VM Monitoring on vCenter
Learn about monitoring your ESXi environment with the Panorama plugin for
vCenter.
| Where Can I Use This? | What Do I Need? |
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Install and configure the Panorama plugin for VMware
vCenter to retrieve the IP addresses for guests in your vCenter
environment and use that information to build policy using Dynamic
Address Groups.
The Panorama plugin for VMware vCenter does not support
proxy servers.
The Panorama plugin for VMware vCenter gives you the tools to build policy for your
vCenter environment using
Dynamic Address Groups. Dynamic Address Groups
allow you to create a policy that automatically adapts to changes in your environment,
such as the addition or deletion of guests. The VMware vCenter plugin monitors for
changes in your vCenter environment and shares that information with Panorama.
The plugin processes the information it receives from vCenter and converts it into a set
of tags on Panorama that you can use as match criteria for assigning IP address to
Dynamic Address Groups. Each tag has a prefix that describes the hierarchy above the VM.
In this example, each tag in Panorama begins with the prefix shown below. Each tag
includes the vCenter name, data center name, and cluster name; if you have folders in
your vCenter hierarchy, the tags will include the folder names. The order of the objects
in the tag matches the order in the vCenter hierarchy.
vcenter.<vcenter-name>_ParentA_ParentB_Datacenter_CHILD1_CHILD2_Cluster_<tag>
The Panorama plugin for VMware vCenter does not support tags associated to vApps or
resource pools.
The tags are shown in Panorama in the following formats:
vcenter.<vcenter-name>_<datacenter-name>_<cluster-name>_vmname.<vm-name>—this
tag maps virtual machine IP addresses based on VM name.
vcenter.<vcenter-name>_<datacenter-name>_<cluster-name>_guestos.<guest-os>—this
tag maps virtual machine IP addresses based on the guest operating system.
vcenter.<vcenter-name>_<datacenter-name>_<cluster-name>_annotation.<annotation>—this
tag maps virtual machine IP addresses based on annotation.
vcenter.<vcenter-name>_<datacenter-name>_<cluster-name>_vlanId.<vlan-ID>—this
tag maps virtual machine IP addresses based on VLAN ID.
vcenter.<vcenter-name>_<datacenter-name>_<cluster-name>_host-ip.<host-ip>—this
tag maps virtual machine IP addresses based on the host IP address.
vcenter.<vcenter-name>_<datacenter-name>_<cluster-name>_<tag-category>.<user-defined-tag>—this
tag maps virtual machine IP addresses based on user-defined tags created in
vCenter.
The plugin supports a maximum of 16 user-defined tags per VM. Any
user-defined tags beyond 16 are not processed.
The Panorama plugin for vCenter cannot process tags that are longer than 128 characters;
this includes letters, numbers, and special characters. Whitespace in vCenter object
names is replaced with forward slashes. Additionally, Panorama does not support
non-ASCII special characters or the following special characters—’<>&” in
vCenter VM names and annotations. Panorama drops tags containing unsupported
characters.
To retrieve endpoint IP-address-to-tag mapping information, you must configure a
Monitoring Definition for each vCenter in your virtual environment. The Monitoring
Definition specifies the username and password that allows Panorama to connect to
vCenter. It also specifies the device groups and corresponding notify groups containing
the firewalls to which Panorama pushes the tags. After you configure the Monitoring
Definition and the Panorama plugin for VMware vCenter retrieves the tags, you can create
DAGs and add the tags as match criteria.
