I’ve had the opportunity to be working with vCOPS in an enterprise environment since v1.0.
Over that time I have seen it evolve and have been able to basically play with it.
The one thing that has bugged me is how many metrics, Memory in particular are displayed in KB this is manageable to a point but when you have host these days sporting 128GB or 256GB that KB number soon turns into a massive number which is really unreadable at a glance. This is where the magic of Super Metrics can come in handy.
Below is a picture of a simple scoreboard widget with Total RAM displayed in GB (super metric) or KB (default) which is better?
I know I would choose the left one it takes up less real estate is more readable and its more client friendly too.
How do we make this magic happen? Its easy just some basic maths and vCOPS Advanced or enterprise editions.
1) First Select Super Metrics from Environment Menu
2)Then Add a new super metric, I will be editing one I have already created
3) Now search for a resource you would like change the metric on in this case I selected a cluster resource. The resource its self doesn’t matter I could choose any cluster resource as we will be using the “This” button. Select the “This” button and then select the resource you want to change, Here I am doing Total Capacity. I then add in my maths to change this to GB. Select OK.
*Note* using the THIS button allows use to use this metric against all clusters, If the THIS button was not used then the ID will be hard coded to that exact resource and would not work for other clusters.
4) Now we need to create a package to to assign the super metric too, Its a good idea to great a separate package for the resource type, in this case we I have a cluster one.
5) Enter the package name and select the newly created super metrics which will be listed on the left. and select OK
6) Now we need to attach this Super metric group to a resource type. Under the environment menu -> Configuration -> Resource Kind Defaults
7) Select the resource, in this case the cluster computer resource and add the super metric package on the right and select OK
8) Now this will not automatically apply it to all the cluster resources only to ones added after we have added the super metric package to the resource type. So now we must add all existing clusters ( in this case ) to the super metric package. In the environment menu select the first option which is “ENVIRONMENT OVERVIEW”. In here select you super metric group and either add the clusters in manually or drag and drop from the cluster compute resource set. Same process is used if you were adding it to datastores or virtual machines.
Wait for the next 5 minute collection interval and the super metric will be available to use in the dashboard
I personally use this when ever the default metric is too small and the numbers im dealing with are too large. Or a dashboard is for a non technical client and just needs to be in terms they understand.
[…] select super metrics and create a new metric. More details on this are in a previous post of mine HERE. In the resource section search for a datastore, can be any datastore, Once selected find the […]
Hi Scott, nice post, I have done more or less the same thing except I did one big division (by 1048576) instead of 2. My issue is that I end up with lots of decimal places, i.e. something like 493.65839348567568589 GB. Do you know how to get rid of those decimal places?
Cheers
Jon
Hi Jon,
Those decimal places can be removed under the generic score board options.
If you look at the last screenshot in this post you can see in the middle up the top, bottom option “round decimals” by default I think it has — which means all. but you can set it. I set it to 1.
Cheers
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the reply. My issue is not in the widgets, but in the creation of a custom xml file which appears in the Planning tab under views. It is probably a setting in the xml, so I will do a bit of experimenting. Thanks again for the article.
Jon
[…] GHz to make it more readable. I will not go into this here but is available on on of my other posts HERE When calling super metrics in an XML file you must use SM_id this ID will be shown on your […]
[…] who have been on this bog previously may remember a post on how to make dashboards more readable HERE well it can now be thrown out the […]