Part 1 - Using vCOps Super Metrics & Custom Dashboards to Display Datastore Usage % !!

For the past few weeks, I have been working on vCenter Operations Manager as a part of a project. As always, I am here to share my experience around the work I have been doing and hopefully help the larger VMware community.

As we all know, one of the basic rule of thumb is to ensure that you have a certain percentage of space always available on your datastores to ensure that you cater to the need of all the virtual machines which are a part of these datastores. For example, you would always want your datastores to be around 10% free to ensure that you have enough space for snapshots or any other unplanned requirement. At the same time, you would want to keep an eye what percentage of space is available in your datastores so that you can provision VMs accordingly, of-course I am assuming that you are not using Storage DRS ;-)

Okay so let's quickly jump into action with our use case. We will use vCOps custom dashboard to create a heat-map which would change colors according to free space remaining and would help you to monitor and plan things accordingly in your Virtual Datacenter.

Since, vCOps pulls all the metrics from vCenter, it will be able to pull the Datastore Total Capacity and Used space. Using these 2 metrics, we would create a super metric which would give us the usage %. Using simple math:

Datastore Used % = (Used Capacity/Total Capacity)*100

So how do we create this super metric.

Note:- For someone new to super metric concept, I would recommend you read this white paper from VMware.

1- Login to vCOps Custom UI with a user with appropriate access rights.

2- Click on Environment -> Super Metrics

3- Click on the Add New icon on this window to create a new super metric.

4-  Configure your super metric as shown in figure below

Your super metric will now reflect in the list of available super metrics. Now we need to create a super metric package to attach the same with all the datastores, so that the system automatically can calculate the usage percentage for every datastore which exists or will be added to vCOps, in the future for monitoring. Here is how you create a package and attach it.

1- On the same screen click on -> Super Metric Package -> Add Super Metric Package.

2-  Give it a name and select the super metric which we create above. Refer to the screen shot below.

3- Put a Check-mark against the given thresholds to make this super metric a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) - I just left the setting to default and clicked on OK.

Now we need to add this Super Metric to all the datastores. This will enable vCOps to calculate this new metric for all the datastores which exist and would be added in the future. This can be done by adding this Super Metric will the Resource Kinds - Datastore. Let's see how we will do it.

1- Click on Environment -> Configuration -> Resource Kind Defaults

2- On this Screen, select the Adapter Kind as VMware Adapter, Select Datastore as the Resource on the left pane and under super metric package select the super metric package which you created before.

UPDATE 19th June 2013 - At this point if you want to collect this super-metric on the existing datastores as well, you need to Click on Environment -> Environment Overview -> Click to Expand Resource Kinds -> Select Datastores.

This will list all the Datastores in the right pane - Select All the Datastores -> Click on the small Pencil on the top to edit all these resources -> In the new window, put a check against Supermetric and then select the Datastore Usage% supermetric-> Click on Ok to save.

Well now you need to wait for the next collection and  performance calculation cycle which is usually 5 minutes. In another 5 minutes we will be able to use this super metric for creating custom dashboards.

We now create a custom dashboard to display this Metric in Part 2.

Click here for Part 2 - Using vCOps Super Metrics & Custom Dashboards to Display Datastore Usage % !!

If you want to see me present other tips and tricks on vCOps at VMworld 2013, please vote the session which I have submitted. 

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