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.
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:
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 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.
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
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
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
