VMware ESXi

General Information

The Forward Collector can collect from both standard and distributed virtual switches in vSphere environments. Follow the steps below to setup VMware collection.

Create a vCenter account for collection

1. Log in as administrator via a web browser

2. From home page, select vcenter object, click on “Menu” and select “Administration”
   

3. In the “Administration” page, click on “Users and Groups” under “Single Sign-on” and select the domain, in this example “dc.forwardnetworks.com”
   

4. Click on the green "+” sign to add a new user, and populate the new user information
   

5. Go back to the home page, select vCenter object, and click on the “Permission” tab
   

6. Click on the green “+” sign to pop-up the “Add Permission” page, then click “Add” under the “Users and Groups” column.
   

7. Select the newly created account. In the example, it is “forward” in domain “dc.forwardnetworks.com”. Click “OK”
   

8. Back at the the “Add Permission” page, select “Read-only” under the “Assigned Role” column. Check “Propagate to children”, and then click “OK”.
   

9. Sanity test the new account by logging into vCenter using the new account

Add the vCenter and ESXi switches to Forward

1. From forward web interface, click on “Collection”, “Device Management” then “Devices”

2. Click on “Add a device”, populate with the vCenter’s IP address, set device type to vCenter API, and add a credential using the new read-only account (in the example, “forward@dc.forwardnetworks.com”)
   

3. Click on “Add” after setting all fields for vCenter
   

4. Sanity test the new vCenter device from collector, by checking the box next to it, and click on “Retest”. If all is working, “Status” will become “connected”
   

5. Click on the snapshot bar, and select “Take now” to take a new snapshot with vCenter.