VVF 8 Ultimate Guide – Aria – Part 2 Of 3

In the Aria Operations For Logs appliance, go to Integrations/vSphere and click Add vCenter Server

Fill in the vSphere info and administrator details, my vSphere domain is leaha.co.uk

Then click test connection and accept the SSL certificate

If you expand the Manage ESXi hosts part, it should be configured to auto configure them all

Once thats all done, click Save at the top right

The vCenter now shows up under Integrations/vSphere

Go to Integrations/VMware Aria Operations, and fill in your appliance info, the hit test connection

Accept the SSL Certificate

Lastly hit save in the top right

There are a lot of different dashboards in by stock, with several categories
Eg vSphere

You can use these as templates for custom Dashboards

A solid dashboard you can do with this is one for your Firewall, now this will vary depending on your environment, but if you configure your Firewall to log to Aria Operations For Logs on UDP using port 514, then all syslog events will be recorded here

You’ll also want to ensure any rules you have are enabled for logging, as some firewalls can default to not logging rules

This example will use VMware’s NSX firewall, as that is what I use at home for my security, however the overall premise is the same, as all widgets are derived from log filtering, this can apply to any firewall and it doesnt need to be VMware related, in theory, so hopefully with this example you can see how you can apply the log filtering and dashboards to your environment

Lets create a new custom dashboard, so I can get the logs I want, there is also nothing for NSX related logs in here by default, so this will be a good demo to start with

Lets click new Dashboard

Give it a name and hit save

This will create a new shared dashboard anyone can see, under Shared Dashboards

Now, its blank, so we need to add some widgets

To go this we need to explore the logs and see what we want to track, this is what the templates in, for example, vSphere, are great as you can take one you like and clone it to your own dashboard which is simple, for NSX ESXi logs, we need to do this manually

Go to Explore Logs

First, lets have a think about what we want to see, the best way is to look through the vSphere log entries, or use the search to find something having graphs would be useful

So, first I want to know how many NSX DFW logs there are, these are quite helpful to see, I have my DFW setup to log everything except the default layer 3 rules, like the any any allow rule as this generates a lot of traffic currently, though with Aria Logs this could be logged as Dashboards could allow better visibility and tracking, using the ESXi CLI to view the log file is way to busy with it enabled, but I will revisit that later

Logging for rules needs to be enabled by default, to do this click the cog on a rule on the right
Eg on my DMZ block rule

And ensure logging is enabled

So, if I want to see all logs in Aria that are for the DFW rules, I can filter for ‘firewall-pktlog’ as they call contain this and mothing else does

This give me a good overview of all DFW logs

Now a filter is a little better, and thats what we will be using for our custom dashboard, so click add filter and set it like so

This is just DFW logs so far, a good start, it would also be good to see which of my hosts the logs are coming from as well, so lets group by host, click into Over Time here and select host name, then apply

This is looking better, now I can see how many logs in total, and for each host

Lets click add to dashboard in the right to add the widget for monitoring all DFW logs
Name the chart, select the NSX dashboard, and add a note, then click add

Now I can see a widget of this search from my dashboard and can change the time in the top left

You can also edit how this looks using the widget cog, the edit chart type

Here are some examples of what you can change design wise, where each point is an hour of logs and how many there were

Ok, now I have all logs as metrics, and I can view the individual logs by clicking the icon left most of the cog, this bring be back to the search if I want to examine them

This is neat for reporting and informational purposes, but what about helping me drill into issues and something more specific

Well, each NSX rule is assigned an ID, going back to my rule blocking anything going into my DMZ, this has an ID of 2024

So I can use this in addition to my firewall-pktlog to filter for logs on this rule only, this is more helpful for troubleshooting as well

If we add another filter for text containing 2024, it grabs all logs that have 2024 and firewall-pktlog

So I will add this to the dashboard

Now we can add widgets like this for important rules that might help in troubleshooting

Here is an example of a few more I added for some rules I want to keep an eye on, like things trying to get into the Veeam environment, I want to know if there is a spike of blocks as someone might be trying to set in, and monitoring access to a game server

We can then add a dashboard for what devices have the most passes and drops in the DFW by source
For passes, you can use these filters, here I have grouped them by source IP

And add to dashboard

For drops, swap pass to drop

We can then also edit the chat to a Pie, which is a little more readable

For destination use this

We can also grab application ports by allowed and blocked with this, grouped by destination port and changing the chart to a pie chart

I have also enabled remote syslog for all NSX applications for more logs, for a standard firewall, you would have set this up for the above

Now when a manager backup runs under this search

We can then also add these for Cluster backups and failures for both as syslog events are generated for them

And create widgets from those searches like so

Here is another example using a Veeam as a basis for a backup dashboard, as you can configure it to log event through syslog, and it will create logs for successful and failed Backups/Replication/SureBackup jobs

Whether this works for other vendors depends on if they support syslog logging, and it included job status events, but here is another example of how you can create dashboard using syslog entries whcih you could apply to anything in your environment that logs this way

You’ll want to configure VBR Syslog to the Aria Logs Server

To do this, open VBR, and click options from the context menu in the top left

Go to event forwarding and click add under syslog servers

Add the server

And click ok

Lets create a new shared dashboard from Dashboards then New Dashboard

Give it a name and click shared

Lets start with one that monitors number of complete jobs

The easiest way to properly filter for all logs for the VBR server is to go to Management/Hosts then click the host, for me this is ‘S2022-Veeam’

This will pre populate the base filter for logs for only this server

For a number of successful jobs, you can use these additional filters

Change this to non time series to give a number

I re ran a backup job as a test, and we can see we have 1 successful hit

We can then add this to our new dashboard

For warning jobs we can use

For failed jobs we can use

For successful SureBackup jobs we can use

For warning SureBackup jobs we can use

For SureBackup Jobs Failed, we can add this for Failed

Successful replication jobs can be done like this

Replication jobs finished with warning can be done like so

We can do failed replication jobs like this

Then you can arrange the Dashboard to look something like this, here is an example after running some jobs with various states

Before we can do anything with agent logs, we need to get the relevant content packs
I will cover content packs for Windows, Linux and AD

Head to Content Packs and search for Windows, then click the pack

Accept the EULA and click Install

And take note of the instructions, I will have a copy at the bottom
And repeat for Linux, its the right option we want

Accept the EULA and click Install

Noting the instructions, I will have a copy at the bottom
AD is another good one to grab, click the icon

Accept the EULA and click Install

And note the instructions, I will have a copy at the bottom

Other useful packs that I dont really have servers to test on are Dell iDRAC/Networking, Cisco UCS/Nexus, HP Servers, Infoblox, Jenkins, Juniper, MS SQL/IIS, Pure Storage, Palo Alto and Puppet

Go to Administration/Integrations and select Aria Operations For Logs

Click add account

Fill out a server name, log server fqdn/ip, click the plus to add a credential

For the built in credentials on the Aria Log server select the middle option

Once you add that validate the connection and accept the SSL certificate

Then click add in the bottom left

Aria Operations can see the VMs in your environment and is able to suggest changing VM sizes to better fit their use, its not a perfect size, so I would keep appliances the same and ignore those

Too see this go to Capacity/Rightsize, from here you can see over sized and under sized machine

If you want to make the suggestion you can click the check box on the machine and click resize
Here this VM will have its memory reduced to 3GB

Clicking resize will do it immediately, or you can schedule it at a particular time, like over night, as this will reboot the machine

For an immediate rightsize

For a scheduled one

Aria will then auto power the machine off and make the adjustments, then power it back on, no further action needed

You can reclaim resources from Capacity/Reclaim

The info here is a little vague as its an on prem environment so I dont have costing setup, this would be better for VMware cloud, eg AVS

But it does show ~100GB of potentially orphaned disks that could have the space reclaimed

Here under orphaned disks it shows where on the datastores you have potential disk space to reclaim
Its worth noting these are potentially orphaned, so you need to check this manually and be very careful not to remove something you may need

Lets look at TrueNas, thats easting up 40GB on my WD-Blue local SSD, which is odd as its just got a boot virtual disk at 30GB

The disk listed here is under TrueNas Scale/TrueNas Scale_1.vmdk
Where the VM is called TrueNas Scale

Checking in vSphere the active disk is TruenNas Scale.vmdk, so this could be an orphaned disk

As this looked orphaned, I have exported a config of the TrueNas server on the off chance and went to the datastore and removed that file from here

This also flagged 46+15GB on my TrueNas Datastores for the Lab VMs for stuff that was orphaned out of old labs, so there was about the full 100GB that could be removed

Aria Operations can plan for what adding certain infrastructure might look like in your environment, lets run through some testing here for adding another host as addming some Vmware for web hosting showed I need more compute

Under Capacity/What-If Analysis we can click Add Hosts under Infrastructure Planning

First lets name the scenario, and select a datacentre and cluster, then we need to select server

By default it will show you servers in the cluster

But you can change that to search for anything, you can even add a custom server spec, while you can search for servers, the list of really out of date, so either add another host matching yours or setup a custom spec, I am going to add another of the same spec

And run the scenario

Here we can see what that would look like, in this case, it double my capacity, so if I click commit scenario, it will apply this for future testing

Add a name and commit

To set up email notification rules, head to Operations/Configurations/notifications

Click add

Add a name for the type of notification you want, eg critical alerts and click next at the bottom

Set the criteria for Object Type leave this blank, it will do every object this way

Now we need an alert scope, keep Category to All Alerts, under Criticality, select the alert critically, eg critical for my alert

Under control state, click open

It should look like this

For Notify On, look at Status and select New and Updated

Then click next at the bottom

For Outbound Method, select the Standard Email Plugin

Then set the instance, this will be from the SMTP setup done earlier

Which should look something like this

Then click next

Now you need to add your recipients, for example, a group, or the email for your ticketing system, you can also add CC and BCC addresses
Then you have notify again, the time in minutes for the system to notify you again if the alert hasnt been resolved, you can leave it blank
There is max notifications, how many time as a max you want to be notified
And lastly, delay to notify, this is the time an alert is open before it notifies you

I settled on the following, I can leave max times notified as no other setting causes it to re email for the same alert

Notify again I left blank, as I dont want to get spammed, 1 email will create a ticket
Max notifications, again, I only want 1
Deplay to notify, I set to 10, this means the alert must be open for 10 mins before I get notified, this will remove things that blip or solve them selves in a timely manner, so I dont get emails, only to have the auto resolved as I am checking them up as this is very likely

To round it off, I recreated 2 more notifications, one for each type of alert, Critical, Immediate and Warning, and set the delay to what I wanted, 10 mins for critical, 20 mins for immediate and 45 mins for warning

I found the in-built dashboards to be very lacking in what they offer, usually needing me to check multiple dashboards to get some info with a lot of useless bit mixed in, so, as you can create your own dashboard from the 100s of metrics, thats what we are looking at here

You can add a custom dashboard from Operations/Dashboards/Create

From there you can add all sorted, we will go through an example of some basic vSphere bits for a vSphere Dashboard

You can name this from the top right

And you can favourite this to add it to the home page on the top right with the house icon

After configuring the below, I ended up with this, there is room for more widgets, and you can move everything around from the top bar, or resize from the bottom right of each widget in the edit menu

You can then also make it viewable to anyone in your department by sharing it with the right icon on the right of the dashboard with the favourite/home button

You can then copy the link and set an expiry, for example, you might select never if you want this available for the department to view, but without giving permissions to Aria

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

From the bottom lets drag a list view onto the canvas

We can re size it from the bottom right and edit it with the pencil

So, I want a widget for my VM stats so I can see VM usage and info, I want this to be wise, so I will grab it over to the right and down then click the pencil on the top right of the widget to edit it, as its currently blank

Lets rename the widget and change refresh to On and self provider to On

Then click configuration to collapse it, which should auto expand input data
Lets click the plus to add a data object

Expand vCenter

And select vSphere World

Then ok and it should be added

And click the Input Data tab to collapse it bringing up output data
There are lots of objects here

Lets scroll to the end page and click to enable VM performance list

Then hit save in the bottom right

We then get an output like so where we can see the VM and hostname, CPU ready, memory contention disk and network stats

Ok, thats a good start, but I want disk usage and OS type in there too, to add more fields, edit the Widget and under Output data, click the 3 dots on VM Performance List and click edit

Under the data section I can now add new fields and re arrange things by dragging the data fields
I can search OS to find the OS type and IP to add
This is under Properties/Summary/Guest Operating System

And to add them to the widget, I can drag them to the data section in the middle

I can add read/write IOPS from Metrics/Virtual Disk/Aggregate Of All instances
I can disk usage % from Metrics/Disk Space Usage On Datastore/Workload %
I can also add configured vDisk size from Metrics/Configuration/Disk Space (GB)

I can also click into the metrics I have added to change the label name, as the default for this, the Metric Name, isnt very helpful

After adding those and removing some bits, I can hit update in the bottom left

Then save from here

Now my dashboard looks something like this

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Drag a Top-N graph to the dashboard

Click the pencil to edit it

For the configuration tab, we are going to want to change the following

• Give it a name at the top
• Refresh content to yes
• Self provider to yes
• Bars count to user defined and enter a number larger than the number of datastores, if you dont have enough datastores it wont add the bars in and we dont want any left off
• Change round decimals to what ever you like, I prefer 2
• Change Top-N Options to Metric Analysis
• And then select top highest utilisation

It should look like this

Now open up the Input Data tab, make sure this is set to all

Open up the Output Data tab and click the plus to add an object

Search for datastore, and add the object called ‘Datastore’ by clicking it, then ok

Click the metric drop down, and expand Capacity and select ‘Used Space (%)’ by double clicking it

Add a Label, this can be what ever you want

At the bottom we then want to edit colour Method, this will apply a colour depending on capacity levels, set this to custom, then add Yellow, Orange and Red colour bounds to fit your environment, this is what I settled on for my environment

Then expand ‘Additional Columns’ and click the plus sign to add a column

Again, filter by datastore and select ‘Datastore’

Excpand Metrics/Datastore, then hold control and click Read IOPS and Write IOPS

Expand Metrics/Capacity and hold control again and select Available Space

Then click ok

This will add all three metrics as extra columns for more data

We can then double click the first entry to edit fields, the default name on the widget is the metric, and this isnt very helpful, so we can type in the Box label to make it more readable, then click update

Then repeat for the remaining objects so you get something like this

Then click save in the bottom right

From the dashboard menu you can resize the widget from the bottom right

Then end result should look something like this

There is only one issue with the widget that would make it a little better, the Veeam Datastore, it just the C Drive of the VBR server used for mounting disks in restores and backups, its not really something I want to monitor, so lets exclude it from this widget

Click the pencil to edit the widget and head to Output Filter and click Advanced at the bottom to expand it

Under criteria at the top, search for Datastore and select the entry ‘Datastore’

Then we can set the left box to Object Name, and the middle to ‘does not contain’

For the right box, search for that Veeam datastore, you’ll see it listed, click it

The filter should look like this

Click save in the bottom right

Now the Datastore is gone

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Drag a Top-N graph to the dashboard

Click the pencil to edit it

We need to set the following on the Configuration Page

• Give the widget a name
• Refresh count to on
• Self provider to on
• Bars count to 15, this allows more to be displayed as we add clusters, if there are less than 15 it draws only what it needs
• Under Top-N options set the radio button to Metric Analysis
• Then Top Highest Utilisation

Keep Input Data as All

Under Object Type click the plus

Then filter for Cluster Compute Resource, select it, and click

At the bottom, then click to select a metric and search for ‘Overcommit’ and double click CPU/Current Overcommit Ratio

Add a label, and set colour method to custom and add figures, this depends on your environment, so its what you decide is acceptable, however general recommendation is not to go over 4vCPU:pCPU, so I would have 4 set at the orange or red and I wouldnt go higher

Lastly, under Additional Columns, click the plus to add some extra stats

Filter for ‘Cluster Compute Resource’ and then filter for ‘Physical CPU’ and Add CPU/Number Of Physical CPU Cores

Also search for ‘Overcommit’ and select to add Memory/Current Overcommit Ratio

You can then double click the object to add a label, and click update to save, for each object

Eg

Now we have a nice widget to monitor the CPU overcommit status on a per cluster basis, per host wouldnt be much help as DRS will move VMs around as it needs if there is resource contention, and we also have the number of cores for reference and the RAM overcommit

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Click and drag a scoreboard to the canvas

We then want to changea few things on the Configuration tab

• First, name the widget, I opted for Rightsizing
• Refresh content should be on
• Self provider should be on
• Round decimals want to be what ever you want, the default is 0
• Box columns wants to be 6
• Visual theme, this you can pick whatever you prefer, I like simple

For Input Data make sure all is selected

On Output Data click the Plus to add data objects

Search for ‘vSphere World’, select that, and then on the left menu search for ‘sized’
Then under Metrics//Compute Increase/Undersized, select ‘Memory (GB) and ’vCPU(s) (vCPUs)’
And under Metrics/Compute Reclaimable/Oversized, and select ‘Memory (GB)’ and ‘vCPU(s) (vCPUs)’

You can drag them to reorder them however you want

Then add, from vSphere World, Metrics/Summary/Number Of Running VMs

Lastly add Metrics/Disk Space Reclaimable/Orphaned Disks (GB)

You can then double click the objects to edit the Box Label, and for the disk capacity, I have changed it from Auto, to GB, to ensure its using GB
Then click update, and repeat for the box label for the rest of the VMs, I have also changed the memory objects to GB

With the end result looking like this

Then sit save, the widget should look like this
The only drawback is VMs you hide in the rightsizing section under Capacity/Rightsizing still show here with no way to exclude them

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Click and drag a List View to the canvas

Edit it with the pencil

Under configuration, give it a name, and set self provider to on

Then click configuration to collapse it, which should auto expand input data
Lets click the plus to add a data object

Expand vCenter

And select vSphere World

Then ok and it should be added

Under Output Data search for ‘Capacity’ and click to select the ‘Capacity \ Cluster Reclaimable’ object

Then click the three dots on the left of the object and click edit

Click the data tab

Click the trashcan icon to remove Idle VM Memory Consulted, in the middle, on the right of the Data Point

Under time settings, change the relative data range to the last 3 months, for a better estimate

Then click update on the bottom left

Then save in the bottom right

The widget should look something like this, allowing you to see the capacity left on a cluster and a rough time remaining allowing you to better plan for needing future resources

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Drag a List View graph to the dashboard

Click the pencil to edit it

Under Configuration, give it a name, set Refresh Content to On, and Self provider to On

On Input Data click the plus to add an object on

Expand the vCenter

Expand the vCenter Server and select your vCenter

Under Output Data, search for Snapshot, and click to select the ‘Configuration | Incorrect | VM with old Snapshot’

Then click Edit

Click Section 2 – Data, then click the Age (Days) data point and click the little arrow on Configuration to expand the config

Click Show Advanced Settings

Here you can define the Yellow/Orange/Red boundaries, for this though, the default should be kept as the time frame shouldnt be exceeding 15 days

Repeat under size, this has yellow kick in for snapshots over 1GB, which is pretty low, and most snapshots will be over this, so you can change the figures to what works well in your environment, this is supplemental data, this is what I settled on

Its not a hard fast rule, in GB at least, that if over a certain size it should be removed, but the bigger the snapshot is, and depending a little on what the VM is, like SQL, this can be an issue, if you are in the TB range, you likely want to remove it ASAP, and the larger it is the more you’ll want to weigh up how much you need it

Its not a hard fast rule, in GB at least, that if over a certain size it should be removed, but the bigger the snapshot is, and depending a little on what the VM is, like SQL, this can be an issue, if you are in the TB range, you likely want to remove it ASAP, and the larger it is the more you’ll want to weigh up how much you need it

The size of snapshots, when including VM memory is largely dependent on the VM disk, this is the better way of doing it, but it leads to larger snapshots

Alternatively, you can remove all numbers from the Yellow/Orange/Red bounds to remove the colouring entirely

Now, at this point, you’ll likely have one large issue, it seems to miss report VMs with -1 snapshots, this isnt ideal

So move to section 4 – Filter, we can remove this from there, just click it at the top

We can populate the blank filter here to remove entries that arent greater than 0, fixing this issue

Set the first bit to Properties

The second bit, type snapshot in and select Disk Space/Snapshot/Ages (Days) by clicking it

Keep the third box on Current
For the fourth, set it to ‘is greater than’
And for the fifth enter 0

It should look like this

On the left, if you click refresh

This has filtered those VMs out, if you had them, even if you dont, you’ll want to set this up

At the bottom we can then hit update

Then save in the bottom right

And we should get something like this

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Click and drag a List View to the canvas

Edit it with the pencil

Give the view a name, and set Refresh Content to On and Self Provider to On

On Input Data, click the plus to add an object

Expand your vCenter

Scroll to the bottom, expand vSphere World and select vSphere World, then hit ok

It should look like this

Under output data, we need to click the plus to add a new object

Give it a name and description, then hit nix at the bottom

On section 2 click to add a subject and search for ‘Virtual Machine’ and add that

As we selected vSphere world before, it may be listed here, if so click the ‘x’ to remove it

It should look like this

Now below, we need to add objects, search for ‘Remaining’ you should see something like this

Then drag from the left, to the right in this order

• Guest File System/Utilisation %
• Memory/Capacity Remaining
• CPU/Capacity Remaining
• Capacity Analysis Generated/Capacity Remaining Percentage

The reason for this order is it will line them up with the last first and so on down the list, so the end chart has the capacity remaining percentage first, then CPU, memory and lastly disk, you can change this order if you want and drag to re order in the middle table

It will then look like this, you cna open/close the configuration tab with the double arrow at the top, shown in the right of the below screenshot

Now, you’ll need to open the config tab if its closed and select the top entry

Here we can add a Metric Label and set the Sort Order to Ascending, the click Show Advanced Settings

Then set the Yellow/Orange/Red thresholds, I opted for 10/6/3 for the capacity remaining percentage

For CPU capacity, add a label, you can add Yellow/Orange/Red bounds if you like, but I am added these columns for info, so I am not

Repeat for memory remaining

For disk remaining, we are going to do something a little different
Set the label to Disk Remaining, and change the unit to %
Under Transformation set this to Expression and for the formula set this to 100-Current
This will invert the default metric from % used to % free
This will apply to the main drive in a multi drive setup

Then click Create at the bottom

And save

This should then look like this, letting you know if the VMs in most need of extra capacity

This only thing to bare in mind is this is not an exact science, for example, my TrueNas server, Carbon, has PCIe passthrough enabled, so VM memory is reserved, this causes it to have 0KB free, and for OPNsense, it has 2GB and is using ~500MB, it has plenty of capacity, but oddly Aria doesnt seem to think so, so your milage may vary

But most are pretty accurate, for example, my Veeam server could really do with more memory

So, we can address this issue, but do make sure you are 100% sure the VM flagged with zero capacity is fine and its a false flag, click the pencil on the widget to edit it and head to Output Data, scroll down and find the object we created earlier

Click the three dots and click edit

Click into section four, for filter, we can also see a preview on the right, so we can see if the filters to remove unwanted VMs are working

Set the first box to Properties, the second to Configuration/Name

The third box to Current, the fourth to Is Not, and the last box, search for your VM, in my case OPNsense

And if we refresh the chart on the right, with the refresh icon on the right of the preview, we can see OPNsense has been removed

You can click Add on the right of the criteria to remove more VMs in the same way, just dont click Add Another Criteria Set, as it wont work

I added my TrueNas server, Carbon, OPNsense, Firestorm, my NSX manager, Ember, my NSX Edge, Hail, Aria Logs, Snow, Aria Ops, and Borealis, my vCenter, the last few are appliances, so they are fine and I want to remove them

And we can see those are all completely gone from the widget preview on the right, so I can click Update at the bottom

The save on the bottom right

And the widget reflects this now

For this widget we will create one that shows the health of the all certificates, virtual machines, and vCenter services and a great glace at some key health metrics

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Click Show More

Scroll down and drag an Environment Overview into the dashboard and click the pencil to edit it

Give it a name, and set Refresh Content to On, and Self Provider to On

Under Input Data, Select Config, then expand the Advanced config menu, it should look like this

On Object Types, click the little arrow on the right

This should reveal the search bar

Search for ‘Certificates’ and double click it to add it to the middle box

Then search for ‘Virtual Machine’ and double click to add that

Lastly, search for ‘vCenter Appliance Service’ and double click to add that

Now hit save in the bottom left

The widget should look like this

And you can scroll down for the vCenter services, or drag from the bottom right to make it taller/wider

You can also hover over an object, for example, one of the orange VMs I have to get info on whats not healthy, in this case, my VBR server

I can then look at alerts, or investigate it from the inventory to see why its unhealthy

Edit your dashboard by clicking into Operations/Dashboards then selecting your dashboard, then Actions and Edit

Drag a Top-N graph to the dashboard

Click the pencil to edit it

Now we need to set the following

• Name the widget
• Refresh Content to On
• Self provider to On
• Redraw rate set to 15 Minutes
• Bars Count set to 15
• Round Decimals can be what ever you want, I chose two
• Filter Old Metrics, this must be On, else the data will consider old metrics and be inaccurate
• Top N Options wants to be Metric Analysis with Top Highest Utilisation

Make sure Input Data is set to All

On Output Data click the Plus

Search for ‘Distributed’ and click to select vSphere Distributed Port Group, and click ok

Click the drop down for Metric at the bottom and search for ‘Utilization’, and double click to add ’Utilization (KBps)

Add a Label so the metric is easier to read, and set the unit, this can be KBps, Mbps, MBps or Gbps and we are keeping colour on None, you can add thresholds for Red, Orange or Yellow if you wanted though

Then move to Additional Columns section, click the Plus to add some extra metrics

Search for ‘Switch’ and click ‘vSphere Distributed Switch’ on the left, then we can click onto Metrics/Networks/Port Statistics and select Egress traffic and Ingress Traffic, and lastly click Metrics/Summary/Used Number Of Ports, then click ok

Now we can double click the added columns, to add a better label and click update

It should now look something like this, the labels make the widget much more readable

Then hit save in the bottom right

The finished widget should look something like this