VMware vCenter Server

Plugin: go.d.plugin Module: vsphere

Overview

This collector monitors hosts and vms performance statistics from vCenter servers.

Warning: The vsphere collector cannot re-login and continue collecting metrics after a vCenter reboot. go.d.plugin needs to be restarted.

This collector is supported on all platforms.

This collector supports collecting metrics from multiple instances of this integration, including remote instances.

Default Behavior

Auto-Detection

This integration doesn’t support auto-detection.

Limits

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact

The default update_every is 20 seconds, and it doesn’t make sense to decrease the value. VMware real-time statistics are generated at the 20-second specificity.

It is likely that 20 seconds is not enough for big installations and the value should be tuned.

To get a better view we recommend running the collector in debug mode and seeing how much time it will take to collect metrics.

Example (all not related debug lines were removed)

[ilyam@pc]$ ./go.d.plugin -d -m vsphere
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:94 discovering : starting resource discovering process
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:102 discovering : found 3 dcs, process took 49.329656ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:109 discovering : found 12 folders, process took 49.538688ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:116 discovering : found 3 clusters, process took 47.722692ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:123 discovering : found 2 hosts, process took 52.966995ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:130 discovering : found 2 vms, process took 49.832979ms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:140 discovering : found 3 dcs, 12 folders, 3 clusters (2 dummy), 2 hosts, 3 vms, process took 249.655993ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] build.go:12 discovering : building : starting building resources process
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] build.go:23 discovering : building : built 3/3 dcs, 12/12 folders, 3/3 clusters, 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, process took 63.3µs
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] hierarchy.go:10 discovering : hierarchy : start setting resources hierarchy process
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] hierarchy.go:18 discovering : hierarchy : set 3/3 clusters, 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, process took 6.522µs
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:24 discovering : filtering : starting filtering resources process
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:45 discovering : filtering : removed 0 unmatched hosts
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:56 discovering : filtering : removed 0 unmatched vms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] filter.go:29 discovering : filtering : filtered 0/2 hosts, 0/3 vms, process took 42.973µs
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] metric_lists.go:14 discovering : metric lists : starting resources metric lists collection process
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] metric_lists.go:30 discovering : metric lists : collected metric lists for 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, process took 275.60764ms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:74 discovering : discovered 2/2 hosts, 3/3 vms, the whole process took 525.614041ms
[ INFO  ] vsphere[vsphere] discover.go:11 starting discovery process, will do discovery every 5m0s
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] collect.go:11 starting collection process
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] scrape.go:48 scraping : scraped metrics for 2/2 hosts, process took 96.257374ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] scrape.go:60 scraping : scraped metrics for 3/3 vms, process took 57.879697ms
[ DEBUG ] vsphere[vsphere] collect.go:23 metrics collected, process took 154.77997ms

There you can see that discovering took 525.614041ms, and collecting metrics took 154.77997ms. Discovering is a separate thread, it doesn’t affect collecting. update_every and timeout parameters should be adjusted based on these numbers.

Setup

You can configure the vsphere collector in two ways:

Method	Best for	How to
UI	Fast setup without editing files	Go to Nodes → Configure this node → Collectors → Jobs, search for vsphere, then click + to add a job.
File	If you prefer configuring via file, or need to automate deployments (e.g., with Ansible)	Edit `go.d/vsphere.conf` and add a job.

:::important

UI configuration requires paid Netdata Cloud plan.

:::

Prerequisites

No action required.

Configuration

Options

The following options can be defined globally: update_every, autodetection_retry.

Group	Option	Description	Default	Required
Collection	update_every	Data collection interval (seconds).	1	no
	autodetection_retry	Autodetection retry interval (seconds). Set 0 to disable.	0	no
Target	url	Target endpoint URL.	http://127.0.0.1/server-status?auto	yes
	timeout	HTTP request timeout (seconds).	1	no
Discovery	discovery_interval	Hosts and VMs discovery interval (seconds).	300	no
Filters	host_include	Hosts selector (filter).	/*	no
	vm_include	VM selector (filter).	/*	no
HTTP Auth	username	Username for Basic HTTP authentication.		yes
	password	Password for Basic HTTP authentication.		yes
	bearer_token_file	Path to a file containing a bearer token (used for `Authorization: Bearer`).		no
TLS	tls_skip_verify	Skip TLS certificate and hostname verification (insecure).	no	no
	tls_ca	Path to CA bundle used to validate the server certificate.		no
	tls_cert	Path to client TLS certificate (for mTLS).		no
	tls_key	Path to client TLS private key (for mTLS).		no
Proxy	proxy_url	HTTP proxy URL.		no
	proxy_username	Username for proxy Basic HTTP authentication.		no
	proxy_password	Password for proxy Basic HTTP authentication.		no
Request	method	HTTP method to use.	GET	no
	body	Request body (e.g., for POST/PUT).		no
	headers	Additional HTTP headers (one per line as key: value).		no
	not_follow_redirects	Do not follow HTTP redirects.	no	no
	force_http2	Force HTTP/2 (including h2c over TCP).	no	no
Virtual Node	vnode	Associates this data collection job with a Virtual Node.		no

host_include

Metrics of hosts matching the selector will be collected.

Include pattern syntax: “/Datacenter pattern/Cluster pattern/Host pattern”.
Match pattern syntax: simple patterns.

Syntax:

host_include:
  - '/DC1/*'           # all hosts from datacenter DC1
  - '/DC2/*/!Host2 *'  # all hosts from datacenter DC2 except HOST2
  - '/DC3/Cluster3/*'  # all hosts from DC3, cluster Cluster3

vm_include

Metrics of VMs matching the selector will be collected.

Include pattern syntax: “/Datacenter pattern/Cluster pattern/Host pattern/VM pattern”.
Match pattern syntax: simple patterns.

Syntax:

vm_include:
  - '/DC1/*'           # all VMs from datacenter DC1
  - '/DC2/*/*/!VM2 *'  # all VMs from DC2 except VM2
  - '/DC3/Cluster3/*'  # all VMs from DC3, cluster Cluster3

via UI

Configure the vsphere collector from the Netdata web interface:

Go to Nodes.
Select the node where you want the vsphere data-collection job to run and click the :gear: (Configure this node). That node will run the data collection.
The Collectors → Jobs view opens by default.
In the Search box, type vsphere (or scroll the list) to locate the vsphere collector.
Click the + next to the vsphere collector to add a new job.
Fill in the job fields, then click Test to verify the configuration and Submit to save.
- Test runs the job with the provided settings and shows whether data can be collected.
- If it fails, an error message appears with details (for example, connection refused, timeout, or command execution errors), so you can adjust and retest.

via File

The configuration file name for this integration is go.d/vsphere.conf.

The file format is YAML. Generally, the structure is:

update_every: 1
autodetection_retry: 0
jobs:
  - name: some_name1
  - name: some_name2

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config go.d/vsphere.conf

Examples

Basic

A basic example configuration.

jobs:
  - name     : vcenter1
    url      : https://203.0.113.1
    username : [email protected]
    password : somepassword

Multi-instance

Note: When you define multiple jobs, their names must be unique.

Collecting metrics from local and remote instances.

jobs:
  - name     : vcenter1
    url      : https://203.0.113.1
    username : [email protected]
    password : somepassword

  - name     : vcenter2
    url      : https://203.0.113.10
    username : [email protected]
    password : somepassword

Metrics

Metrics grouped by scope.

The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.

Per virtual machine

These metrics refer to the Virtual Machine.

Labels:

Label	Description
datacenter	Datacenter name
cluster	Cluster name
host	Host name
vm	Virtual Machine name

Metrics:

Metric	Dimensions	Unit
vsphere.vm_cpu_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.vm_mem_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.vm_mem_usage	granted, consumed, active, shared	KiB
vsphere.vm_mem_swap_usage	swapped	KiB
vsphere.vm_mem_swap_io	in, out	KiB/s
vsphere.vm_disk_io	read, write	KiB/s
vsphere.vm_disk_max_latency	latency	milliseconds
vsphere.vm_net_traffic	received, sent	KiB/s
vsphere.vm_net_packets	received, sent	packets
vsphere.vm_net_drops	received, sent	packets
vsphere.vm_overall_status	green, red, yellow, gray	status
vsphere.vm_system_uptime	uptime	seconds

Per host

These metrics refer to the ESXi host.

Labels:

Label	Description
datacenter	Datacenter name
cluster	Cluster name
host	Host name

Metrics:

Metric	Dimensions	Unit
vsphere.host_cpu_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.host_mem_utilization	used	percentage
vsphere.host_mem_usage	granted, consumed, active, shared, sharedcommon	KiB
vsphere.host_mem_swap_io	in, out	KiB/s
vsphere.host_disk_io	read, write	KiB/s
vsphere.host_disk_max_latency	latency	milliseconds
vsphere.host_net_traffic	received, sent	KiB/s
vsphere.host_net_packets	received, sent	packets
vsphere.host_net_drops	received, sent	packets
vsphere.host_net_errors	received, sent	errors
vsphere.host_overall_status	green, red, yellow, gray	status
vsphere.host_system_uptime	uptime	seconds

Alerts

The following alerts are available:

Alert name	On metric	Description
vsphere_vm_cpu_utilization	vsphere.vm_cpu_utilization	Virtual Machine CPU utilization
vsphere_vm_mem_usage	vsphere.vm_mem_utilization	Virtual Machine memory utilization
vsphere_host_cpu_utilization	vsphere.host_cpu_utilization	ESXi Host CPU utilization
vsphere_host_mem_utilization	vsphere.host_mem_utilization	ESXi Host memory utilization

Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

Important: Debug mode is not supported for data collection jobs created via the UI using the Dyncfg feature.

To troubleshoot issues with the vsphere collector, run the go.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn’t working.

Navigate to the plugins.d directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that’s not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the plugins setting under [directories].
```
cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/
```
Switch to the netdata user.
```
sudo -u netdata -s
```

Run the go.d.plugin to debug the collector:

./go.d.plugin -d -m vsphere

To debug a specific job:

./go.d.plugin -d -m vsphere -j jobName

Getting Logs

If you’re encountering problems with the vsphere collector, follow these steps to retrieve logs and identify potential issues:

Run the command specific to your system (systemd, non-systemd, or Docker container).
Examine the output for any warnings or error messages that might indicate issues. These messages should provide clues about the root cause of the problem.

System with systemd

Use the following command to view logs generated since the last Netdata service restart:

journalctl _SYSTEMD_INVOCATION_ID="$(systemctl show --value --property=InvocationID netdata)" --namespace=netdata --grep vsphere

System without systemd

Locate the collector log file, typically at /var/log/netdata/collector.log, and use grep to filter for collector’s name:

grep vsphere /var/log/netdata/collector.log

Note: This method shows logs from all restarts. Focus on the latest entries for troubleshooting current issues.

Docker Container

If your Netdata runs in a Docker container named “netdata” (replace if different), use this command:

docker logs netdata 2>&1 | grep vsphere

Industry

Technology

Use cases