VMware Monitoring Solution

Complete the following steps to start monitoring VMware. These are only the highlights of what must be accomplished in the process.

For details of each step, see GitHub: Oracle VMware Monitoring Solution.

1. Confirm the target compartment for Log Analytics resources. Select the OCI compartment where you will create and manage Log Analytics resources for the VMware solution.

2. Create an IAM user, group, and solution permissions. Set up an OCI user and group and grant the group the permissions needed to deploy and operate the solution.

   • Add Log Analytics policy statements. Grant the user group access to Log Analytics and the required Log Analytics resources.

   • Add Management Agent policy statements. Grant permissions to deploy Management Agents and use agent-related resources for continuous log collection.

   • Add VCN and Vault secret access policies. Add policies to use the virtual network and to read secrets from OCI Vault in the compartment that hosts your Log Analytics resources.

3. Enable Log Analytics. Turn on the Log Analytics service in your tenancy so you can ingest and analyze logs.

4. Create a Log Analytics log group. Create a log group to store and organize VMware logs that you ingest into Log Analytics.

5. Prepare a compute instance (or Linux VM) for collection. Use a compute instance in the SDDC VCN (OCI VMware SDDC) or a Linux VM with access to vCenter, OCI services, and the internet (on-premises).

6. Store vCenter credentials in OCI Vault (base64). Save the vCenter user name and password as secrets so the collector can retrieve them securely.

7. Gather required configuration values (OCIDs and identifiers). Collect the API key details, OCIDs, vCenter host info, region, namespace, and log group/compartment OCIDs needed for configuration.

8. Create the OCI CLI configuration file. Place your OCI private key under ~/.oci and create a config profile with fingerprint, key file path, tenancy, region, and user OCID.

9. Download and unzip the solution package on the collector host. Copy logan_collectors.zip to the compute instance (collector host) and unzip it into your chosen installation directory.

10. Create and update the solution configuration file (config.yaml). Copy config.yaml.sample to config.yaml and fill in OCI details, log sources (metrics/alarms/events), and vCenter connection and secret OCIDs.

11. Enable the Management Agent plugin on the compute instance. Turn on the Management Agent plugin through Oracle Cloud Agent so the instance can run agent-based collection.

12. Deploy the Log Analytics plugin on the Management Agent. Install the Log Analytics service plugin so the agent can forward syslog data into Log Analytics.

13. Install required Python and modules. Run setup_python.sh to install the supported Python version and dependencies used by the collectors.

14. Discover and initialize VMware entities in Log Analytics. Update BASE_DIR in bin/run.sh and run bin/run.sh init_entities to discover log-emitting objects and create the corresponding entities in Log Analytics.

15. Verify VMware entities were created. Confirm that entities such as vCenter, Data Center, Cluster, Host, and VM appear in Log Analytics.

16. Test metrics collection end-to-end. Run bin/run.sh metrics and confirm you can search the ingested metric data in Log Explorer.

17. Set up syslog forwarding from vCenter to Log Analytics. Associate the VMWare vSphere Syslog Logs source to the vCenter host entity and configure vCenter syslog to send to the collector host on port 8519 (or update the source port if you must use a different port).

18. Create cron jobs for continuous metrics, alarms, events, and entity sync. Add crontab entries to run collectors every 5 minutes and run sync_entities hourly to keep entity inventory up to date.

19. (Optional) Configure log rotation on the collector host. Add a logrotate configuration under /etc/logrotate.d/vmwarelogan to limit log file growth and enable compression.

The data collected from your VMware environment is presented in the solution to help you obtain insights into the entire system topology and its performance.

To view the solution for your VMware environment:

1. Open the navigation menu and click Observability & Management. Under Log Analytics, click Solutions, and click VMware. The VMware Monitoring Solution page opens. The VMware vCenters that are already set up for monitoring with Oracle Log Analytics are listed in the solutions page.

2. Click the Actions icon in the row corresponding to your VMware vCenter to view the options:

   • View solution: Opens the VMware solution dashboard for the selected vCenter so you can review the curated widgets and visualizations. Use this option when you want a guided, solution-specific view of your VMware logs and insights. See VMware Monitoring Solution Dashboard.

   • View details: Opens the Entity Details page in Oracle Log Analytics for the selected VMware vCenter entity. This page shows the entity’s key information (such as OCID, compartment, created/updated time, and Management Agent) and lets you view or manage the log sources associated with that entity.

   • Copy OCID: Copies the OCID of the selected VMware solution entry to your clipboard. Use this option when you need the OCID for troubleshooting, automation, or when working with OCI CLI/SDKs and support teams.

   • View in Log Explorer: Opens Log Explorer with the context of the selected VMware system so you can run searches and pivot into raw log records. Use this option when you want to validate ingestion, drill down into specific events, or build custom queries beyond the dashboard.

The VMware Monitoring Solution Dashboard gives you a single, curated view of your vCenter environment so you can quickly understand inventory scale and current resource consumption.

At the top, tile widgets summarize key VMware objects such as clusters, ESXi hosts, VMs, data stores, and networks, along with average CPU, memory, and storage usage across the environment. You can then pivot into deeper investigation using the Alarms table and the VMWare Topology visualization to correlate issues across vCenter-managed components within the selected time range.

The following image shows an example dashboard of a VMware vCenter environment:

Following are the widgets displayed in the dashboard:

• Data Center Clusters: Shows the total number of vSphere clusters discovered in the selected vCenter scope. Use it to quickly confirm that your cluster inventory is being discovered and monitored.

• ESXi Hosts: Shows the number of ESXi hosts currently being monitored. Use it to validate host coverage and to spot sudden changes in host count that might indicate discovery or connectivity issues.

• Virtual Machines: Shows the total number of VMs that LOGAN has discovered for this vCenter. Use it to understand the VM footprint and to confirm that VM-level monitoring is active.

• Data Stores: Shows the number of data stores detected in the environment. Use it to validate storage inventory and to quickly spot when data stores are added or removed.

• Networks: Shows the number of networks (for example, port groups) discovered under vCenter. Use it to understand the network surface area you are monitoring and to validate network discovery.

• Average Cluster CPU Usage: Shows the average CPU usage across clusters for the selected time range. Use it to identify cluster-level CPU pressure and decide whether you need to drill down into specific clusters or hosts.

• Average VM CPU Usage: Shows the average CPU usage across VMs in the selected time range. Use it to detect VM-side CPU demand trends and to prioritize deeper analysis on workload-heavy VMs.

• Average Cluster Memory Usage: Shows the average memory usage across clusters for the selected time range. Use it to spot overall memory contention signals and determine whether you should investigate specific resource pools, hosts, or VM allocations.

• Average Storage Usage: Shows the average data store/storage usage across the environment for the selected time range. Use it to track storage consumption trends and identify early signs of capacity constraints.

• Average Host CPU Usage: Shows the average CPU usage across ESXi hosts. Use it to detect compute hot spots at the host layer and to decide when to pivot into host-level events or alarms.

• Average Host Memory Usage: Shows the average memory usage across ESXi hosts. Use it to identify memory pressure at the hypervisor layer that can affect VM performance and stability.

• Average VM Memory Usage: Shows the average memory usage across VMs in the selected time range. Use it to spot memory-heavy workloads and to correlate with VM memory alarms or performance symptoms.

• Alarms: Lists triggered vSphere alarms with details such as time, entity, entity type, status, alarm name, and message. Use it as your primary pivot to investigate active or recent issues and to understand which VMware object is impacted.

• VMWare Topology: Shows the discovered VMware topology so you can understand relationships across vCenter, data centers, clusters, hosts, VMs, networks, and data stores. Use it to correlate an alarm or usage spike with upstream or downstream dependencies and quickly identify the likely blast radius.

For more information about the query used in each widget, see Queries Used in VMware Solution.

In the dashboard, you can use the following options for any of the widgets:

• Click the Open icon on a widget to open the widget in the Log Explorer.
• Click the Actions in the top right corner of the widget, click Maximize to view the widget in large size right inside the dashboard page.
• Click the Actions in the top right corner of the widget, click Export to CSV to export the analysis values to a comma separated values (CSV) file.

• Click the View Query icon in the bottom right corner of the widget to view the query that is used for filtering the logs and generating the analysis. The View Query dialog box opens. Here you can Copy query text or Cope query URL.