Audience and Features

Audience

If you are a Solutions administrator or a Splunk technical user, then this document is for you. You are a Splunk user who has a good understanding of Splunk. You may also have some prior knowledge of virtualized environments.

You will download and install the Splunk app for VMware to work with Splunk. You will configure the app to collect data from your VMware environment , index it in Splunk, and then map it to the dashboards in the Splunk App for VMware.

As a user you:

• Know your environment and you know your data.
• Can download and install Splunk for VMware.
• Will get value from the views and dashboards.

What you should know before using the app

To get the App working in your environment, it helps if you:

• Can configure Splunk files on the command line.
• Know the Splunk Search Processing Language (SPL).
• Have some previous knowledge of how indexes, sources, source types, and field extractions work.
• Have used Splunk in an enterprise environment. Read the Splunk product documentation for more information on how to get started.
• Know VMware and that you understand your VMware infrastructure.

Features

• Splunk App for VMware now specifically targets the proactive monitoring and troubleshooting of your environment. You can identify issues quickly and easily and drill down to those issues.
  • Use the Selector to navigate your environment. Filter and expand your environment down to the most detailed level.
  • Use the tree view to see your overall environment status and to navigate quickly to issues. With the new bubble up status, you can see the status of your environment at a glance as the status at a lower level in your environment is indicated at the top most level so that you can triage quickly and easily.
  • Use the search capability in the drop-downs to make faster selections. You can make a selection from the list displayed or you can enter text into the menu to get a more direct response.
• You can reduce your data volume by using the latest data collector App in the FA VM and running the latest enginebuilder.py tool on it to regenerate your configuration files.
• We have default thresholds set for the VMware performance metrics collected by the App. The default number collected is approximately 24.
  • You can configure the thresholds in the App to work for your specific environment or you can manually edit the sa_threshold.conf file.
• You can see the health of your environment now by looking at one dashboard, the App Install health Screen.
• We have integrated some of the older dashboards into the App.
• We have removed the App dependency on Sideview Utils.
• We have improved the upgrade process.
• Automatically Install the App using the configuration tools. No more manual installation.
• Scaling is easier using the tools.
• You can get performance metrics directly from the vSphere hosts.
• It provides data persistence for analysis and trending.
• Analysis and reporting of vCenter (VC) tasks and events.
• Easy correlation of virtualization layer data with data from other tiers such as applications or operating system information from inside virtual machines and the supporting hardware.
• use pre-built views showing tasks associated with hosts and events associated with data health, inventory views where you can monitor the components of your VMware environment, and performance views where you can monitor the performance of your hosts and virtual machines.