Supported Versions	Type	Authentication Type
vCenter Server 6.5 update 2 - 7.0.3	Local Plugin	User API Key

The vCenter inventory plugin connects BigPanda to your vCenter Server enriching incoming alerts with your up-to-date infrastructure information

The BigPanda vCenter Inventory integration works by registering a local plugin with your vCenter Server. Within the Configuration page of the plugin, one can set a schedule for how frequently to export data to BigPanda. All host and virtual machine inventory data is then transmitted to BigPanda for processing and transformation into a BigPanda enrichment which then immediately starts enriching your incoming alerts.

🚧
Updating to vCenter 1.0.8
If you have already integrated BigPanda and vCenter and wish to upgrade to the latest version, you'll need to unregister and delete the previous version before installing the new version.

Key Features

Enriches alerts in BigPanda with topology information from vCenter Inventory export of hosts and virtual machines.
Schedule automatic exports of the vCenter Inventory.
Automatically creates and manages Enrichments in BigPanda.

Install the Integration

Before You Start

Ensure you have admin access to the vCenter Server

Register the plugin with vCenter Server

Download the vSphere Client SDK 7.0.
Using the terminal or command prompt, navigate to CLIENT_SDK/tools/vCenter plugin registration/prebuilt
Run the following command to register the BigPanda Plugin with your vCenter Server.
- Make sure to input the vCenter Server IP or FQDN as well as a user and password to access the server.
- Make sure to use the correct script (shell/bash) based on the OS you are running.

./extension-registration.sh -action registerPlugin -local \
-n BigPanda \
-c BigPanda \
-v 1.0.8 \
-k io.bigpanda.vcenter \
-s "BigPanda export plugin" \
-pu https://bp-bin.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/integrations/vcenter/latest/bigpanda-plugin.zip \
-st E8:EE:A0:D0:24:8E:9C:2E:DE:11:82:37:25:83:DA:D7:5B:D0:50:4C \
-url <https://VCENTER_IP_OR_FQDN/sdk> \
-u <USER> \
-p <PASSWORD>

Log out and back into the vCenter Server. A new user session triggers the download of any newly registered plugin.
The BigPanda Plugin should now be present in the shortcut menu. If it does not appear, don't worry, just wait another few seconds and refresh your browser.

Configure the Integration

The integration configuration page needs just a few inputs for it to start exporting the vCenter Inventories to BigPanda.

Input	Description	Example
API Key	Access the API Key from the BigPanda Console
Endpoint	(Optional) Endpoint for the export of data Default: BigPanda integration endpoint. EU users may need to add an additional prefix.
Username	vCenter username with read-only access This user should be a local user to vCenter often denoted with the `@vsphere.local` suffix
Password	Password for the user
Export Period	Represents the interval at which the export should be done Values: Hourly, Daily, Weekly
Export Frequency	Represents how often within the interval should the export occur Value: number	export period: Daily export frequency: 5 This will perform an export of the data every 5 days
Field Renaming	(Optional) If you would like to rename the default field names, you can provide a list here	host: server vcenter_server: vcenter
Blacklist	(Optional) A comma-delimited list of properties to remove from the inventory export.	vcenter_server, storage_size, storage_free_space

📘
Username and Password
The username and password fields are required for the plug-in to be able to perform inventory retrieval when a user is not logged in.
When assigning the Read-Only Role to the user, ensure the Propagate to children is checked. If it is not, the user will fail to authenticate.
The password is encrypted on a local configuration file within the vCenter server and is never shared outside to BigPanda.

Enrichment Data

Once the export is successful, BigPanda will process and create two BigPanda enrichment schemas. One for all Hosts and the other for all Virtual Machines.

Host Enrichment Map

Below are all the tags that will be added to each BigPanda Alert where the host tags match

Enrichment Tag	Description
host	The name of the vSphere host
physical_host	Duplicate of host value
vcenter_server	The name of the vCenter Server
cluster	The name of the cluster this host is in
vm_list	A list of all the Virtual Machines in this host
datastores	A list of all datastores this host has access to
cpu_cores	Number of CPU cores
cpu_usage	Percentage of CPU utilization
memory_size	Size of memory in GB's
memory_usage	Percentage of memory utilization
storage_size	Total storage capacity for this host This is an aggregate of all storage capacity for the datastores this host has access to
storage_free_space	Total free storage for this host This is an aggregate of all free storage available across all the datastores this host has access to

Virtual Machine Enrichment Map

Below are all the tags that will be added to each BigPanda Alert where the host tags match

Enrichment Tag	Description
`host`	The name of the virtual machine
`physical_host`	The name of the vSphere host where this virtual machine lives
`vcenter_server`	The name of the vCenter Server
`cluster`	The name of the cluster where the `physical_host` resides
`cpus`	The number of CPU cores available to this virtual machine
`memory`	The amount of memory available for this virtual machine ( in GB's)
`storage`	The total amount of storage committed to this virtual machine across all datastores
`guestos`	The operating system installed on this virtual machine
`ip_adress`	The IP Address associated with this virtual machine

> export VMAFD_CLI="/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/vmafd-cli"
# This command will restart the UI within the vCenter Server
> vmon-cli -r vsphere-ui

Additional Troubleshooting

Plug-in Installation Logs

It’s possible the plugin registered successfully but is still not showing in the UI. Have the user check vCenter for any errors.

Within the vCenter shell, navigate to the vCenter log files. On a Linux installation log files are located at /var/log/vmware/vsphere-ui/logs/ and /var/log/vmware/vsphere-client/logs/. On a Windows Installation log files are located at C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\Logs\vsphere-client\logs and C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\Logs\vsphere-ui\logs.
Search the vsphere_client_virgo.log for "io.bigpanda.vcenter". An example using grep is below

grep "io.bigpanda.vcenter" ./vsphere_client_virgo.log

Unregister the Plugin

Using the same SDK that was used to register the plugin, run the following command to unregister it.
- Make sure to use the correct script (shell / bash) based on the OS you are running on.

./extension-registration.sh -action unregisterPlugin \
-k io.bigpanda.vcenter \
-url <https://VCENTER_IP_OR_FQDN/sdk> \
-u <USER> \
-p <PASSWORD>

Remove Plugin Files

The unregister process does not remove the plugin files from vCenter. This process would need to be done manually.

Log into the shell window of the vCenter Server and navigate to one of the following directories based on your vCenter install:
vCenter Server Appliance /etc/vmware/vsphere-ui/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity/
vCenter for Windows C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\vsphere-client\vc-packages\vsphere-client-serenity\
Windows OS %PROGRAMFILES%/VMware/vSphere Web Client/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity/
Mac OS /var/lib/vmware/vsphere-client/vsphere-client/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity/
Remove the directory io.bigpanda.vcenter-<VERSION>
To flush the vCenter Server from any caches files it's recommended to restart the vSphere UI.

> export VMAFD_CLI="/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin/vmafd-cli"
# This command will restart the UI within the vCenter Server
> vmon-cli -r vsphere-ui

Manually resolve any open alerts sent from the integration to remove the associated incidents from your incident feed. These incidents will not automatically resolve without an ok status from the original sending integration.

Release Notes

v1.0.8 (2/28/23)

Bug fix for paging of data coming to the BigPanda API
Added retries in the event of failure sending to the BigPanda API

v1.0.7 (1/23/23)

Support sending inventory information to the BigPanda API in batches to handle customers with larger vCenter environments

v1.0.6 (12/7/22)

Fixed packaging issue for vCenter version earlier than 6.6.3

v1.0.5 (11/30/22)

Enhanced vSphere API session management
Additional debug logging

v1.0.4 (7/8/22)

Fixed incomplete data being returned for customers with a large inventory in their environment
Fixed physical host for a VM being incorrect
Fixed the datastore field to be only the datastore of the VM and not all datastores in an environment

v1.0.3 (6/13/22)

Fixed package issue found during install

v1.0.2 (11/20/20)

Fixed validation of property when attempting to cast to Object Types

v1.0.1 (9/13/20)

Added datastores field to Host mapping enrichment
Added datastores and ip_address fields to Virtual Machines mapping enrichment
Fixed a bug causing the configuration UI to potentially hang
Fixed a bug causing authentication to sometimes fail

v1.0.0

Initial release 🎉