Recieve VMware Aria Operations Alerts in Microsoft Teams

This blog is the follow-up to the one I wrote earlier this week about sending VMware Aria Operations for Logs alerts to Microsoft (MS) Teams. This article describes the steps to forward alerts from VMware Aria Operations (Aria Ops) to MS Teams.

Use Case – Increase the ability to notice prio 1 alerts outside of office hours with the available technical resources.

Goal – In addition to the standard Aria Ops alerts, we also want to have the option available to receive alerts through Microsoft Teams.

Solution – Use Aria Ops Webhook to send alerts to MS Teams

Setup – In order to have Aria Ops alerts sent to MS Teams, we need to set up two things.

  1. Setup a MS Teams Connector to receive alerts
  2. Setup the Aria Ops Webhook configuration to push alerts

Setup a MS Teams Connector to receive alerts

First, decide in which Teams Channel you want to receive the Aria Ops alerts or add a new Teams Channel. I have created a new Channel called VRMware VMware Alerts.

Click on the 3 dots on the right side and select Manage Channel.

Select Edit under Connectors.

Select Incoming Webhook and hit the Configure button.

Provide a friendly name, upload an image and create the connector.

After creation copy the url to the clipboard. We need this URL later to configure the AO4L Webhook.

Before we move on to Aria Ops we need to enable the channel notifications. Click once again on the 3 dots on the right side and select Channel notifications > All New Posts.

Setting up Aria Ops Webhook configuration to push alerts

Go to Configure > Alerts > open Outbound Settings > Add > Plugin Type > Webhook Notification Plugin. Choose a Instance name. Copy the Webhook URL that was copied from MS Teams connector. Save, Test option does not work.

Webload Payload

Go to Configure > Alerts > Payload Templates > Add > Create Payload Template > Details. Choose a frienly name and select the Outbound Method.

On the next tab, Object Content we select Host System and Hardware|Model as property. This is just an example. Choose what you like to monitor.

On the next tab, Payload Details we add the Payload code.

The Payload code that is used in the Payload Details tab.

{
"text": "<b> ${ALERT_CRITICALITY} alert on ${RESOURCE_NAME}: ${ALERT_DEFINITION} at $(CREATE_TIME)</b>"
}

After completing the Webhook configuration we want test the Webhook configuration.

Create an alert, in our test case we use alert “Host has lost connection to vCenter Server“. Then we select the Outbound method “Webhook Notifcation Plugin” “VRMware MS-Teams“.

Next step is select the Payload Template.

Finally, we are almost there to send a test alert. We do this on the Test Notifcation tab. Hit the “Initiate Process” button.

We select the Alert Definitions “Host has lost connection to vCenter Server“. We also use the filter the alert definition… option.

Select a host and validate the configuration.

Now we can close the alert in Aira Ops. In Teams we have received the alert.

I hope this blog post will help you configure Aria Operations to send notifications to MS Teams. Please remember that MS Teams is not a monitoring tool. So be selective with the alerts you forward.

The payload code is based on the one that I found in this blog post from Brock Peterson.

Recieve VMware Aria Operations for Logs Alerts in Microsoft Teams

This blog is meant to keep up to date on important infrastructure alerts during and outside office hours with standard products such as VMware Aria Operations for Logs (AO4L) and Microsoft (MS)Teams.

Use Case – Increase the ability to notice prio 1 alerts outside of office hours with the available technical resources.

Goal – In addition to the standard AO4L alerts, we also want to have the option available to receive alerts through Microsoft Teams.

Solution – Use AO4L Webhook to send alerts to MS Teams

Setup – In order to have AO4L alerts sent to MS Teams, we need to set up two things.

  1. Setup a MS Teams Connector to receive alerts
  2. Setup the AO4L Webhook configuration to push alerts

Setup a MS Teams Connector to receive alerts

First, decide in which Teams Channel you want to receive the AO4L alerts or add a new Teams Channel. I have created a new Channel called VRMware VMware Alerts.

Click on the 3 dots on the right side and select Manage Channel.

Select Edit under Connectors.

Select Incoming Webhook and hit the Configure button.

Provide a friendly name, upload an image and create the connector.

After creation copy the url to the clipboard. We need this URL later to configure the AO4L Webhook.

Before we move on to AO4L we need to enable the channel notifications. Click once again on the 3 dots on the right side and select Channel notifications > All New Posts.

Setup the AO4L Webhook configuration to push alerts

Go to the Administration section and open Configuration > Webhook > New Webhook. Choose a name. From the Endpoint drop down menu select Custom. Copy the Webhook URL that was copied from MS Teams connector. From the Content Type drop down menu select JSON and from the Action drop down menu select POST. The Webhook Payload will be described under the picture.

Webload Payload

The Webload Payload was the hardest part to figuring it out how the Webhook Payload layout should look like.

As far as I know from AO4L Webhook, only clear text can be used to send notifications to MS Teams. It’s possible to use one or more parameters in the script. For an overview of the parameters see the picture above here. Because the notictions are send in clear text it’s not possible to use all parameters. In our case not a problem because MS Teams is not used to replace monitoring software. It is just an additional option to be informed in a timely manner.

I wouldn’t go indepth how I found out the layout of the Webhook Payload code. That’s why I’m only sharing the code with you, so you can start testing for yourself.

{
"type":"message",
"attachments":[
{
"contentType":"application/vnd.microsoft.card.adaptive",
"contentUrl":null,
"content":{
"$schema":"http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
"type":"AdaptiveCard",
"version":"1.2",
"body":[
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"text": "${AlertName}",
"weight": "bolder",
"wrap": true
}
]
}
}
]
}

After completing the Webhook configuration you may want test the Webhook configartion. Press the Send Test button

Finally Save the Webhook configuration.

Open the MS Teams Channel where the connector was created earlier. You should see here the Test Alert.

The last part is sending a notification to MS Teams when a ESXi host have entered Maintenance Mode.

I have created an AO4L alert with the name “AO4L Alert: Host entered Maintenance Mode“.

I have decided that I would like to be notified by MS Teams. This can be set under the Trigger Conditions.

If everything is configured correctly we should receive the Send Test Alert Results after sending a test alert.

Save the Alert. Now we are ready for the final test. I put a ESXi host in maintenance mode and we should receive within 5 minutes a MS Teams notification. It works!

I hope this blog post will help you configure AO4L to send notifications to MS Teams. Please remember that MS Teams is not a monitoring tool. So be selective with the alerts you forward.

Aria Operations 8.17.1 Hotfix1 API/Webhook JSON Bug (FIXED)

Recently, while testing after upgrading Aria Operations 8.16 to 8.17.1 Hotfix1, I found that I could not forward alerts via API to a remote monitoring system.

While testing an alert notification (Test Notification in a random alert). We see an error message at ‘Endpoint Receives Notification’.

After investigation, the problem appears to be in the JSON code in the payload template. Nothing had changed here and we may be dealing with a bug here. Let’s take a look at the payload template.

Payload Template working fine in 8.16 and is broken in 8.17.1 Hotfix1

In the payload template sample, we see in the JSON code section highlighted in green that the new line character ‘\n’ is used.

Payload Template working fine in 8.17.1 Hotfix1

In the next payload template sample, we see in the JSON code section highlighted in green that the new line character ‘\n’ is not used.

After we apply another test alert notification using the payload template without the new line character “\n” everything works fine.

I opened a ticket by VMware/Broadcom GSS and they confirmed the bug. It is now waiting for an update that fixes this issue. As soon as there is an update I will report it here.

Update June 19:

The special character “\” json bug is fixed in Aria Operations 8.17.2. See the release notes. VMware Aria Operations 8.17.2 (broadcom.com) .

The following issues have been resolved as of Aria Operations 8.17.2:

  • Snapshot age reporting incorrectly
  • [App Monitoring] Product managed telegraf agent installation via script fails due to wget.exe URL is not reachable from Windows machine to CP
  • Reclamation page show >0 days old snapshots with 0 GB reclaimable space
  • Update Messaging in Manage Agents page
  • Uninstalling ARC agent status for windows-endpoint keeps on loading state when uninstall gets triggered through api.
  • Activated plugins is not shown post Agent is tried to uninstall with failed attempts
  • [APP Monitoring] : vROPS Large Environment – Bootstrap operation takes 11 mins to complete for 1 VM
  • Agent Installation on Windows VM taking more than 5mins
  • “Manage Telegraf Agents” page takes 30 sec to load
  • [APP Monitoring] : ARC services are operational on the endpoint VM; however, the agent status is currently indicated as unhealthy in vROPS UI
  • NPE when sending Alert Notification
  • [WLP] [vSAN] During the Workload Optimization, the VM vSAN compatibility check calls are failing, when the endpoint vCenter version is 8.0 U2 and higher
  • Cost Calculation failed on one DC.
  • [AWLP] [Backend] vRA calls, to get the advanced workload placement plan from vROps, fail on vROps side
  • In case of Metric chart Metrics mode, for deleted object widget is throwing exception.
  • Custom property: Internal server Error is thrown on alerts timeline
  • Having “\” and other JSON special characters in notification template leads to invalid JSON payload.
  • [Resources API Call] All resources in api response have resourceHealth and Value are GREY and -1 respectively on 8.17.x vROPs

Aria Operations Alert Notification Test Enhancement

This time a short blog about a new feature in Aria Operations 8.14.1 that I discovered by accident. Normally when you have created an alert notification and want to test it, an actual alert has to be created and takes up to 5 minutes each time before the alert is sent. If you have an Aria Operations and a vSphere test environment you will be fine generating an alert as a test.

As an example, an alert notification, e.g. “Host has lost connection to vCenter Server”. The following screenshot details the steps to create an alert notification as follows as it goes up to Aria Operations 8.14.

After creation, you can only test the alert by disconnecting a host from vCenter. In a test environment this is not a problem, but in a production environment this is often not preferred.

What’s new in Alert notifications in Aria Operations 8.14.1

Nothing has changed about creating an alert notification except that an additional new step “Test Notifcation” has been added.

Go direct to Test Notification and select INITIATE PROCESS.

A new window pop-up. We choose as object “Host has lost connection to vCenter Server”, select this rule, turn-on the filter switch, Next

Because we turned on the filter switch in the previous step, we now see only the objects we can test. I have selected a ESXI host. Finally hit the VALIDATE CONFIGURATION button.

Response: Test passed successfully.

If we now look at the alert body we see that an SNMP trap has been sent. We can compare this data with what SNMP trap receiver has received.

Output SNMP trap receiver shows the data that was send as test.

Conclusion:
This small addition is a big step forward in testing alert notications in Aria Operations. We can now test against a production environment without having to generate an actual alert.

Forward Aria Operations alerts as SNMPv3 traps to Ubuntu

Last week I wrote about forwarding Aria Operations alerts with SNMPv3. Since Ubuntu is widely used I have decided to test also Ubuntu in my lab.

In this blog post I will describe the steps taken to send an SNMPv3 trap from Aria Operations to Ubuntu where the traps are stored readably in a log file. For this test, I used the following configuration:

  • VMware vCenter 8.0 update 2a
  • VMware ESXi 8.0 update 2
  • VMware Aria Operations version: 8.14.1
  • Linux Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS
  • NET-SNMP 5.9.1

First step: Configure Aria Operations SNMP Trap Instance (Configure > Alerts > Outbound Settings > Add)

The name of the SNMP instance in my lab is “SNMP-UBUNTU”

The data highlighted in green later is needed later when configuring the Linux SMMP trap collector. For both the Authentication Password and Privacy Password, we use the same password, which is “T3st123!”.

Second step: Install and configure the Linux SNMP trap collector.

Install Ubuntu 22.04

Once Ubuntu is installed, snmptrapd need to be installed. Note that from version NET-SNMP 5.9.x onwards, AES256 can be used, which is needed to decode SNMPv3 traps.

Install snmptrapd

apt-get update
apt-get -y install snmptrapd
apt update
apt -y install snmptrapd

Create /var/log/snmptrapd.log

touch /var/log/snmptrapd.log
chmod 666 /var/log/snmptrapd.log

Modify /usr/lib/systemd/system/snmptrapd.service to write traps to /var/log/snmptrapd.log

#Modify snmptrapd.service 
#Comment out the next line
#ExecStart=/usr/sbin/snmptrapd -LOw -f udp:162 udp6:162
#Add the next line
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/snmptrapd -LOw -f udp:162 udp6:162 -Lf /var/log/snmptrapd.log

Modify /etc/snmp/snmptrapd.conf

#Add the next lines
disableAuthorization yes
authCommunity log,execute,net public
createUser -e 687570118567EE5F48839F4D0C2B8AE5312C ariaops SHA-256 T3st123!! AES-256 T3st123!!
authUser log,execute,net ariaops
format2 %.4y-%.2m-%.2l %.2h:%.2j:%.2k %B [%b]:\n%v\n
outputOption s

Reload snmptrapd

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart snmptrapd.service

Add Ubuntu MIB files

apt-get install snmp-mibs-downloader

Download the Aria Operations MIB files from the Aria Operations appliance. See VMware KB2118780. This is needed to convert the Aria Operations in readable alerts in the snmptrapd.log. See the next two Aria Operations test traps why the Aria Operations MIB files are needed.

First screenshot, the Aria Operations MIB files are not imported in Ubuntu. It cannot be seen that these alerts are VMware alerts

Next screenshot, the Aria Operations MIB files are imported in Ubunti. Now it is clear that these are VMware events.

#Download the Aria Operations MIB files from this directory 
/usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/outbound/vcops-snmptrap-plugin/mib

Upload the Aria Operations MIB files from the Aria Operations appliance to Ubuntu

#Upload the Aria Operations MIB files into this directory
/usr/share/snmp/mibs

Modify /etc/snmp/snmp.conf

#Comment out mibs 
#mibs :

#Add custom Aria Operations MIB files
mibs +VMWARE-ROOT-MIB
mibs +VMWARE-VROPS-AGENTCAP-MIB
mibs +VMWARE-VROPS-MIB
mibs +VMWARE-PRODUCTS-MIB

Restart snmpd and snmptrapd

systemctl restart snmpd.service
systemctl restart snmptrapd.service

Third step: Test if Aria Operations SNMPv3 traps are received on the Linux SNMP collector

Test 1: Sending a test trap from the Aria Operations SNMP instance.

Note that before testing both password have been entered. Otherwise the test will fail.

Hit the “TEST” button. The following message will appear.

Check the snmptrapd.log (tail -f /var/log/snmptrapd.log) and search for “Test Notification Rule”

We see “Test Notification Rule” in the snmptrad.log. Test is succeeded.

Test2: Disconnect a ESXi host from vCenter

I have created a notification that wil send a SNMP trap to the LinuxSNMP collector.

Disconnect ESXi host from vCenter:

Alert is raised in Aria Operations

Check the snmptrapd.log (tail -f /var/log/snmptrapd.log) and search for “Host disconnected from vCenter”

We see “Host disconnected from vCenter” in the snmptrad.log. Test is succeeded.

From here, the alerts can move on to the third-party monitoring tool. That is beyond the scope of this test. Hopefully this blog post is useful to you.

Forward Aria Operations alerts as SNMPv3 traps to a Linux collector

Recently a question came up whether it is possible to forward Aria Operations alerts to a third-party monitoring tool using SNMPv3. I had no experience with this until that point. During this exploration it turns out that there is a lot of information to be found about configuring a SNMPv3 target. It turned out to be quite a search to find the right information to be able to decode the SNMPv3 traps and write them readable away in a log file. I tested with several types of Linux, including Raspberry Pi and Rocky Linux 9, but in the end I succeeded with Alpine Linux. An added advantage of Alpine is that it is lightweight.

In this blog post I will describe the steps taken to send an SNMPv3 trap from Aria Operations to a Linux collector where the traps are stored readably in a log file. For the test, I used the following configuration:

  • VMware vCenter 8.0 update 2a
  • VMware ESXi 8.0 update 2
  • VMware Aria Operations version: 8.14.1
  • Linux Alpine Standard 3.19.0 x86_64
  • NET-SNMP 5.9.4

First step: Configure Aria Operations SNMP Trap Instance (Configure > Alerts > Outbound Settings > Add)

The name of the SNMP instance in my lab is “SNMP-Alpine-Linux”

The data highlighted in green later is needed later when configuring the Linux SMMP trap collector. For both the Authentication Password and Privacy Password, we use the same password, which is “T3st123!”.

Second step: Install and configure the Linux SNMP trap collector.

Install Alpine Linux. Click here for the Alpine Wiki.

Once Alpine is installed, NET-SNMP can be installed. Note that from version NET-SNMP 5.9.x onwards, AES256 can be used, which is needed to decode SNMPv3 traps.

Install NET-SNMP

apk update && apk add net-snmp net-snmp-tools

Modify /etc/snmp/snmp.conf

In this step we will need the green marked higlighted data from the Aria Operations SNMP instance.

#######################################################################
# Example configuration file for snmptrapd
#
# No traps are handled by default, you must edit this file!
#
# authCommunity   log,execute,net public
# traphandle SNMPv2-MIB::coldStart    /usr/bin/bin/my_great_script cold
########################################################################

authCommunity log,execute,net public

#AriaOps

#createUser -e <ENGINE-ID> <USERNAME> <AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL> <AUTHENTICATION PASSWORD> <PRIVACY PROTOCOL> <PRIVACY PASSWORD>

createUser -e 687517EA587080304ED28C73A0FB0B676570 ariaops SHA-256 T3st123! AES-256 T3st123!

######################################
authUser log,execute,net ariaops

format2 %.4y-%.2m-%.2l %.2h:%.2j:%.2k %B [%b]:\n%v\n

outputOption s

Modify /etc/conf.d/snmptrapd

Here we unmark #OPTS=”${OPTS} -Lf /var/log/snmptrapd.log” so snmp traps will be logged in /var/log/snmptrapd.log.

# extra flags to pass to snmptrapd
OPTS=""

# ignore authentication failure traps
#OPTS="${OPTS} -a"

# log messages to specified file
OPTS="${OPTS} -Lf /var/log/snmptrapd.log"

# log messages to syslog with the specified facility
# where facility is: 'd' = LOG_DAEMON, 'u' = LOG_USER, [0-7] = LOG_LOCAL[0-7]
#OPTS="${OPTS} -Ls d"

Restart snmptrapd

/etc/init.d/snmptrapd restart of systemctl restart snmptrapd

Create snmptrapd.log

touch /var/log/snmptrapd.log

Download the Aria Operations MIB files from the Aria Operations appliance. See VMware KB2118780. This is needed to convert the Aria Operations in readable alerts in the snmptrapd.log. See the next two Aria Operations test traps why the Aria Operations MIB files are needed.

First screenshot, the Aria Operations MIB files are not imported in Alpine. It cannot be seen that these alerts are VMware alerts

Next screenshot, the Aria Operations MIB files are imported in Alpine. Now it is clear that these are VMware events.

#Download the Aria Operations MIB files from this directory 
/usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/outbound/vcops-snmptrap-plugin/mib

Upload the Aria Operations MIB files from the Aria Operations appliance to Alpine

#Upload the Aria Operations MIB files into this directory
/usr/share/snmp/mibs

Create /etc/snmp/snmp.conf

touch /etc/snmp/snmp.conf

Add the custom Aria Operations MIB files to snmp.conf

#Add custom Aria Operations MIB files
mibs +VMWARE-ROOT-MIB
mibs +VMWARE-VROPS-AGENTCAP-MIB
mibs +VMWARE-VROPS-MIB
mibs +VMWARE-PRODUCTS-MIB

Restart snmpd and snmptrapd

/etc/init.d/snmpd restart
/etc/init.d/snmptrapd restart

Auto start snmpd and snmptrapd at boot

rc-update add snmpd default
rc-update add snmptrap default

Third step: Test if Aria Operations SNMPv3 traps are received on the Linux SNMP collector

Test 1: Sending a test trap from the Aria Operations SNMP instance.

Note that before testing both password have been entered. Otherwise the test will fail.

Hit the “TEST” button. The following message will appear.

Check the snmptrapd.log (tail -f /var/log/snmptrapd.log) and search for “Test Notification Rule”

We see “Test Notification Rule” in the snmptrad.log. Test is succeeded.

Test2: Disconnect a ESXi host from vCenter

I have created a notification that wil send a SNMP trap to the LinuxSNMP collector.

Disconnect ESXi host from vCenter:

Alert is raised in Aria Operations

Check the snmptrapd.log (tail -f /var/log/snmptrapd.log) and search for “Host disconnected from vCenter”

We see “Host disconnected from vCenter” in the snmptrad.log. Test is succeeded.

From here, the alerts can move on to the third-party monitoring tool. That is beyond the scope of this test. Hopefully this blog post is useful to you.

Upgrade Aria Operations 8.12 to 8.14 fails

There is a known issue occurring with some Aria Ops upgrades from version 8.12 to 8.14. During the upgrade Aria Ops is hanging for some time and lose access to the Admin UI. The Admin UI does not come back. The issue is related due the Photon OS upgrade.

VMware Support has confirmed that Aria Ops 8.14 will be replaced shortly by Aria Ops 8.14 hotfix 1. Unlike the normal upgrade process, it will be possible to upgrade directly from Aria Ops 8.12 to 8.14 hotfix 1.

VMware Support’s advice is to wait a while before upgrading until Aria Ops 8.14 hotfix 1 is available.

Update November 22, 2023

Last night VMware released Aria Operations Upgrade PAK | 2023 | Build 22611353 . Read the complete release note here.

UPDATE: Aria Operations for Logs persistent static route on second network interface on behalf of Log Forwarding

There is an update on the blog post “vRealize Log Insight persistent static route on second network interface on behalf of Log Forwarding”. Beginning with version Aria Operations for Logs 8.14, the VAME_CONF_NET is no longer available, it’s removed in this version.

The information in the orignal blog post can still be used. Only now you need to manually create and predefine the 10-eth1.network configuration. See example at the bottom of the original post.

There are two important things to consider:

  1. Keep in mind that multic-nic configurations in Aria Ops for Logs is not officially supported
  2. After every update the 2nd interface must be recreated and configured again

Orginal post:

Recently I wanted to test whether it is possible to configure vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) log forwarding to a second network interface to reach a log target in another network segment that could not be reached from the default vRLI appliance ip address.

The first step is adding a second network interface to the appliance. In this example we use the following network configuration.

  1. VMnic1
    Vlan10, IP 10.1.1.10, Subnetmask 255.255.255.0, Gateway 10.1.1.1
  2. VMnic2
    Vlan20, IP 20.2.2.20, Subnetmask 255.255.255.0, Gateway 20.2.2.1
  3. In this example the log forwarding target ip address is 30.3.3.233

To configure the second network interface open a SSH session to vRLI appliance. Move to /opt/vmware/share/vami/ and run the network configuration script. vami_config_net. Eth1 is now also available for configuration. First select ‘0’ for a configuration overview. In the results is an error on eth1 displayed. This error keeps us from being able to configure eth1.

After some ‘Trial & Error’ research I noticed the following error during reconfiguring eth1 “can’t open /etc/systemd/network/10-eth1.network

In the directory /etc/systemd/network is the file “10-eth1.network” not present. The name of the file could be different then here in this example. It depends on the number of network interfaces. I fixed this issue by creating this file manual.

  1. touch /etc/systemd/network/10-eth1.network
  2. chmod 644 /etc/systemd/network/10-eth1.network
  3. Config the second network interface. Go to the directory /opt/vmware/share/vami/ and run the network configution script. vami_config_net. Eth1 is now also available for configuation.
  4. Check the new configuration by selecting option 0. If Ok press 1 to exit
  5. Restart the network, systemctl restart systemd-networkd.service

Now this issue is fixed we can move on to configure the persistant static route for vRLI log forwarding.

Edit /etc/systemd/network/10-eth1.network

The file shlould look like this before editing:

[Match]
Name=eth1
[Network]

Gateway=10.1.1.1
Address=20.2.2.20/24
DHCP=no

[DHCP]
UseDNS=false

Now add route information at the end of the file:

[Match]
Name=eth1
[Network]

Gateway=10.1.1.1
Address=20.2.2.20/24
DHCP=no

[DHCP]
UseDNS=false
[Route]
Gateway=20.2.2.1
Destination=30.3.3.233/24

Save the file and restart the network service.

systemctl restart systemd-networkd.service

Check if the new route is present.

route -n

Test if you reach the destionation from CLI. I used Syslog over UDP port 514.

nc -v 30.3.3.233 514

Answer if configuration is working:

[30.3.3.233 514] open

The last step is to configure the vRLI Log Forwarding Destination.

Send a test event and check if the event is received by the target.

Keep in mind that multic-nic configurations in vRLI are not officially supported.

Also credits to this blog post that pushed me in the right direction.

PowerCLI script to get Syslog.Global.Host advanced setting

The following script may be useful if you are in the process of migrating vRealize Log Insight to a new appliance/cluster. You can use this script before, during and after migrating to check the settings of Syslog.Global.Loghost of all ESXi hosts in vCenter.

# Connect to vCenter Server
Connect-VIServer <vCenterServer>

# Get all ESXi hosts in the cluster
$hosts = get-vmhost

# Loop through each ESXi host and get the syslog.global.loghost advanced setting
foreach ($esxi in $hosts) {
    $setting = Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $esxi -Name 'syslog.global.loghost'
    Write-Host "$($esxi.Name): $($setting.Value)"
}

# Disconnect from vCenter Server
Disconnect-VIServer <vCenterServer> -Confirm:$false

For example: You can use the script during vRealize Log Insight in the following way:

  • Before migration
    Check the current configured syslog endpoint
  • During migration
    Check the current and new syslog endpoints are configured
  • After migration
    Check the new configured syslog endpoint

vRealize Log Insight Admin Alert: SSL Certificate Error (Host =vrli.vrmware.nl)

This time a short post about a vRealize Log Insight (vrLI) configuration issue that took too long to solve. In the end, the solution is simple after I found the documentation. Finding the right documentation was the hardest part.

Just briefly the reason of this setup. I want ESXi hosts to use Syslog over SSL to send logging encrypted to vRLI.

While adding the vCenter I configured the hosts to use SSL.

After configuring, everything seemed to work fine, until I got a vRLI Admin mail with the following alert:

This alert is about your Log Insight installation on https://vrli.vrmware.nl/

SSL Certificate Error (Host = vrli.vrmware.nl) triggered at 2023-04-16T09:23:53.412Z

This notification was generated from Log Insight node (Host = vrli.vrmware.nl, Node Identifier = de568ad3-d4e3-7f8a-b543-cef17632af11).

Syslog client esx01.vrmware.nl disconnected due to a SSL handshake problem. This may be a problem with the SSL Certificate or with the Network Time Service. In order for Log Insight to accept syslog messages over SSL, a certificate that is validated by the client is required and the clocks of the systems must be in sync.

Log messages from esx01.vrmware.nl are not being accepted, reconfigure that system to not use SSL or see Online Help for instructions on how to install a new SSL certificate .

This message was generated by your Log Insight installation, visit the Documentation Center for more information.

Time couldn’t be the issue in my case. So it had to be a certificate issue. The issue was caused by the vRLI certificate that wasn’t in the ESXi host truststore.

Per ESXi host, the following steps should be taken to solve the issue. Step 3 is only a verification step.

  1. openssl s_client -connect [FDQN or IP vRLI]:1514 < /dev/null | openssl x509 -outform PEM >> /etc/vmware/ssl/castore.pem
    Example: openssl s_client -connect vrli.vmware.nl:1514 < /dev/null | openssl x509 -outform PEM >> /etc/vmware/ssl/castore.pem
  2. esxcli system syslog reload
  3. esxcli network ip connection list | grep 1514

If ESXi hosts have the vRLI certificate in their truststore, the vRLI Admin mail (1x per day per vRLI node) should no longer occur.

Here is the link to the VMware documentation. This documentation is actually for vRLI Cloud which is a different product than standard vRLI although they overlap in some areas. The documentation for vRLI will be updated according to VMware GSS.

So this is probably why the vRLI documentation on this topic was so hard to find. Hopefully this blog post will save you a lot of time.