Monitoring VMware disk subsystem via CIM / Zabbix

In 2021, it is already known that Zabbix offers a set of templates using the Low Level Discovery (LLD) functionality and Host prototype elements as a means of comprehensive monitoring of VMware infrastructure, in which standard list sensors are created from known to vCenter. However, not all hardware vendors correctly publish sensors or counters for their devices in a form accessible to vCenter. This chapter discusses in detail how to configure monitoring for Adaptec SmartRAID Disk Controllers that are still supported but do not display status in vCenter. The data retrieval method may be suitable for other vendors as well.





So the challenge. There are several ESXi hosts, purchased separately from different vendors, with different content, and there is a desire to get hold of the same monitoring for them. Some hosts give information to the vSphere web client, but unstructured - there are no beautiful groupings of sensors by the word "storage", and the other part does not give anything at all. The required software is installed! Example:





[root@esxi-8:~] esxcli software vib list

<snip>

scsi-aacraid 6.0.6.2.1.59002-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585 Adaptec_Inc VMwareCertified 2020-08-14

arc-cim-provider 3.07-23850 Adaptec VMwareAccepted 2021-02-15

arcconf 3.07-23850 Adaptec VMwareAccepted 2021-02-15








As you can see, the list contains the driver for the controller (here Adaptec RAID 8805 ), and the arcconf management utility, and the "native" data provider for external services (hereinafter "CIM provider") arc-cim-provider, all the latest versions. The VMware version on the host is 6.7U3, and there are no storage subsystem health sensors. However, if there is a provider, then somehow you can get data from him - and that's what we'll do.





First, how to get this data. The documentation for VMware , among other things, says that there is an sfcb service that is launched when a third-party CIM provider is installed, and an openwsman service, which is a WS-Management server, and , moreover, can work with more primitive CIM or WBEM requests. And to work with these protocols, there is a quite serious pywbem client that returns data in any convenient form. For my monitoring implementation, I took the more familiar bash and wbemcli programming environment as a means of accessing the ESXi host.





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/usr/lib/vmware/auth/bin/adduser -s /sbin/nologin -D -H zabbix -G root
echo "secure_zabbix_password" | /usr/lib/vmware/auth/bin/passwd --stdin zabbix
vim-cmd vimsvc/auth/role_add CIM_ReadOnly Host.Cim.CimInteraction System.Anonymous
vim-cmd vimsvc/auth/entity_permission_add vim.Folder:ha-folder-root 'zabbix' false CIM_ReadOnly true
      
      



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wbemcli gi



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