Monitoring VMware vSphere with Grafana
Grafana is a powerful tool for visualizing and monitoring various metrics from different data sources. When it comes to VMware vSphere, Grafana can be used to monitor the performance and health of your virtual infrastructure, including ESXi hosts, vCenter, virtual machines, disks, storage, and more1.
Setting Up Grafana for VMware vSphere
To get started with monitoring VMware vSphere using Grafana, you need to set up the necessary dashboards and data sources. One popular approach is to use InfluxDB as the time-series database and Telegraf as the data collection agent. Here are the steps to set up Grafana for VMware vSphere:
- Install and Configure InfluxDB: InfluxDB is a time-series database that can store the metrics collected from your VMware environment. You can install InfluxDB on a server and configure it to accept data from Telegraf.
- Install and Configure Telegraf: Telegraf is an agent that collects metrics from various sources and sends them to InfluxDB. You need to configure Telegraf to collect metrics from your VMware vSphere environment. This involves setting up the VMware input plugin in Telegraf and providing the necessary credentials and connection details.
- Install and Configure Grafana: Grafana is the visualization tool that will display the metrics collected by Telegraf and stored in InfluxDB. You need to install Grafana on a server and configure it to use InfluxDB as the data source.
- Import VMware vSphere Dashboards: Grafana provides pre-built dashboards for monitoring VMware vSphere. You can import these dashboards into your Grafana instance to get a comprehensive view of your VMware environment. Some of the available dashboards include: VMware vSphere Overview Dashboard VMware vSphere Datastore Dashboard VMware vSphere Hosts Dashboard VMware vSphere VMs Dashboard
Key Metrics Monitored
The VMware vSphere dashboards in Grafana provide a wide range of metrics to monitor the performance and health of your virtual infrastructure. Some of the key metrics include:
- Cluster Stats: CPU usage, memory usage, failover events, VM operations (e.g., clone, create, deploy, destroy, power, reboot, etc.).
- Host Stats: CPU usage, memory usage, datastore IOPS, latency, disk commands, network usage, power usage, system uptime.
- VM Stats: CPU demand, memory usage, disk latency, network usage, power usage, system uptime.
- Datastore Stats: Disk capacity, provisioned space, used space.
These metrics are displayed in various visualizations such as gauges, graphs, and tables, making it easy to monitor the performance and health of your VMware environment1.
Conclusion
Using Grafana to monitor VMware vSphere provides a powerful and flexible way to visualize and analyze the performance and health of your virtual infrastructure. By setting up InfluxDB, Telegraf, and Grafana, and importing the pre-built VMware vSphere dashboards, you can gain valuable insights into your VMware environment and ensure its optimal performance.
Más información