AppDynamics VMWare - Monitoring Extension

This extension works only with the standalone machine agent.

Use Case

VMware vSphere (www.vmware.com) is a cloud computing virtualization operating system. The VMWare extension gets statistics from the VSphere server and displays them in the AppDynamics Metric Browser.

Prerequisites

1. Before the extension is installed, the prerequisites mentioned here need to be met. Please do not proceed with the extension installation if the specified prerequisites are not met.
2. The Extension also needs a Vsphere server to be installed.
3. The extension needs to be able to connect to VMWare Vsphere server in order to collect and send metrics. To do this, you will have to either establish a remote connection in between the extension and the product, or have an agent on the same machine running the product in order for the extension to collect and send the metrics.

Installation

1. Run 'mvn clean install' from the vmware-vsphere-monitoring-extension directory
2. Deploy the file VMWareMonitor.zip found in the 'target' directory into <machineagent install dir>/monitors/
3. Unzip the deployed file
4. Open <machineagent install dir>/monitors/VMWareMonitor/config.yml and update the host (Host of VSphere), username and password (VSphere credentials). Note: The host can be specified with or without a specific port. For instance, if no port is specified, port 80 will be used. On the other hand, if there is specific port then it needs to be appended to the host in the config.yml
5. Also in hostConfig, the host and vms arguments needs to be configured. There are two ways to specify the value for this argument. If * is specified as the value then all the VMs/Hosts associated with the host will be fetched. If a comma separated list of values is provided, then only those VMs/Hosts wil be fetched. (see config.yml for examples)
6. In metrics.xml you can comment unwanted metrics to reduce the number of metrics reported to controller
7. Restart the machineagent

Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory. Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.

Configuartion

config.yml

Please copy all the contents of the config.yml file and go here. On reaching the website, paste the contents and press the “Validate YAML” button.

If you get a valid output, that means your formatting is correct and you may move on to the next step.

Metric prefix

Please follow section 2.1 of the Document to set up metric prefix.

# Use this only if SIM is enabled. Please make sure to have a trailing |
#metricPrefix: "Custom Metrics|vmware|Status|"

#This will create it in specific Tier aka Component. Replace <COMPONENT_ID>. Please make sure to have a trailing |.
metricPrefix: "Server|Component:<COMPONENT_ID>|Custom Metrics|vmware|Status|"

Servers configuration

# By default the port is 80/443 ( http/https ) for the host. If there is a specific port that is being used then append it to the host
# Case 1, default port  : default-value="hostname"
# Case 2, specific port : default-value="hostname:1234"
servers:
  # displayName is optional if you are configuring only 1 server. If you are configuring multiple servers, configuring displayName is mandatory.
  # When configured displayName is added to the metric path
  - displayName: ""
    host: ""

    username: ""

    #Provide password or encryptedPassword and encryptionKey. See the documentation to find about password encryption.
    password:

    encryptedPassword: ""
    encryptionKey: ""

      #Provide information about hosts and vms to monitor.
      # "host" will take host name you want to monitor or "*" to monitor all hosts
      # "vms" will take vm names in the host specified or "*" to monitor all vms in that host
      # "*" will fetch all the available hosts/vms.
    hostConfig:
      - host: "host1"
        vms: ["vm1","vm2"]
      - host: "host2"
        vms: ["*"]

• displayName: Display name for your server. It will be included in metric path. If single server is configured then it is not mandatory. For multiple server configuration, it is mandatory
• username: Username for your vsphere server
• password: Password for your vsphere server
• encryptedPassword: To configure encrypted password (refer Credentials Encryption section for more details)
• hostConfig: Configurations for hosts and vms to monitor

Metric path replacements

Please refer to this document to get details on Metric path replacements

#Replaces characters in metric name with the specified characters. By default extension takes care of replacing "|",":",",".
#Specify any other char you want to replace here.
# "replace" takes any regular expression
# "replaceWith" takes the string to replace the matched characters
#metricPathReplacements:
#    - replace: ","
#      replaceWith: " "

Number of threads

#Configure this based on the number of hosts and vms you want to monitor. You will get "Queue Capacity reached!! Rejecting runnable tasks.. " error if the numberOfThreads is far less than the
# hosts and vms from which the extension has to collect metrics. You will have to increase numberOfThreads in this case.
numberOfThreads: 15

Task Schedule

Please refer this document to get details on Task schedule feature.

taskSchedule:
  numberOfThreads: 1
  taskDelaySeconds: 60

Metrics

VM Metrics

Host Metrics

This monitor can potentially register hundred of new metrics, depending on how
many hosta and vms you are configuring. By default, the Machine Agent will only report 450
metrics to the controller, so you may need to increase that limit when
installing this monitor. To increase the metric limit, you must add a parameter
when starting the Machine Agent, like this:

java -Dappdynamics.agent.maxMetrics=1000 -jar machineagent.jar

Credentials Encryption

Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on password encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.

Workbench

Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document on How to use the Extensions WorkBench.

• If the server is not accessible from outside/browser, you can use the following end points to see the list of registered metrics and errors.

    #Get the stats
    curl http://localhost:9090/api/stats
    #Get the registered metrics
    curl http://localhost:9090/api/metric-paths

• You can make the changes to config.yml and validate it from the browser or the API
• Once the configuration is complete, you can kill the workbench and start the Machine Agent

Troubleshooting

Please follow the steps listed in this troubleshooting-document in order to troubleshoot your issue. These are a set of common issues that customers might have faced during the installation of the extension.

Contributing

Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly here on GitHub.

Version

Note: While extensions are maintained and supported by customers under the open-source licensing model, they interact with agents and Controllers that are subject to AppDynamics’ maintenance and support policy. Some extensions have been tested with AppDynamics 4.5.13+ artifacts, but you are strongly recommended against using versions that are no longer supported.