How-to exclude VM's with snapshot / refresh rate

[Matts N]

Hello,
We have an installation of ONE v11 running. Looking at the report "vSphere Optimization -> Active Snapshots" I can set how old the snapshots should be before reported and also exclude snapshots from replicas. So far, so good, but...

I do I ecxlude VM's where the snapshots alarms are excluded in ONE? The exclusions are for VM's that are golden images, the snapshots will always be there and I expect them to be there, but I don't them to be listed in the report. I assume I can create a custom report, but I am not clever enough to find how to make use of information in the alarms exclusions list.

Also, how often does Report update its information? Hours after deleting a snapshot and the alarm is gone in ONE, the snapshots are still in the report for active snapshots.

Environment is vSphere, vCenter is 7 Update 2a, hosts are all 7 Update 1 with all patches within Update 1.

[nikolaj]

Hi Matts,

I do I exclude VM's where the snapshots alarms are excluded in ONE? The exclusions are for VM's that are golden images, the snapshots will always be there and I expect them to be there, but I don't them to be listed in the report. I assume I can create a custom report, but I am not clever enough to find how to make use of information in the alarms exclusions list.

I'd suggest creating a Business View category and building up the report based on certain groups.
That way you can categorise VMs by vmWare tags. If for instance you create a 'goldenVM' tag and then create Business View groups with and without the tag, you'll be able to build up a custom report that satisfies your goal.

Also, how often does Report update its information? Hours after deleting a snapshot and the alarm is gone in ONE, the snapshots are still in the report for active snapshots.

That depends on the data that is being collected. For instance, Business View categorisation runs every 10 min regardless of the task that refreshes HW information. Some other data (e.g. VBR-related) is also being constantly harvested. However, in the case of this particular report, the data will be collected only after a scheduled run of the designated task, which by default happens at 3 a.m. on weekdays but can be started manually or re-scheduled.

Speaking about alarm customisation, you can change the assignment scope based on custom categorisation groups that you can configure in Business View. More on that can be found here.

Thanks!

[Matts N]

Hello Nikolaj,
I'm looking into this now, it's a bit of a jungle when your new to it, but think I can find a way.

Thanks!

[nikolaj]

Hi Matts,

I do agree that the learning curve can be quite steep at times and some of the proposed solutions may not be that obvious.
Perhaps, once you're done with your setup, you could share your feedback on how we could improve the experience.

Thanks!

[Matts N]

Hello!
I think what would have made this a lot easier to begin with would have been to enable an exclusion of what to include based on actual alarms in ONE. That is, if a VM has an active snapshot but the alarm is excluded in ONE, I didn't expect it to show up in the report. Thinking about it, I can understand why it does since it does have a snapshot. We have a number of golden images, which will always have snapshots. What we wanted to accomplish was an emailed report of VM's where we do NOT expect snapshots. So, golden images are excluded from the alarm in ONE but there is no easy way to create a report taking that exclusion into account. Maybe a choice to use default report criteria and a choice to filter based on what is actual alarms. The information is there, having to create a tag and apply and remember to apply is a bit of a hassle, me thinks.

[nikolaj]

Hi Matts,

That is, if a VM has an active snapshot but the alarm is excluded in ONE, I didn't expect it to show up in the report.

In all fairness, Alarms and Reports serve different purposes and one might argue that it would be inappropriate to make such radical associations between the two based on an alarm exclusion.
May I ask if the aforementioned solution worked for you? Or maybe if it didn't, we could come up with something else.
Could you share your final setup?

Thanks.

[Matts N]

Hello Nikolaj,
It worked fine with the tags I created a tag "Golden Image" and exclude that tag from the report.

I had a look at the reports "Alarms Overview" and "Alarms Current State Overview". They could be a good starting point for what I wish to do, if I could choose which alarms I want to include or exclude. Only had a quick look, but no obvious way to find out how to make that work. I tried using the same business view as for the current solution, but it still lists all error types.

I think my point was that if you have 10's of Golden Images, spread in the hierarchy in vCenter, finding them all and tagging them is a bit of a pain. The option to create the report based on raw data or filtered by ONE could be nice option. See at as a request for enhancement , an option to create a report that mirrors what is shown in ONE, instead of default show everything. I realize that might not be the easiest thing to do, but... I gotta have hope, no?

Have another interesting "problem" at same installation. Customer has an intrusion detection system, trying to log on to ESXi hosts. Each time ONE registers a failed login attempt, which is expected. But... since it is expected that the login will fail, the alarm is a false positive in a way. Could be helpful to create a custom alarm that excludes failed attempts from a certain IP address only, but triggers on everyone else. Still not 100%, because if someone finds a way to the IDS system, they could try indefinitely from there and no one would know.

[nikolaj]

Hi Matts,

We'll consider your suggestions as feature requests, thank you.
As for the other enquiry, I have created a separate topic to address it.

Thanks.