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
Requires Free Membership to View
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
VMware-vSphere-Perl-SDK-<version-number>.tar.gz. This 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-Pod-Perldoc perl-CPAN openssl-devel to ensure that all software requirements are met on
your server.
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 CPUdefine 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
{ 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.
This was first published in November 2012