Monitoring vSphere cluster health with check_vsphere

What’s new?

The cluster-health command in check_vsphere looks at the members of a vSphere cluster, checks their state and decides whether the whole cluster is healthy. By default it treats nodes that are disconnected or in maintenance as faulty, but you can tweak that list. Use --faulty to customize what counts as a failure.

How the threshold works

You tell the command when to raise a warning or a critical alert with the --cluster-threshold flag:

[max_members:]warn_threshold:crit_threshold

• max_members (optional) - Apply the rule to clusters with up to this many members.
• warn_threshold – Number or percent of faulty nodes that triggers a WARN.
• crit_threshold – Number or percent that triggers a CRIT.

You can give several --cluster-threshold flags for different cluster sizes. Rules apply to clusters up to their max_members; if multiple rules match, the smallest max_members wins. One rule must omit max_members; that one is the fallback.

Quick examples

• 3:1:1 - For clusters up to 3 nodes: a single fault triggers a critical state (warning and critical equal).
• 5:1:3 - For clusters up to 5 nodes: warn at >=1 faulty node, critical at >=3.
• 10:2:5 - For clusters up to 10 nodes: warn at 2 faulty nodes, critical at 5
• 50:5:15 - For clusters up to 50 nodes: warn at 5 faulty nodes, critical at 15.
• 10%:20% - Fallback for larger clusters: warning at 10% failures, critical at 20%.

Usage snippet

check_vsphere cluster-health \
  --host vcenter.example.com \
  -u naemon@vsphere.local \
  --cluster-threshold 3:1:1 \
  --cluster-threshold 5:1:3 \
  --cluster-threshold 10:2:5 \
  --cluster-threshold 50:5:15 \
  --cluster-threshold '10%:20%' \
  --cluster-name MyCluster

Naemon integration

define command{
    command_name check_vsphere_cluster_health
    command_line VSPHERE_PASS=$ARG4$ $USER2$/check_vsphere cluster-health \
      -u $ARG3$ \
      --host $ARG1$ \
      --cluster-name $ARG2$ \
      --cluster-threshold 3:1:1 \
      --cluster-threshold 5:1:3 \
      --cluster-threshold 10:2:5 \
      --cluster-threshold 50:5:15 \
      --cluster-threshold '10%:20%'
}

define service{
    use generic-service
    host_name vcenter.example.com
    service_description vSphere Cluster Health
    check_command check_vsphere_cluster_health!vcenter.example.com!MyCluster!user!pw
}

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