Requirements

• A user with "Read" permissions to the entire inventory on VCenter. This is needed in order to be able to collect alarms all the way from the root entity recursively. Only alarms about entities the user is able to see in the inventory will be collected.
• Network communication to the VCenter host must be open. By default, it connects on port 443.
• Dynatrace API v2 token with "Ingest events" scope.

Installation

There are two steps to install an Activegate extension:

1. Environment Activegate server - Extract the extension zip file to the plugin_deployment folder of the remote plugin module

   Linux ActiveGate:

   • In a default installation this is done with unzip -o -d /opt/dynatrace/remotepluginmodule/plugin_deployment custom.remote.python.vcenter_alarms.zip
   • Adjust the path if the Activegate was installed somewhere other than /opt/dynatrace

   Windows ActiveGate:

   • Extract content of the zip archive to the <DYNATRACE-INSTALLDIR>\remotepluginmodule\plugin_deployment\ directory. Windows likes to create a folder named after the zip file in itself, so make sure you do not end up with two custom.remote.python.vcenter_alarms folder levels within itself.

2. Browser - Upload the custom.remote.python.vcenter_alarms.zip file to your tenant

   • Settings > Monitored technologies > Custom extensions > Upload extension

Configuration

• Click on the new uploaded extension on the Custom Extensions screen on your tenant and select "Add new endpoint"
• Fill in the fields on the configuration screen and select the ActiveGate to which the extension was uploaded.
• Use a Dynatrace API v2 token with "Ingest events" scope.
• Be sure that the user you are using to connect to VCenter has access and visibility to read from the root of the VCenter inventory.
• Enter the name of the alarms defined on VCenter in either the Warning or Critical fields, depending on what type of severity you would like those alarms to create problems.

Metrics

• Availability: Shows the percentage of time it was able to connect/access VCenter.
• Alarm counts: Total number of triggered alarms on VCenter regardless of any filter.

VCenter showing total triggered alarms (selected and unselected).

Alert collected from VCenter showing which entity triggered it