VMware ESX is nothing but a slightly modified RedHat. Maybe you could try and use the RedHat hobbit client.

On Fri, 2007-01-26 at 10:23 -0600, Rich Smrcina wrote:

VMware ESX provides SNMP support, so it is likely that devmon can be used to query the data and report it to Hobbit. I dabbled with some shell scripts to capture the info, but didn't get too far... :(

Jon Dustin wrote:

...

Greetings -

I have been using Hobbit since summer 2006 (and Big Brother for about 10 years prior). GREAT system, my appreciation to Henrik and the community.

I am evaluating how to monitor our VMWare ESX boxes with Hobbit. I would like to have ESX report the "standard" set of data (cpu, disk, memory, msgs, procs, trends) and have Hobbit graph the data appropriately. As some of you may know, ESX is its "own" OS, with slightly different management tools for reporting on the VM GUEST sessions. There are appropriate analogies for top, ps, df, etc.

It seems this might best be handled by sending a "client data" report to Hobbit, and masquerading ESX to "look" similar to a Linux box.

Is this feasible? Any potential problems? I have looked for some documentation on the client report, to no avail. Or should I just look at the Hobbit CLIENT source?

Thanks for any tips/tricks/traps.

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Note: this is regarding ESX 3.x

I was running into a similar issue with trying to get the usage data from the ESX host. The problem I was seeing though was that a system I *knew* to be extremely heavily utilized as evidenced by MUI/VC usage data, was reporting back only ~5% utilization. The problem was that the console OS is almost like a VM itself and the tools were only showing usage data as used by the console OS.

Here's how I was able to get around it, with mad props to those who have helped me in the past to get the custom graphing working: On hobbit client:

• Ensure hobbit client is already installed first.
• visudo (or vi /etc/sudoers) (needs root access to run esxtop)
• hobbit ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/esxtop
• service firewall stop, chkconfig firewall off (for my environment a FW was not necessary, YMMV)
• su hobbit
• In /apps/hobbit/client/ext/pcpu paste the script below, then chmod +x

#!/bin/sh

Dynamically detects the number of CPU's on the machine and grabs the

data from the appropriate field.

tmp=cat /proc/vmware/cpuinfo | grep pcpu | wc -w | sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//' tmp=expr $tmp - 1 cpuCount=expr $tmp / 2 targetField=expr 8 + $cpuCount targetField="\$$targetField"

strPre="sudo esxtop -bn 2 | awk 'BEGIN {FS=\",\"};" strTemp="{print \"pcpuIdle : \"(100-(substr($targetField, 2, length($targetField)-2)))}'" strPost=" | tail -1 | sed 's/\\\"//g' > /tmp/pcpu.txt"

strCommand="$strPre $strTemp $strPost"

eval "$strCommand"

$BB $BBDISP "data $MACHINE.pcpuIdle cat /tmp/pcpu.txt " exit 0

• In /apps/hobbit/client/etc/clientlaunch.cfg

[pcpu] ENVFILE $HOBBITCLIENTHOME/etc/hobbitclient.cfg CMD $HOBBITCLIENTHOME/ext/pcpu INTERVAL 5m

• Restart client

On hobbit host:

• In hobbitgraph.cfg:

[pcpuIdle] TITLE ESX CPU Utilitization YAXIS % Used -u 100 -r DEF:cpu_idle=pcpuIdle.rrd:pcpuIdle:AVERAGE CDEF:pbusy=100,cpu_idle,- AREA:pbusy#FF0000:Busy GPRINT:pbusy:LAST: \: %5.1lf (cur) GPRINT:pbusy:MAX: \: %5.1lf (max) GPRINT:pbusy:MIN: \: %5.1lf (min) GPRINT:pbusy:AVERAGE: \: %5.1lf (avg)\n STACK:cpu_idle#00FF00:Idle GPRINT:cpu_idle:LAST: \: %5.1lf (cur) GPRINT:cpu_idle:MAX: \: %5.1lf (max) GPRINT:cpu_idle:MIN: \: %5.1lf (min) GPRINT:cpu_idle:AVERAGE: \: %5.1lf (avg)\n

• In hobbitserver.cfg:

TEST2RRD="cpu=la,disk,inode,qtree,memory,$PINGCOLUMN=tcp,http=tcp,dns=tcp,dig=tcp,time=ntpstat,vmstat,iostat,netstat,temperature,apache,bind,sendmail,mailq,nmailq=mailq,socks,bea,iishealth,citrix,bbgen,bbtest,bbproxy,hobbitd,files,procs=processes,ports,clock,lines,pcpuIdle=ncv"

GRAPHS="la,disk,inode,qtree,files,processes,memory,users,vmstat,iostat,tcp.http,tcp,ncv,netstat,ifstat,mrtg::1,ports,temperature,ntpstat,apache,bind,sendmail,mailq,socks,bea,iishealth,citrix,bbgen,bbtest,bbproxy,hobbitd,clock,lines,pcpuIdle"

NCV_pcpuIdle="pcpuIdle:GAUGE"

Hope that helps.

On 1/26/07, Rich Smrcina <rsmrcina at wi.rr.com> wrote:

VMware ESX provides SNMP support, so it is likely that devmon can be used to query the data and report it to Hobbit. I dabbled with some shell scripts to capture the info, but didn't get too far... :(

Jon Dustin wrote:

...

Greetings -

I have been using Hobbit since summer 2006 (and Big Brother for about 10 years prior). GREAT system, my appreciation to Henrik and the community.

I am evaluating how to monitor our VMWare ESX boxes with Hobbit. I would like to have ESX report the "standard" set of data (cpu, disk, memory, msgs, procs, trends) and have Hobbit graph the data appropriately. As some of you may know, ESX is its "own" OS, with slightly different management tools for reporting on the VM GUEST sessions. There are appropriate analogies for top, ps, df, etc.

It seems this might best be handled by sending a "client data" report to Hobbit, and masquerading ESX to "look" similar to a Linux box.

Is this feasible? Any potential problems? I have looked for some documentation on the client report, to no avail. Or should I just look at the Hobbit CLIENT source?

Thanks for any tips/tricks/traps.

To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk

-- Rich Smrcina VM Assist, Inc. Phone: 414-491-6001 Ans Service: 360-715-2467 rich.smrcina at vmassist.com

Catch the WAVV! http://www.wavv.org WAVV 2007 - Green Bay, WI - May 18-22, 2007

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