By: Karthic Kumar
In my previous blog post, Monitoring Network Performance for Remote Workers, we saw how the vRealize Network Insight Remote Worker pinboard could help VDI admins monitor the VDI environment. In this blog post, we will go step-by-step to create this VDI pinboard and customize it further.
vRealize Network Insight is a comprehensive database for the entire data center; we can search anything in the search box just like Google. We can pin any search results to a pinboard to have all relevant data on a single page. Please watch this video to learn more about pinboard capabilities.
Before we curate widgets for the VDI pinboard, we need to create few items that act as sources for the pinboard.
Prerequisites:
- vRNI Enterprise
- vCenter and VMware NSX added as a data source with IPFIX (network flows) enabled
- Any Public Cloud (such as VMware Cloud on AWS), if the VDI environment is hosted
Application for VDI
When a single VM is hosting an application, it is easy to manage and maintain. Getting visibility on multi-tiered applications can be challenging. Application feature in vRNI helps users visualize multiple-tiered applications and view it is dependencies in graphical format. To know more about how vRealize Network Insight discovers applications, click here.
We will create an application with the VDI components, which will act as the building block for the VDI pinboard.
Hover the mouse pointer to the left to expand the menu, then hover on “Plan & Assess,” click on “Applications.” and select “Add Application.”
Give the application a name and fill the tier components with relevant member details. There are multiple options to choose tier the members. After filling the tier and member details, click on “Save.”
Thresholds
Within vRealize Network Insight, there are configurable thresholds that notify you when VM behavior deviates from configured conditions or from their past behavior. In this use case, it will help us view average network traffic utilization and validate the network spikes.
Hover the mouse pointer to the left to expand the menu, then click on “Analytics –> Thresholds.”
- Provide a unique name for the threshold
- Scope: Choose the Application we just created (HZ-View)
- Condition: Choose “Total traffic” aggregated over “entire scope.” when “any value” “deviates from past behavior.”
- Choose the required Sensitivity and click submit.
The threshold will start tracking the network metrics of the application right away, and it will generate a baseline of its behavior in a couple of hours.
Now we have organized all the necessary data to curate the pinboard!
Creating the Pinboard
To create a pinboard, open the Application we created by typing “Application HZ-View” and click on pin button from any widget –> Create a new pinboard –> Provide a name and click “Create and Pin.” We will use this pinboard to pin other widgets.
Pins from the Application
Pin all required widgets to the pinboard:
Pins from Flow Insights
- In the Search box, write “flows where application = hz-view” and click on Flow Insights.
- Pin all the required pins to the existing pinboard.
Pins from Threshold
Open the threshold that we created and pin it.
Pins from Search
We’ll gather the rest of the data via the search engine that relates to the VDI environment and are useful to have on the pinboard.
Host that have problems and need attention
Hosts where VM in (VM where application = 'HZ-View') and problem is set
Microsegmenation wheel
Get the One Day view:
plan application ‘HZ-View’
And the One Week view:
plan application ‘HZ-View’ in last 7 days
VDI OS Versions
vms group by Operating System where Application = 'HZ-View'
Conclusion
This pinboard provides all necessary information to a VDI admin in a single page without the need for multiple navigations. It is a sample to showcase the pinboard’s practical usage, VDI admin can further customize it and also make it a vRNI homepage. Using this pinboard as a reference, we can monitor and get visibility for any application.
