Introduction
VxRail is the only fully integrated, pre-configured, and pre-tested VMware hyper-converged infrastructure appliance family on the market. It modernizes data centers and allows customers to eliminate complexity and deliver IT services quickly.
Hyper-converged appliances allow a data center in a box approach, rather than buying servers, storage and hypervisor separately hyper-converged appliances bundle the components into one package.
Leveraging VMware’s vSphere, Virtual SAN, and EMC software, VxRail delivers all-in-one IT infrastructure transformation.
The VxRail appliance hardware is composed of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. The virtualization and software layers are composed of vSphere and vSAN which is integrated into the kernel of vSphere. The VxRail Manager plug-in for vCenter Server allows:
- Manage all features & configurations VxRail Manager.
- Allows to manage physical hardware of the VxRail cluster.
Prerequisites
- The OpsRamp Gateway must be installed.
- REST APIs need to be enabled on the VxRail manager appliance.
- Configured VxRail IP address should be reachable from the OpsRamp Gateway.
- Configuration with VxRail Manager hostname is not allowed. Only VxRail manager IP address to be used.
Dell EMC VxRail features
- All the devices are pre-configured and tested.
- Dell EMC VxRail is based on Intel Xeon processors.
- The power of a SAN (storage area network) is in two rack units.
- It is suitable for a wide variety of applications and workloads.
Integration mechanism
- Integration is done through REST APIs exposed by VxRail Manager
- VxRail entities are mapped as components to existing vCenter resources (cluster, host)
Integration configuration
When VMware is integrated with VxRail, vCenter Plugin configuration check needs to be enabled, and VxRail Manager IPaddress should be added in the provided field.
- Discover physical components of VxRail appliances:
- Network Components
- Chassis
- Disk drives
- Boot devices
- Discovered VxRail Chassis, Bootdevices and Disks can be seen under Infrastructure → vCenter → VxRail Components.
- Discovered VxRail Network Components can be seen under Infrastructure → vCenter → DataCenter → Cluster → Host → Attributes → Hardware → Network Information.
- Discovered VxRail Bootdevices and Disks can be seen under Infrastructure → vCenter → DataCenter → Cluster → Host → VxRail Components.
Monitoring metrics and Templates
| Template Name | Monitor Name | Metric Name | Possible metric values | Thresholds(Warning / Critical) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_nics_Link_Status | Down:0, Up:1 | Critical when !=1 Note: here operator is != | link_status (string): The link status of the NIC Sample Value: "link_status":"Up", |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_disk_State | Unknown:0, OK:1 | Critical when !=1 Note: here operator is != | disk_state (string): Health state of the disk Sample value: "disk_state": "OK", |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_disk_Led_Status | Red:Off:0, Blue:Blink:1, Green:On:2 | Critical when == 0 Warning when == 1 Note: here operator is == | State of the chassis LED indicator for the host Sample Value: "led_status": "Blue:On" |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_boot_device_stats_Health | 0 to 100% | Critical when !=100 Note: here operator is != | health (string): Health status of the boot device (percentage) Sample value: "health": "100" |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_disk_Write_Endurance | 0 to 100% | Critical when > 90 Waring when > 70 Notes:
| Write endurance is the number of program/erase cycles, or P/E cycles, that can be applied to a block of flash memory before the storage media becomes unreliable write_endurance (string): Write endurance of the disk (usage percentage) Sample value: "write_endurance": "3", |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_Operational_Status | Normal:1, Unknown:0 | Critical when != 1 Note: here operator is != | operational_status (string): Operational status of the host Sample Value: "operational_status": "normal", |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_Power_Status | On:1, Off:0 | Critical when != 1 Note: here operator is != | power_status (string):Power supply status of the host Sample value: "power_status": "on", |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_Health_Status | Healthy:1, Unknown:0 | Critical when != 1 Note: here operator is != | Health status of the VxRail system Supported values are Critical, Error, Warning, and Healthy. Sample value: "health": "Healthy", |
| VxRail Host Template | VxRail Hosts Monitor | vxrail_host_powersupply_Health_Status | Healthy:1, Unknown:0 | Critical when != 1 Note: here operator is != | health (string): Health status of the power supply Supported values are Critical, Error, Warning, and Healthy. Sample value: "health": "Healthy", |
| VxRail Cluster Template | VxRail Cluster Monitor | vxrail_cluster_chassis_stats_Health | Healthy:1, Unknown:0 | Critical when != 1 Note: here operator is != | health (string): Status of the health of the chassis. Supported values are Critical, Error, Warning, and Healthy. Sample value: "health": "Healthy" |
| VxRail Cluster Template | VxRail Cluster Monitor | vxrail_cluster_Operational_Status | ok:1, Unknown:0 | Critical when != 1 Note: here operator is != | operational_status string Operational status information Sample value: "operational_status": "ok" |