OpenTelemetry Support
Service Integration Guides

Vcenter Integration with KloudMate

6min

In today’s dynamic IT environments, effective monitoring and management of virtualized resources are crucial for maintaining performance and reliability. This document outlines the integration of vCenter with OpenTelemetry (OTel), facilitating the collection and transmission of metrics from VMware vSphere environments, including both vCenter and ESXi hosts.

By leveraging the vSphere APIs, our integration allows seamless fetching of vital metrics, which are then forwarded to KloudMate. This ensures that teams have access to real-time insights and analytics, enabling proactive management of virtual infrastructure. Through this integration, organizations can enhance visibility into their virtualized resources, optimize performance, and streamline troubleshooting processes, ultimately driving improved operational efficiency.

Pre-requisites::

  1. Vcenter must be running with the version 8 and 7.0.
  2. User credentials: A “Read Only” user assigned to a vSphere with permissions to the vCenter server, cluster and all subsequent resources being monitored must be specified in order for the receiver to retrieve information about them.
  3. Endpoint: Endpoint to the vCenter Server or ESXi host that has the sdk path enabled.
  4. Install the OpenTelemetry collector on the specific server which have access to Vcenter. Check Installing and Configuring OpenTelemetry Collector.
    

Step 1: Configure the Receivers to scrape metrics as well as Logs.

To start monitoring with VMware with Otel Collector, you need to configure vcenter receiver 

  • Linux Users: Open the file located at /etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yamlusing your preferred text editor.
  • Windows Users: Create a new file called config.yaml in the C:\Program Files\OpenTelemetry Collector folder. You can use Notepad or any text editor to do this.

Add the suitable extensions :

YAML


In this configuration file, ensure the vcenter receiver is set up to collect and send metrics according to your specific requirements.

YAML


Step 2: Set up the processor component to identify resource information and either append or replace the resource values in the telemetry data with this information.

YAML


Step 3: Configure the exporter, extension and save the configuration

Set up the KloudMate Backend on the exporter part of the Open Telemetry configuration file and configure the pipeline.

YAML


Step 4: To restart and verify the status of the OpenTelemetry (Otel) Collector, follow these steps:

For Linux:

  1. Execute the following commands:
Text


These commands will restart the Otel Collector and display its current status.

For Windows:

  1. Open the Services window:
    • Press Win + R, type services.msc, and press OK.
    • Alternatively, search for "Services" in the Windows Start menu.
  2. In the Services window, locate the "OpenTelemetry Collector" service.
  3. Right-click the service and select "Restart."

Subsequently, monitor the metrics on the KloudMate dashboard and set up an alarm to receive notifications if the potential metrics for a specific application rise.