VMWare (ESX) Monitoring Requirements

Last Modified

Wed Jan 26 18:20 GMT 2023

Description

  • What requirements are there for monitoring ESX servers with N-able N-central ?
  • Do I need to enable the MOB pages?
  • Do I need anything from the hardware vendor?

Environment

  • N-able N-central 10.1+
  • VMware ESXi version 4.x or higher (3.5 is not supported)

Solution

ESX/ESXi Monitoring Requirements

  • Installed Probe in the environment
  • ESX or ESXi version 4.5 or later
  • CIM Port and CIM services enabled (port 443 and 5989 by default). Port 22 (SSH) access is not required.
  • Administrator level account on the ESX machine
    • This account can be root, however this is not recommended
  • Offline Bundle installed from the hardware vendor. Refer to the vendor documentation for instructions on how to install the offline bundle.
  • MOB pages must be enabled. This is not enabled by default in ESXi 6.5+
  • In some instances you may need to check for the most recent version of the Offline bundle, or install additional VIBs per the Vendor requirements
  • Run a Virtualization enabled discovery job using the administrator level account mentioned above
    • We do not recommend using both SNMP and Virtualization discoveries in the same discovery job. Doing so can cause slowdowns of the discovery and possibly missed or invalid information. Separate the jobs into SNMP and Virtualization separately for best results, having ESX servers on a specific range of dedicated IPs will help simplify this.
  • Import the discovered ESX servers and let the rules and service templates apply the necessary services.
If you run into any issues or have additional questions, please contact the support team.