Dynamically setting VMWare Data Store monitoring yes/no via VC AIM in Spectrum

[Legacy User]

I have had request from one of our service desks to amend monitoring of VMWare data stores with a certain naming convention to not alarm at all.

 

When VEEAM is doing a backup, it creates a temporary data store, and once complete, it deletes it.  Thing is VC AIM is picking up on this data store when it's created, then when the backup finishes the AIM then spews a "DATASTORE OFFLINE" critical alarm into Spectrum which our guys then blindly log as a support ticket and in some cases wake up on-call guys for no reason.

 

What I'd like to do is set up a continually updated GC in Spectrum of discovered datastores with that particular naming convention and then apply a policy to set "do_not_monitor" on the VC AIM for it.

Thing is I can't find how to create a VC of datastores from VC  AIMs.  They're under "Disks" in the VMWare section of the Info tab for the VC AIM models, but I can't find if they're specific models or whether they're something in the local AIM configs rather than addressable database objects.

Anyone got an idea how I can achieve this without having to resort to hacking about with event code?

 

Thanks

Dave

[Mohammed Alfakhrany]

Hi David,

 

If I understood your problem correctly, you'd like to be able to identify certain ESX hosts or DataCenters (DC) in your virtual environment and group them together in a GC based on the particular datastores of these ESX/DC hosts, if they conform to a specific naming convention.

 

I'm not sure what the attributes are, but what I would try to do here is get a model attribute dump of the ESX/DC host model under which the Datastore resides and then search through that dump for any unique identifiers highlighting these datastores and the attributes that contain them. You can get a model attribute dump as follows;

 

1. Log into the SPECTRUM system as a valid SPECTRUM user.
2. Launch a bash shell, cd to the $SPECROOT/vnmsh directory
3. Enter the following command to set the CLIMNAMEWIDTH environment variable; 
   • export CLIMNAMEWIDTH=32;
4. Enter the following command to connect to the SpectroSERVER:
   • ./connect
5. At the prompt after connecting, enter the following command to find the model handle of the model where you are currently seeing this problem.
   • ./show models | grep <Affected Model name>
6. The output will be four columns of data. The model handle will be the first column of data. When you have the model handle, enter the following command to dump the attributes for that model:
   • ./show attributes mh=<Model Handle from step 5> > model.dmp

 

If you find an attribute containing the datastore name or other identifier, then you can create a GC using that attribute to search for models containing it.

 

Hope that helps.