Polling vCenter servers

This section explains how to configure event notifications for VMware vCenter Server in your environment such that you are able to monitor your data center more closely for any events.   

Overview of vCenter server polling

As a BMC Discovery user, you likely want an up-to-date view of your VMware vCenter environment at all times. However, running a scan of your environment might not provide you with a minute-to-minute update; for example, you might have scheduled your scans to occur only once in 24 hours. For that reason, you might be able to better monitor your VM environment if an automated notification is generated every time a VM-related event occurs with the VMs, such as VM moves, and VM renaming.

You can configure the VMware vCenter event source—which is built-in with the BMC Discovery appliance—to gather events from the scanned vCenter servers in your environment. The patterns shipped with BMC Discovery define which events are collected from the vCenter servers. These patterns—which are shipped with TKUs—might be periodically updated to collect additional events. Therefore, if the appropriate patterns are not activated on your appliance, event collection will not occur. For more information about updated patterns, see the latest TKU documentation. 

The event collection for vCenter instances are disabled by default. You enable the event collection feature, and then enable event collection for individual vCenter servers. You can disable any specific vCenter Server in the server domain at any point to exclude it from event collections.

Before you begin

Before you configure event collection for your vCenter Servers, ensure you have the following information:

• vCenter credentials for all vCenter Server instances that have been set up and are working.
• vCenter Server instances from which you want to gather events have been scanned in a previous discovery run.

Managing event collection

This section explains how to view and configure event collection for vCenter Servers.

• To enable event collection
• To disable event collection on individual vCenter servers
• To view events for all or a specific vCenter Server
• To edit an event source

To enable event collection

1. On the menu bar, click the Administration icon.
    The Administration page is displayed.
2. In the Discovery section, click Event Sources.
3. To enable the built-in vCenter event source, from the vCenter table, click Actions > Enable.
    Event collection for vCenter servers is now enabled.

To disable event collection on individual vCenter servers

1. On the menu bar, click the Administration icon.
    The Administration page is displayed.
2. In the Discovery section, click Event Sources.
3. In the vCenter Instances field, click the collections status link.
    A list of vCenter Software Instances (SI) is displayed.
4. Select the vCenter SI that you want to disable. The vCenter SI page is displayed.
5. Scroll down the vCenter page and In the vCenter Event Collection field, click the Actions list.

6. Click Disable Event Collection for this vCenter.
    The event collection for the specific vCenter host is now disabled.

   Event notification settings

   When you enable the event collection feature, event collection for individual vCenter servers is not automatically enabled. You must enable event collection on on individual vCenter servers.

To view events for all or a specific vCenter Server

1. To view events for all vCenters in your environment:
   
   1. On the menu bar, click the Administration icon.
      The Administration page is displayed.
   2. In the Discovery section, click Event Sources.
   3. From the vCenter section, click RecentEvents.
2. To view events for a specific vCenter server:
   1. On the menu bar, click the Administration icon.
       The Administration page is displayed.
   2. In the Discovery section, click Event Sources.
   3. In the vCenter Instances field, click the collections status link.
       The SI page for the specific VM host is displayed.
   4. Scroll down on the page and select the vCenter SI that you want to disable.
      The SI page is displayed for the vCenter SI.
   5. In the vCenter Event Collection field expand the Actions list.
   6. Click Show Events.
      The events collected for the specific vCenter Server is displayed.

To edit an event source

1. On the menu bar, click the Administration icon.
    The Administration page is displayed.
2. In the Discovery section, click Event Sources.
3. In the Event Source table, perform any of the following steps as required for the specific event source that you want to edit:
   
   • To reset an event count, in the Event Sources row, click Actions > Reset Count.
     This resets the count to zero. You might need to perform this step to analyze and determine the number of events that are generated from a source within a set period of time.

   • To update other parameters for the event source, in the Event Sources row, click Actions > Edit.
     The Edit Event Source page is displayed. You can change the following:

     Field	Description
     Description	A free text description of the event source.
     Event Removal	How often should events be removed from the logs.
     Enabled	Whether event collection is currently enabled.
     Polling Interval	Specifies how frequently the event source is polled for updates.

     The following additional fields, or similar might be displayed, depending on patterns you have activated.

     • Process vMotion events
     • Process VM Removal events
     • Process VM Rename events

     Patterns are updated with TKU releases and additional capabilities may be added. For more information about updated patterns, see the latest TKU documentation.

Related topics

• Event-driven-model-updates
• TKU documentation