Monitor VMware ESXi With Your Existing Nagios Application

Monitor VMware ESXi with your existing Nagios application
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Home Topics VMware ESX and ESXi administrative tips Using monitoring and performance tools with VMware Monitor VMware ESXi with your existing Nagios application
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Sander van Vugt E-Mail Print A AA AAA LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Share This RSS Reprints
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Nagios is plug-in-oriented management software typically installed on a Linux server. Many corporate system administrators use Nagios to keep track of the current state of their servers and other vital devices in the network. This makes Nagios a good choice if you're looking for VMware monitoring tools. Here's a look at how to integrate VMware ESXi monitoring in an existing Nagios environment. Any device with a plug-in -- even the software in your department's coffeemaker -- can be managed through Nagios, which makes the open source network monitoring system popular and well-known. If you already have a Nagios monitoring environment in place, you can use it to monitor VMware infrastructures by installing the VMware plug-in on the Linux server. The open source development company OP5 offers the most common VMware monitoring software plug-in: the OP5 Check ESX Plug-in. Since it is written in Perl scripting language, you'll need Perl support on your Linux server and the free VMware vSphere Perl SDK software. Download the VMware vSphere Perl SDK to the Linux server that hosts Nagios and then extract it using tar zxvf VMwareThis will create the subdirectory called vmware-vsphere-cli-distrib. In this subdirectory, you'll find the installer script vmware-install.pl. Before running this script, use yum install perl-PodPerldoc perl-CPAN openssl-devel to ensure that all software requirements are met on your server.
vSphere-Perl-SDK-<version-number>.tar.gz.
After installing the prerequisites, use the ./vmware-install.pl command and follow the script's directions. Now, you can download the Nagios plug-in from OP5 or do an Internet search for download check_esx3.pl to find the plug-in script in text format. Download this script, save it to the directory /usr/lib64/nagios/plugins and use chmod +x check_esx3.pl to make it executable. Nagios can now begin monitoring ESXi. You can now define the commands for Nagios to use to monitor VMware ESXi hypervisors. Add the monitoring commands to the Nagios /etc/nagios/objects/command.cfg file. Put a user name and password in variables in the /etc/nagios /resource.cfg file. In this example, a variable ESXUSER is defined, as well as the user's password. Nagios can use these credentials to access the ESXi host. The file could have the following contents:
# cat /etc/nagios/resource.cfg $ESXUSER$=username $ESXPASSWORD$=password
Based on this, you can add the ESXi monitoring commands to the /etc/nagios/objects/command.cfg file. If you want to monitor ESXi CPU usage, use this command:
# check vmware ESXi CPU
define command
{ command_name check_esx_cpu command_line $ESXUSER$/check_esx -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -u $ESXUSER$ -p $ESXPASSWORD$ -l cpu -s usage -w $ARG1$ -c $ARG2$ }
Once you've defined commands, create a configuration file for your ESXi host. If the ESXi host is called esxi01, you could put its configuration in a /etc/nagios/hosts/esxi01.cfg file containing the following:
# Host esx01
define host
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use
Linux-server
host_name
esxi01 address 192.168.1.10
define service
{ use generic-service } host_name esxi01 service_description ESXi CPU Load check_command check_esx_cpu!80!90
This is just a taste of what you can do with the ESXi monitoring plug-in for Nagios. Depending on what functions the plug-in defines, you can monitor other aspects of the ESXi host. Work with your Nagios administrator to define more commands for monitoring VMware. More News and Tutorials Articles Nagios setup: Installing and configuring the network monitoring tool Installing Nagios on Solaris for network and server monitoring Installing Nagios on Solaris for network and server monitoring Using Nagios plugins for configuration and system testing Remote server monitoring with Nagios
Tags VMware ESX VMware ESXi VMware Inc
Related glossary terms Terms for Whatis.com - the technology online dictionary VMware Virtual SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing) This was first published in November 2012
Storage Management, Backup and Recovery: On a Smarter Planet, you dont worry about storage, backup and recovery. Your software does.
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Does your IT shop already use Nagios?
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1. Post 4089115 Dec 201212:25 PM zReport Nagios is great! Welcome ESXi!
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2. Post 4087645 Dec 20125:26 AM zReport OP5 company does an excellent job on Nagios implementation. 3. Post 4087375 Dec 20123:35 AM zReport thanks 4. Post 4087555 Dec 20123:29 AM zReport OK 5. Post 4084474 Dec 201210:46 AM zReport I'm looking forward to monitor our ESX farm with Nagois. 6. Post 4084454 Dec 201210:31 AM zReport Yes we do use nagios extensively. All our switches, remote/local,servers are getting monitered by nagios 7. SearchVMwareTT3 Dec 20129:17 AM zReport Many IT shops already use #Nagios monitoring -- why not add #VMware to Nagios' workload? Here's how from @sandervanvugt http://t.co/SRrWrhme via twitterView Profile 8. xinity_bot30 Nov 20124:54 PM zReport Monitor VMware ESXi with your existing Nagios application (VMware tips and tricks) http://t.co/ex9bvLJY via twitterView Profile 9. fionason30 Nov 20124:30 PM zReport Monitor VMware ESXi with your existing Nagios application - TechTarget http://t.co/yb1Q7sNO via twitterView Profile
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Modern Infrastructure E-Zine Subscribe today to ensure you receive the premier issue of this online magazine focused exclusively on building enterprise data centers, while keeping an eye on tectonic shifts in trends like cloud computing, virtualization and consumerization. You'll also get a free copy of Technology Priorities for 2012! VMware Topics
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Advice & Tutorials
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VMware View, VMware Workstation, Fusion and Player, VMware Server

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