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check-vmware | check_vmware_disk_consolidation plugin

Table of Contents

Overview

Nagios plugin used to monitor Virtual Machine disk consolidation status.

The status of this property indicates whether one or more disks for a Virtual Machine require consolidation. This can happen when a snapshot is deleted, but its associated disk is not committed back to the base disk. This situation can cause backup failures and performance issues.

By default, this plugin does not trigger a state reload for each Virtual Machine that it evaluates, instead evaluating the disk consolidation status as currently reflected in the vSphere environment. The state data appears to only be updated during vMotion and Fault Tolerant related methods, when a VM is first added to inventory or when manually reloaded via the vSphere web UI. If not refreshed by one of these tasks or a custom job configured on the cluster the consolidation status may be stale.

You can work around this potentially stale state by specifying a --trigger-reload flag for this plugin. This flag enables a state reload for each evaluated Virtual Machine. This reload will refresh state data for the Virtual Machine to ensure that the disk consolidation status reflects the actual state of the VM. This option does not come without a cost however.

Due to the time required for each reload operation to complete, this plugin can require a much longer timeout value than other plugins which only evaluate (and not refresh) existing state data for vSphere objects. You should configure the --timeout value for this plugin accordingly and also configure the timeout settings in your monitoring system (e.g., service_check_timeout within nagios.cfg for Nagios) to permit longer plugin execution times.

Instead of enabling this flag, you may wish to schedule a job on the cluster or an "admin box" that handles the reload/refresh of each Virtual Machine. This will be significantly faster than evaluating the state of each VM every time the associated service check executes and depending on the frequency of the job should be "fresh enough" to allow this plugin to accurately detect disk consolidation needs.

Output

The output for these plugins is designed to provide the one-line summary needed by Nagios for quick identification of a problem while providing longer, more detailed information for display within the web UI, use in email and Teams notifications (atc0005/send2teams).

See the main project README for details.

Performance Data

Background

Initial support has been added for emitting Performance Data / Metrics, but refinement suggestions are welcome.

Consult the list below for the metrics implemented thus far, the original discussion thread and the Add Performance Data / Metrics support project board for an index of the initial implementation work.

Please add to an existing Discussion thread or open a new one with any feedback that you may have. Thanks in advance!

Supported metrics

Metrics below are obtained in this order:

  1. Obtain count of all resource pools
  2. Obtain count of all folders
  3. Obtain count of all virtual machines
  4. Filter virtual machines
    1. by resource pools
    2. by folders
    3. by name
    4. by power state
  5. Evaluate virtual machines for disk consolidation requirement

For example, the count of virtual machines powered on is obtained based on VMs remaining after resource pool filtering is complete at the time of applying power state filtering.

NOTE: These metrics are based on the visibility of the service account used to login to the target VMware environment. If the service account cannot see a resource, it cannot evaluate the resource.

Metric Alias of Unit of Measurement Description
time milliseconds plugin runtime
vms vms_all all (visible) virtual machines in the inventory
vms_all vms all (visible) virtual machines in the inventory
vms_evaluated vms_after_filtering virtual machines after filtering, evaluated for plugin-specific threshold violations
vms_after_filtering vms_evaluated virtual machines after filtering, evaluated for plugin-specific threshold violations
vms_powered_on virtual machines powered on
vms_powered_off virtual machines powered off
vms_excluded_by_name virtual machines excluded based on fixed name values
vms_excluded_by_folder virtual machines excluded based on folder IDs
vms_excluded_by_power_state virtual machines excluded based on power state (powered off VMs are excluded by default)
vms_excluded_by_resource_pool virtual machines excluded based on resource pool name
folders_all all folders in the inventory
folders_excluded folders excluded by request
folders_included folders included by request (all non-listed folders excluded)
folders_evaluated folders remaining after inclusion/exclusion filtering logic is applied
resource_pools_all all resource pools in the inventory
resource_pools_excluded resource pools excluded by request
resource_pools_included resource pools included by request (all non-listed resource pools excluded)
resource_pools_evaluated resource pools remaining after inclusion/exclusion filtering logic is applied
vms_with_consolidation_need virtual machines requiring disk consolidation
vms_without_consolidation_need virtual machines not requiring disk consolidation

Optional evaluation

Some plugins provide optional support to limit evaluation of VMs to specific Resource Pools (explicitly including or excluding) and power states (on or off). Other plugins support similar filtering options (e.g., Acknowledged state of Triggered Alarms). See the configuration options, examples and contrib sections for more information.

Installation

See the main project README for details.

Configuration options

Threshold calculations

Nagios State Description
OK Ideal state, VM disk consolidation not needed.
WARNING Not used by this plugin.
CRITICAL Disk consolidation needed for one or more VMs.

Command-line arguments

  • Use the -h or --help flag to display current usage information.
  • Flags marked as required must be set via CLI flag.
  • Flags not marked as required are for settings where a useful default is already defined, but may be overridden if desired.
Flag Required Default Repeat Possible Description
branding No false No branding Toggles emission of branding details with plugin status details. This output is disabled by default.
h, help No false No h, help Show Help text along with the list of supported flags.
v, version No false No v, version Whether to display application version and then immediately exit application.
ll, log-level No info No disabled, panic, fatal, error, warn, info, debug, trace Log message priority filter. Log messages with a lower level are ignored. Log messages are sent to stderr by default. See Output for more information.
p, port No 443 No positive whole number between 1-65535, inclusive TCP port of the remote ESXi host or vCenter instance. This is usually 443 (HTTPS).
t, timeout No 10 No positive whole number of seconds Timeout value in seconds allowed before a plugin execution attempt is abandoned and an error returned.
s, server Yes No fully-qualified domain name or IP Address The fully-qualified domain name or IP Address of the remote ESXi host or vCenter instance.
u, username Yes No valid username Username with permission to access specified ESXi host or vCenter instance.
pw, password Yes No valid password Password used to login to ESXi host or vCenter instance.
domain No No valid user domain (Optional) domain for user account used to login to ESXi host or vCenter instance. This is needed for user accounts residing in a non-default domain (e.g., SSO specific domain).
trust-cert No false No true, false Whether the certificate should be trusted as-is without validation. WARNING: TLS is susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks if enabling this option.
include-rp No No comma-separated list of resource pool names Specifies a comma-separated list of Resource Pool names that should be exclusively used when evaluating VMs. Specifying this option will also exclude any VMs from evaluation that are outside of a Resource Pool. This option is incompatible with specifying a list of Resource Pool names to ignore or exclude from evaluation.
exclude-rp No No comma-separated list of resource pool names Specifies a comma-separated list of Resource Pool names that should be ignored when evaluating VMs. This option is incompatible with specifying a list of Resource Pool names to include for evaluation.
include-folder-id No No comma-separated list of folder ID values Specifies a comma-separated list of Folder Managed Object ID (MOID) values (e.g., group-v34) that should be exclusively used when evaluating VMs. This option is incompatible with specifying a list of Folder IDs to ignore or exclude from evaluation.
exclude-folder-id No No comma-separated list of folder ID values Specifies a comma-separated list of Folder Managed Object ID (MOID) values (e.g., group-v34) that should be ignored when evaluating VMs. This option is incompatible with specifying a list of Folder Managed Object ID (MOID) values to include for evaluation.
ignore-vm No No comma-separated list of (vSphere) virtual machine names Specifies a comma-separated list of VM names that should be ignored or excluded from evaluation.
trigger-reload No false No true, false Trigger a reload operation for each VM evaluated. This option ensures that the most current state data is evaluated, but increases plugin runtime. If using this, you should also adjust the --timeout value and potentially your monitor system's service check timeout setting.

Configuration file

Not currently supported. This feature may be added later if there is sufficient interest.

Contrib

See the main project README for details.

Examples

CLI invocation

/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_vmware_disk_consolidation --username SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME --password "SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PASSWORD" --server vc1.example.com  --trust-cert --log-level info --trigger-reload --timeout 110

See the configuration options section for all command-line settings supported by this plugin along with descriptions of each. See the contrib section for information regarding example command definitions and Nagios configuration files.

Of note:

  • Certificate warnings are ignored.
    • not best practice, but many vCenter instances use self-signed certs per various freely available guides
  • Service Check results output is sent to stdout
  • Logging output is enabled at the info level.
    • logging output is sent to stderr by default
    • logging output is intended to be seen when invoking the plugin directly via CLI (often for troubleshooting)
      • see the Output section of the main README for potential conflicts with some monitoring systems
  • A forced state data reload/refresh is triggered for each evaluated Virtual Machine
    • NOTE: this operation is expensive, omit to rely on existing (potentially stale) state data
    • see the overview section for additional details, including potential alternatives to the use of this flag
  • A custom timeout value is specified
    • NOTE: in order for this timeout value to be respected, you may need to adjust the service check timeout value in your monitoring system (e.g., service_check_timeout value in your nagios.cfg file)

Command definition

# /etc/nagios-plugins/config/vmware-disk-consolidation.cfg

# Look at all pools, all VMs.  Use existing (potentially stale) state data for
# evaluation of disk consolidation status instead of triggering (potentially
# expensive) reload/refresh of state data.
#
# This variation of the command is most useful for environments where all VMs
# are monitored equally and no filtering based on pool membership or VM name
# is needed.
define command{
    command_name    check_vmware_disk_consolidation
    command_line    $USER1$/check_vmware_disk_consolidation --server '$HOSTNAME$' --domain '$ARG1$' --username '$ARG2$' --password '$ARG3$'  --trust-cert --log-level info
    }

# Look at all pools, all VMs, trigger potentially expensive reload operation
# on each evaluated VM.
#
# This variation of the command is most useful for environments where all VMs
# are monitored equally and where the time required to reload/refresh data
# data for each VM is acceptable.
#
# The tradeoff in having current state data comes at the cost of increased
# execution time. If this proves too expensive for your environment, you may
# wish to schedule a job on the cluster to handle refreshing state data.
define command{
    command_name    check_vmware_disk_consolidation_trigger_reload
    command_line    $USER1$/check_vmware_disk_consolidation --server '$HOSTNAME$' --domain '$ARG1$' --username '$ARG2$' --password '$ARG3$'  --trust-cert --log-level info --trigger-reload --timeout 110
    }

License

See the main project README for details.

References