VMWare Handler

The VMware adapter pulls hosts and/or virtual machines from a vCenter server into Meridian. With this adapter, you can automatically add, update, or remove nodes from your Meridian based on the status of the VMware entity. The adapter also lets Meridian collect additional performance metrics directly from the VMware server based on stats stored by the hypervisor.

Prepare VMware credentials

To allow communication between OpenNMS and VMware, you must create a user and a role for authentication and permissions. You can either create a new local user within your vCenter server or use an account that has been defined in an external authentication system that is set up to access your vCenter instance.

Create a new vCenter role:

  1. Log into vCenter Server.

  2. Go to Home  Administration  Roles.

  3. Select the built-in "Read Only" role.

  4. Select the option to clone the role and name the new role "OpenNMS-Access" (or another name to your preference).

  5. Edit the new role to add the Host  CIM  CIM Interaction permission.

  6. Click OK to save the role.

Once the role is set up, you will need to assign it to the user account. You can either create a new user for the role or assign the role to a user from an external authentication directory on your vCenter.

Assign user permissions to access vCenter objects

  1. In your vCenter, navigate to Home  Inventory  Hosts and Clusters.

  2. Right-click on the container to apply the permission.

    • If you want Meridian to import all entities, this would be the root vCenter level.

    • To import only a subset of nodes, select a specific data center, cluster, or host.

  3. Select Add Permission from the right-click menu.

  4. Enter the name of the user account to use to connect to vCenter during the import process.

  5. Select the "OpenNMS-Access" role (or whatever you called it in the previous step).

  6. Save the role assignment and make sure to propagate to child objects, if prompted.

Provide credentials to Meridian

Now that you have configured vCenter to allow access to read objects, you must set up Meridian to be able to connect to vCenter. In the ${OPENNMS_HOME}/etc/vmware-config.xml file, add a line with the hostname, user, and password to connect to your vCenter server. If you have multiple vCenter servers, you can specify multiple <vmware-server /> objects in this file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<vmware-config>
    <vmware-server hostname="vcenter.mydomain.org" username="domain\username" password="secret"/>
</vmware-config>
When specifying the username, make sure to fully qualify it with the appropriate domain name for your directory.

Configure VMware requisition

To configure a VMware requisition, follow the steps in Create an external requisition, but specify VMWare as the type, the host (name must match the case of the hostname entered in the vmware-config.xml file), username, password, schedule, and rescan behavior.

By default, the handler detects and adds all running hosts and virtual machines to the requisition.

Add additional parameters as key/value pairs in the Advanced Options area.

Parameter Description Default

cimTimeout

Timeout, in milliseconds, used to test interface addresses for a reachable CIM service. Increase this value only if you have problems discovering CIM services on host systems.

3000

hostSystemServices

Monitor services to assign to imported host systems. Multiple values should be comma separated.

VMware-ManagedEntity
VMware-HostSystem
VMwareCim-HostSystem

importHostAll

Imports all host systems and ignores importHostPoweredOn, importHostPoweredOff, and importHostSuspended parameters.

false

importHostOnly

Imports only host systems and ignores VMs. Cannot be true if importVMOnly is true.

false

importHostPoweredOff

Defines if powered-off host systems should be imported.

false

importHostPoweredOn

Defines if powered-on host systems should be imported.

true

importHostStandBy

Defines if stand-by host systems should be imported.

false

importHostUnknown

Defines if host systems with an unknown power state should be imported.

false

importIPv4Only

Imports only IPv4 interfaces. Cannot be true if importIPv6Only is true.

false

importIPv6Only

Imports only IPv6 interfaces. Cannot be true if importIPv4Only is true.

false

importVMAll

Imports all virtual machines and ignores importVMPoweredOn, importVMPoweredOff, and importVMSuspended parameters.

false

importVMPoweredOff

Defines if powered-off machines should be imported.

false

importVMPoweredOn

Defines if powered-on machines should be imported.

true

importVMOnly

Imports only virtual machines and ignores hosts. Cannot be true if importHostOnly is true.

false

importVMSuspended

Defines if suspended machines should be imported.

false

password

Password for username to connect to your vCenter server.

timeout

VMware connection timeout, in milliseconds. If you receive a "read timeout" error, increase this value.

3000

topologyDatastores

Add the datastores information to the VMWare topology.

true

topologyNetworks

Add the network information to the VMWare topology. If set to false, port group information will not be added to Meridian topology maps.

true

topologyPortGroups

Add the port groups information (distributed virtual switches) to the VMWare topology.

false

username

Username to connect to your vCenter server.

virtualMachineServices

Monitor services to assign to imported virtual machines. Multiple values should be comma separated.

VMware-ManagedEntity
VMware-VirtualMachine
Examples for import-url-resource
vmware://vcenter.mydomain.org?importHostPoweredOff=true
vmware://172.16.123.100/vCenterImport?key=shouldImport;value=1
vmware://172.16.123.100/vCenterImport?_shouldImport=1
vmware://172.16.123.100/vCenterImport?_shouldImport=1;username=opennms;password=secret
vmware://[2001:db8:0:8d3:0:8a2e:70:7344]?virtualMachineServices=VM-SERVICE1,VM-SERVICE2
If you do not import powered-off or standby entities, they will be removed and re-added to Meridian based on their power state. This can cause their database ID to change over time. Enabling the storeByForeignSource setting can help make sure collected metrics are kept properly.

Provision a subset of VMware entities

To provision an arbitrary selection of VMware entities, you can specify a key-value pair to match objects that have a specific attribute in vCenter. The key to look up is a user-defined attribute for entities being imported. If the value provided starts with a ~, the value will be treated as a regular expression. Only one key-value pair can be specified per requisition.

<requisition-def import-name="vmware-requisition"
    import-url-resource="vmware://<vcenter-host>/VCenterImport?key=OpenNMS-Import;value=yes">

If you need to specify several attributes, use the _[customAttributeName] parameter

<requisition-def import-name="vmware-requisition"
    import-url-resource="vmware://<vcenter-host>/VCenterImport?_OpenNMS-Import=yes">