VMware vSphere 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the vsphere monitor type to collect metrics from vSphere through the vSphere API.

This integration is available on Kubernetes, Linux, and Windows. You can install it on the same server used by vSphere if it’s running on Linux or Windows.

This integration uses VMware govmomi SDK, which officially supports vCenter 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0. While this monitor might work with vCenter 5.1, 5.5, and 6.0, these versions are not officially supported. Photon Operating System is not supported.

Note

When you add a custom role, don’t assign any privileges to it. The role is created as a read-only role with three system-defined privileges: System.Anonymous, System.View, and System.Read. For more information, see the vSphere official documentation on user roles.

Caution

VMware does not allow any modifications to their Virtual Appliances, including vCenter.

Benefits 🔗

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Installation 🔗

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
Configure the integration, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration 🔗

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.

See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example 🔗

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/vsphere:
    type: vsphere
    ...  # Additional config

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/vsphere]

See the following example with extended config options:

receivers:
  smartagent/vsphere:
    type: vsphere
    host: hostname
    username: user
    password: pass
    insecureSkipVerify: true
exporters:
  signalfx:
    access_token: abc123
    realm: us2
service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers:
        - smartagent/vsphere
      exporters:
        - signalfx

Configuration settings 🔗

The following table shows the main configuration options for the vsphere monitor. For more settings see vSphere monitor in GitHub.

Option	Required	Type	Description
`host`	No	`string`	Hostname or IP address of the vSphere instance. For example, `127.0.0.1`.
`port`	No	`integer`	Port of the vSphere instance. The default value is `0`)
`username`	No	`string`	vSphere username.
`password`	No	`string`	vSphere password.
`filter`	No	`string`	Limits the inventory traversed by the monitor. Leave blank or omit to traverse and get metrics for the entire vSphere inventory. Otherwise, this expression is evaluated per cluster. If `true`, metrics are collected for the objects in the cluster, otherwise it’s skipped. The expression can use the variables `Datacenter` and `Cluster`. For example, to collect metrics for a specific datacenter and cluster, use `filter: "Datacenter == 'MyDatacenter' && Cluster == 'MyCluster'"`. See expr in GitHub for advanced syntax.
`insecureSkipVerify`	No	`bool`	Controls whether a client verifies the server’s certificate chain and host name. The default value is `false`.
`inventoryRefreshInterval`	No	`integer`	Controls how often to reload the inventory and inventory metrics. The default value is `60s`.
`perfBatchSize`	No	`integer`	Controls the maximum number of inventory objects to be queried for performance data per request. Set this value to `0` to request performance data for all inventory objects at a time. The default value is `10`.
`tlsCACertPath`	No	`string`	Path to the CA certificate file.
`tlsClientCertificatePath`	No	`string`	Path to the client certificate. Both `tlsClientKeyPath` and `tlsClientCertificatePath` must be present. The files must contain PEM encoded data.
`tlsClientKeyPath`	No	`string`	Path to the keyfile.
`vmHostDimension`	No	`string`	The host dimension value set for monitored VMs. The options are `ip` (default value, the VM IP if available), `hostname` (the VM Hostname if available) , and `disable` (the vsphere monitor does not set the host dimension on the VM metrics).

To report metrics for a vSphere deployment, this monitor logs into a vCenter Server and retrieves data about the deployment and real time performance data on a regular interval. When the monitor first runs, it logs in to the vCenter Server and traverses the inventory, gathering and caching all of the hosts and virtual machines and their available metrics.

After the initial sweep, the monitor queries the vCenter for performance data and metrics. This query runs every 20 seconds, which is the interval at which the vCenter makes real time performance data available. As a result, regardless of the intervalSeconds value in the agent configuration, this monitor runs every 20 seconds.

The monitor also refreshes, at a configurable interval, the cache of hosts, virtual machines, and metrics. By default, this refresh takes place every 60 seconds; however, this interval can be changed by updating the configuration field InventoryRefreshInterval.

Metrics 🔗

The following metrics are available for this integration:

Notes 🔗

To learn more about the available in Splunk Observability Cloud see Metric types
In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Splunk Observability Cloud, such as host, container, or bundled metrics. Custom metrics are not provided by default and might be subject to charges. See Metric categories for more information.
In MTS-based subscription plans, all metrics are custom.
To add additional metrics, see how to configure extraMetrics in Add additional metrics

Troubleshooting 🔗

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal .
Contact Splunk Support .

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers .
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups in the Get Started with Splunk Community manual.

This page was last updated on Feb 20, 2025.

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