. As a pre-requisite Instana should be already installed in a single host machine and vSphere should be available having a few or more number of VMs inside it.
Install Instana Agent on a vSphere VM
For installing Instana agent on vSphere machine, access the Instana Tenant through a browser from the VM having URL https://<ipaddress>.nip.io and go to home page. Click on More as highlighted in image below
Execute the commands, so that Instana agent is installed. Here for example, we would have to execute
curl -o setup_agent.sh https://setup.instana.io/agent && chmod 700 ./setup_agent.sh && sudo ./setup_agent.sh -a <agent-key> -t dynamic -e <instana tenant host address>:<port>
After this the VM would be shown as reporting in the Instana as highlighted in below image.
Once agent is installed, auto discovery of VM would be done and its all metrics would be displayed in the dashboard. After this we have to proceed to setting up the monitoring of vSphere.
Monitoring vSphere
To enable vSphere metric monitoring which is to get all the performance metrics of all the systems residing in vSphere, update the vSphere credentials in agent config file located at <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml in VM where Instana agent is installed as shown in below image
Run the command below for applying the changes –
instana update -f /<path-to>/setting.hcl
Optional: You might encounter error like this after executing the update command –
Precondition check for new metric pipeline failed:
The free diskspace for metrics is not enough. Available: xxxx MB - Required: yyyy MB
In this case increase the storage memory of the VM to the Required storage shown in error message.
Validating vSphere Dashboard
For seeing the vSphere dashboard or validating that feature is installed, go to Instana Tenant’s Home Page and from there click on side panel and select vSphere under Platforms as shown below.