vFoglight™ 5.2.
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Table of Contents Introduction to this Guide ...................................................................................................................................5 About vFoglight ................................................................................................................................................................ 6 About this Guide...........................................................................................................................................
vFoglight Getting Started Guide First Steps.......................................................................................................................................................... 39 Downloading vFoglight ................................................................................................................................................... 39 Next Steps ...........................................................................................................................
Introduction to this Guide This chapter provides information about what is contained in the Getting Started Guide. It also provides information about the vFoglight documentation suite and Vizioncore. This chapter contains the following sections: About vFoglight..............................................................................................................................6 About this Guide...........................................................................................................
vFoglight Getting Started Guide About vFoglight vFoglight helps IT organizations understand the virtual infrastructure by managing the relationships and interaction between all the components in the environment, including data centers, data stores, clusters, resource pools, hosts and virtual machines.
Introduction to this Guide vFoglight Documentation Suite 7 This chapter summarizes the main steps involved in installing (or upgrading) and configuring vFoglight. As well, this chapter directs you to the appropriate instructions in the Administration and Configuration Guide and in the Installation and Setup Guide set.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide • Online Help: You can open the online help by selecting the Help tab from vFoglight’s action panel. • PDF: The Getting Started Guide, What’s New Guide, System Requirements and Platform Support Guide, Installation and Setup Guide set, Administration and Configuration Guide, vFoglight User Guide, Command-Line Reference Guide, Web Component Guide, and Web Component Tutorial, are provided as PDF files. The PDF guides are included in the zip file downloaded from Vizioncore.
Introduction to this Guide vFoglight Documentation Suite 9 • Installation and Setup Guide—Installing on Windows with an External Oracle Database • Administration and Configuration Guide (PDF and online help) • vFoglight User Guide (PDF and online help) • Advanced Configuration Guide set • Command-Line Reference Guide (PDF and online help) • Web Component Guide (PDF and online help) • Web Component Tutorial (PDF and online help) • Web Component Reference (online help) Cartridge Documentation Sets When you
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Text Conventions The following table summarizes how text styles are used in this guide: Convention Description Code Monospace text represents code, code objects, and commandline input.
Introduction to this Guide About Vizioncore Inc.
Contacting Dell Note: If you do not have an active Internet connection, you can find contact information on your purchase invoice, packing slip, bill, or Dell product catalog. Dell provides several online and telephone-based support and service options. Availability varies by country and product, and some services may not be available in your area. To contact Dell for sales, technical support, or customer service issues: 1 Visit http://support.dell.com.
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2 Introducing vFoglight This chapter discusses how vFoglight works, defines key concepts and terms, and describes vFoglight components. This chapter contains the following sections: Welcome to vFoglight ..................................................................................................................26 Key Concepts and Terms ............................................................................................................27 How vFoglight Works.......................................
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Welcome to vFoglight What is vFoglight? vFoglight is an application management solution that reduces or eliminates service disruptions to unify IT and the business. Unlike other solutions, it provides a correlated, 360 degree view of your applications from end user to database and from service levels to infrastructure—to source the root cause of every incident impacting your business and fix them quickly.
Introducing vFoglight Key Concepts and Terms Key Concepts and Terms How vFoglight Works Term Definition Monitored environment The hosts, server instances, databases, and other systems in your environment that are monitored by vFoglight agents. The data collected from your environment is used in the Foglight Management Server, where it populates model instances, drives rules, and can be rendered in views.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Term Definition Collection model A model type for which the definitions are included with a vFoglight cartridge. The cartridge can be one that is installed by default with the Management Server or can be a cartridge for monitoring a particular domain. A model instance of this type is created from the collection of data from your monitored environment.
Introducing vFoglight How vFoglight Works Term Definition Observation An observation taken over time, for example, a Metric, StringObservation, or TopNList. In vFoglight, every observation is linked to a specific part of the topology model, for example, CPU utilization on a particular monitored host. Metric A simple value observation measured over time, for example, a count, rate, or percentage.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Term Definition vFoglight Agent Manager A component that manages agents installed on monitored hosts. See “vFoglight Agent Manager” on page 37 for more information. Cartridge A unit that is added to the vFoglight Management Server. Cartridges contain components that extend the functionality of vFoglight, such as agents, rules, and views. See “Cartridges” on page 37 for more information.
Introducing vFoglight How vFoglight Works 31 that model type. For example, the HostModel type is a collection of Host objects; each host object is one representation of the HostModel type. vFoglight models provide context for the metrics collected from your monitored environment. The model instances are dynamic and can change and expand automatically as the resources you are monitoring change. This approach allows you to correlate data from different nodes and to derive cluster data.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide In this collection model instance, a host is represented by a node. It has three child nodes, which represent the CPU, memory, and disk of the host. The CPU and disk nodes also have child nodes that represent the individual processors and file systems, respectively.
Introducing vFoglight How vFoglight Works 33 When you define a service, a corresponding service level is automatically created. You can also use Alarm Filters to decide what alarms are relevant to a given service and can impact the availability of that service. See Services and availability below for more information. Using the Dynamic Managed Components feature, you can define a set of components that will be automatically included in a service when certain data arrives.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide For example, an alarm fired by a rule called CPU Trending (which monitors the CPU usage over the last 12 months) may be relevant to your Management Planning service, but not to your Billing Application service. In this case, you would not want Fatal alarms fired by this rule for a component of the Billing Application service to signal a service outage. vFoglight allows you to specify the alarms that are relevant to a given service by means of Alarm Filters.
Introducing vFoglight vFoglight Components 35 vFoglight Components vFoglight Management Server The vFoglight Management Server is the central component of vFoglight. The Management Server receives information from agents and makes it available in the browser interface. The vFoglight database stores all system, application, and performance data. Over time, it becomes an invaluable source of historical information for planning future system capacity requirements and for doing point-in-time analysis.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide The browser interface also includes the Administration home page, which allows you to navigate to all Administration dashboards and presents a summary of information about vFoglight from an administrative perspective. The browser interface consists of three areas: • A navigation panel that: • Lists all of the dashboards that are available for viewing in the display area by the current user.
Introducing vFoglight vFoglight Components 37 For example, this interface allows you to automate component-management tasks using scripts or to use regular expressions to select multiple entities. See the Command-Line Reference Guide for more information. vFoglight Agent Manager New in the 5.2.4 release of vFoglight, the vFoglight Agent Manager is the next generation vFoglight component for managing and communicating with agents.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide When a cartridge is installed and enabled, all of its components become part of the Management Server. Adding cartridges to the vFoglight Management Server allows you to monitor additional operating systems, processes, databases, applications, and servers in your environment. See the Administration and Configuration Guide for more information about managing cartridges. See the cartridge documentation for information about each cartridge.
3 First Steps This chapter includes instructions on downloading vFoglight documentation and software packages. Follow these instructions if you want to download vFoglight 5.2.4. This chapter contains the following sections: Downloading vFoglight ................................................................................................................39 Next Steps...................................................................................................................................
vFoglight Getting Started Guide If you have not previously downloaded software, or are using a different e-mail address than used previously, you will be prompted to provide some basic information before downloading. Complete the information, and click Continue. 6 Access your e-mail client and open the mail from “downloads”. 7 Click the link for the software package (a .zip file) that you want to download. A file download dialog appears.
4 Installation and Setup Overview This chapter contains the following sections: Getting Started with the Installation and Setup Process .............................................................42 Part 1: Installing or Upgrading the vFoglight Management Server..............................................43 Part 2: Initializing the Database, Starting the vFoglight Management Server, and Logging In....44 Part 3: Installing or Upgrading Cartridges ...........................................................
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Getting Started with the Installation and Setup Process This chapter provides an overview of the vFoglight installation and setup process. It summarizes the main steps involved in installing (or upgrading) and configuring vFoglight and contains directions to the appropriate instructions in the Administration and Configuration Guide and in the Installation and Setup Guide set. This chapter is intended as a preface or supplement to these guides.
Installation and Setup Overview Part 1: Installing or Upgrading the vFoglight Management Server 43 The Installation and Setup Guide also contains a brief overview of hardware requirements and installation recommendations. Prior to installing vFoglight, review the System Requirements and Platform Support Guide as well as “Before Installing vFoglight” and “Preparing to Install” in the Installation and Setup Guide. Part 1: Installing or Upgrading the vFoglight Management Server The vFoglight 5.2.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide • If you are using an external database and chose the installer option to manually set up the database later, see “Manual Database Configuration” in the Installation and Setup Guide for your platform and external database. • If you are using an external MySQL database, see “External MySQL Database Access for Remote Users” in the Installation and Setup Guide for using an external MySQL database on your platform.
Installation and Setup Overview Part 3: Installing or Upgrading Cartridges 45 See “Starting and Stopping the vFoglight Management Server” in the Installation and Setup Guide for information about starting and stopping the Management Server. For information about running the Management Server as a Windows service, see “Starting the vFoglight Management Server as a Windows Service” in the version of Installation and Setup Guide — Installing on Windows for the database you are using.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide • Ensure that the vFoglight Management Server is running and that you have logged in to vFoglight. • Ensure that you are granted the required permissions by your vFoglight administrator to access the dashboards under the Administration module. 2 Install or upgrade the cartridge: If you are installing a new cartridge: Install the cartridge by following the instructions in “Installing and Managing Cartridges” in the Administration and Configuration Guide.
Installation and Setup Overview Part 4: Installing, Configuring, and Starting the vFoglight Agent Manager 47 2 Download or retrieve the vFoglight Agent Manager installer: The different ways to obtain the installer for your platform (fglam-.[bin|exe]) are described below. See the table in “vFoglight Agent Manager Platform Support Matrix” in the Installation and Setup Guide for the name of the installer for your platform.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide See the file fglam.config.xml in the directory in which the vFoglight Agent Manager is installed for details about these and other configuration options. See also “Configuring the vFoglight Agent Manager” in the Installation and Setup Guide for information about a vFoglight Agent Manager configuration interface that you can run after installation. The vFoglight Agent Manager automatically detects HA-enabled Management Servers and configures itself for them.
Installation and Setup Overview Part 5: Deploying and Creating Agents 49 1 Before you begin: • Review the documentation for the cartridge in which the agent is included for information about agent installation prerequisites. • Ensure that the vFoglight Management Server is running and that you have logged on to vFoglight. • Ensure that you are granted the required permissions by your vFoglight administrator to access the dashboards under the Administration module.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide 4 Manage agents: You can perform agent-management tasks like starting, stopping, activating, deactivating, deleting, and setting blackout periods for agents from the browser interface and from the command line. See “Accessing the Agent Status Dashboard” and “Assigning Blackouts to Agent Instances” in the Administration and Configuration Guide for instructions on managing agents from the browser interface.
5 Starting Points in vFoglight vFoglight offers a wide range of functionality through its customizable dashboards. This means that there are multiple starting points and workflows available for users with different roles and needs—administrators in charge of managing vFoglight, operational users interested in troubleshooting problems throughout their monitored environment, users focused on monitoring a specific domain or system, or users interested in services management.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Before You Get Started The section below provides getting started tips on common elements in the browser interface and features that can affect how you see data in the monitoring dashboards. Working in a Current or a Diagnostic Time Range This getting started tip helps you understand whether you are working in a real time range or a diagnostic time range and how to switch from one to the other.
Starting Points in vFoglight Before You Get Started 53 Figure 3 In some cases, however, the alarm might have occurred close enough to the current moment that the last quarter of the diagnostic time range would cover a span of time that is in the future. If that is the case, vFoglight sets the diagnostic time range to end at the current moment (shown as Now in the time range display). When you are working in a diagnostic time range, no new data is displayed in the views on the dashboard.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Services Dashboard This section provides an introduction to the Services dashboard. For details about this dashboard, see “Monitoring Services” in the vFoglight User Guide. For more information about services, see “Services” on page 32. A service can be any grouping of monitored components.
Starting Points in vFoglight Services Dashboard 55 1 — Categories and Services view: lists monitored services by category. For example, the screen on page 54 shows two categories of monitored services, Hosts and Applications. The services in these categories were created automatically for the monitored host Host01 and for the user-created application model AppGroup1.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Hosts Dashboard This section provides an introduction to the Hosts dashboard and the views and dashboards to which you can drill down from it. You can use the Hosts dashboard to monitor problems in your environment by focusing on a set of hosts. From this dashboard, you can drill down to different dashboards and views, depending on the host type (physical or virtual).
Starting Points in vFoglight Hosts Dashboard 57 1 — State indicators: allow you to see at a glance the state of the listed hosts. Each indicator shows the aggregate alarm state of the host, which is determined by the most severe alarm for the host. In this dashboard, the indicator represents a state rollup from the host and its children, excluding the state of agents on that host.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Agent Status Dashboard This section introduces the Agent Status dashboard, which can be accessed from the Administration module (Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Agent Status) and from the Administration home page (Homes > Administration > Navigation > Explore > Agents > Status). For details about this dashboard see “Accessing the Agent Status Dashboard” in the Administration and Configuration Guide.
Starting Points in vFoglight Agent Status Dashboard 59 1 — Filter by boxes: allow you to filter the list of agents by one or more of the following parameters: Host Name, Agent Name, Namespace, Type, Version, Build, Tags, Status, and Properties. Tip The agent list can be filtered by whole or partial parameters. Simply start typing the parameter in the appropriate Filter by field to cause vFoglight to filter the list.
vFoglight Getting Started Guide Next Steps Your next steps depend on how you are using this guide and the way you want to use vFoglight. Some examples are provided below. • If you read this guide prior to installing vFoglight: select the appropriate platform- and database-specific Installation and Setup Guide and follow the instructions for installing and configuring vFoglight. • If you are an operator responsible for monitoring a large environment: you can follow a service- or host-oriented workflow.
Index Index A about vFoglight 6 Administration home page 36, 51 navigation to the Agent Status dashboard 58 Administrator role Agent Status dashboard 58 after reading this guide next steps 60 agent 30 defined 58 Agent Hosts dashboard creating/deploying multiple hosts agents 59 agent management component 30 Agent Status dashboard Administrator role 58 agent tagging 58 Button array 59 Create Agent button 59 Deploy Agent Package button 59 filtering fields 59 List of agents 59 starting agent-oriented workflows
vFoglight Getting Started Guide contacting Vizioncore 10 CPU, Memory, Disk, Network columns details dashboard 57 Hosts dashboard 57 sparkline values 57 Create Agent button Agent Status dashboard 59 Create/Deploy Agent buttons creating new agent instances 59 creating custom dashboards next steps 60 creating custom views next steps 60 creating new agent instances Create/Deploy Agent buttons 59 creating/deploying multiple hosts agents Agent Hosts dashboard 59 current time range 52 custom services 54 custo
Index Host name 57 monitoring hosts 56 starting host-oriented workflows 56 starting points 56 State indicators 57 after reading this guide 60 configuring browser interface 60 creating custom dashboards 60 creating custom views 60 large environment monitoring 60 performing administrative tasks 60 services monitoring 60 specific domain monitoring 60 I installing vFoglight Agent Manager 46 L large environment monitoring next steps 60 List of agents Agent Status dashboard 59 agent status icons 59 agent tagg
vFoglight Getting Started Guide S service 29 defined 54 service level 29 service level agreement 29 Service Level Compliance column details popup 55 Services dashboard 55 services availability 33 custom 54 Services dashboard Alarms column 55 Categories and Services view 55 monitoring services 54 Service Level Compliance column 55 starting service-oriented workflows 54 viewing services state 54 services monitoring next steps 60 severe state components determining compliance levels 55 SLA 29 sparkline va
