vCenter Inventory
The vCenter inventory plugin connects BigPanda to your vCenter Server enriching incoming alerts with your up-to-date infrastructure information.
Supported Versions | Type | Authentication Type |
---|---|---|
vCenter Server 6.5 update 2 and newer | Local Plugin | Bearer Token |
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.
How it Works
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.
The vCenter plugin is only supported on Linux boxes.
Windows support is coming soon.
Installing the Integration
Prerequisites
- Admin access to the vCenter Server
Registering the plugin with vCenter Server
- Download the vSphere Client SDK (version 6.7 update 3)
- 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 1.0.2 \
-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 |
---|---|
Bearer Token | Required. Access token from the BigPanda Console |
Endpoint | Optional. Endpoint for the export of data Default: BigPanda integration endpoint |
Username | Required. vCenter username with read-only access This user should be a local user to vCenter often denoted with the |
Password | Required. Password for the user |
Export Period | Required. Represents the interval at which the export should be done Values: Hourly, Daily, Weekly |
Export Frequency | Required. Represents how often within the interval should the export occur Value: number |
Field Renaming | Optional. If you would like to rename the default field names, one can provide a list of here Example: |
Blacklist | Optional. A comma-delimited list of properties to remove from the inventory export. Example: |
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 |
---|---|
| The name of the vSphere host |
| Duplicate of |
| The name of the vCenter Server |
| The name of the cluster this host is in |
| A list of all the Virtual Machines in this host |
| A list of all datastores this host has access to |
| Number of CPU cores |
| Percentage of CPU utilization |
| Size of memory in GB's |
| Percentage of memory utilization |
| Total storage capacity for this host Note: This is an aggregate of all storage capacity for the datatstores this host has access to |
| Total free storage for this host Note: This is an aggregate of all free storage available across all the datatstores 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 |
---|---|
| The name of the virtual machine |
| The name of the vSphere host where this virtual machine lives |
| The name of the vCenter Server |
| The name of the cluster where the |
| The number of CPU cores available to this virtual machine |
| The amount of memory available for this virtual machine ( in GB's) |
| The total amount of storage committed to this virtual machine across all datastores |
| The operating system installed on this virtual machine |
| The IP Address associated with this virtual machine |
Uninstalling the Integration
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>
Removing 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
/etc/vmware/vsphere-ui/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity/
- Remove the directory
io.bigpanda.vcenter-<VERSION>
- Navigate to
/usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/
and remove the bigpanda-config.txt file - 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
Release Notes
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
andip_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 🎉
Updated 7 months ago