Part 2 - Creating Supermetrics for Cluster Utilization Dashboard in vCOps!

Continuing from the previous part where I gave you an overview of the Cluster Utilization Dashboard, in this post we will create all the 8 Supermetrics required for this dashboard. We will start with one example, wherein I will give you step by step instructions and you would need to repeat the steps for the rest of the Supermetrics.

To begin with let's look at the Supermetrics which we need to create:-

CREATING THE SUPERMETRICS

Let's create the SM 1. Here we need to get the Total VMs a cluster can host, hence to get that number we will add Total VMs deployed so far with the Total Remaining. This is how the formula would look like:-

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. Follow the steps from 1 to 5 and click on OK

5- Now you need to configure the rest of the 8 Super metrics the same was as I showed you the first one. Here are the formulas which can help you get to the correct metric.

SM 2

SM 3

SM 4

SM 5

SM 6

SM 7

SM 8

6- Once you have created all the Supermetrics, your list will appear as mine. Please make sure that you note down all the Supermetrics ID as we would need them in PART 3 when we bring this all together. For me they are Number 1 to 8.

CREATING A SUPERMETRICS PACKAGE AND ADDING THE SUPERMETRICS

We will now create a Supermetric package where we will add all these Supermetrics and then apply them on the clusters of my environment to start calculating this metric.

7- Click on Package Editor and click on the + symbol to add a package.

8- Since all these Supermetrics are for Cluster level, give it a name, I call it SM-CLUSTER. Put a check against all the supermetrics you want to add to this package. You can then setup DT configuration if required else just click on OK.

APPLYING THE SUPERMETRICS PACKAGE ON THE EXISTING & NEW CLUSTERS

Now that your Supermetrics package is ready, you need to apply the same on the existing clusters and also apply the same on the Cluster Compute Resource kind to ensure that all these supermetrics are calculated for any new cluster which you bring into vCenter Operations Manager. Here are the steps:-

9- Click on Environment -> Environment Overview.

10- On the left pane navigate to Resource Kinds -> Cluster Compute Resources -> Default Attributes as shown in the screenshot below. This will list all the existing clusters in your environment.

11- Select all the clusters and click on the Edit Button to edit the properties of the selected cluster. If you have a lot of clusters then you can select the 1st item (Press the CTRL + SHIFT) on the keyboard and select the last item. This will select all the clusters. Click on the Edit button as shown below.

12- Under Supermetric package apply the package, SM-CLUSTER which we created in Step 8 by clicking on the drop down arrow as shown below & click on OK. This will apply all the supermetrics on all the existing clusters.

13 - Finally, let us apply this package on the Cluster Compute Resource Kinds to ensure that every new cluster has these metrics by default. Click on Environment -> Configuration -> Resource Kinds Default.

14 - Select Cluster Compute Resource on the Left pane and Select the SM-CLUSTER package under super metric package & click on OK.

Alright, so we are done with the trivial part.. In the Next Part, I will help you bring together these Supermetrics and an XML file which I have created for you guys to download to get your final Cluster Utilization Dashboard.

Till then - stay tuned...

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