Some vCenter Operations Manager 5.x tweaks

Web Interface Timeout Issues

I often use the Web Interface of vCenter Operations Manager to check the infrastructure. Because while the client module exist for the vSphere Client, I don’t find it as optimized in the display and the pane jumping. One of the smaller annoying parts of using vC Ops via the Web Interface is the quick timeout of the user authentication. This can been tweaked by making a small change on the User Interface virtual machine.

Simply edit the /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat/webapps/vcops-vsphere/WEB-INF/web.xml  file, near the top you will find the following section

<session-config>
<session-timeout>value</session-timeout>
</session-config>

You can increase the time to 60, 90 or 120 minutes or set the time to infinite with a ‘-1’ value.

Once modified, just restart the vCenter Operations Manager Admin interface with the command

vcops-admin restart

This is referenced in the VMware KB Article 2015135.

 

 Log Files Location

With the release of vCenter Operations Manager 5.0. and later, the log files have been moved to their own partition, so that if there are lots of logs, they do not file the system partition of the two virtual machines in the vApp.

The logs have been moved to /data/vcops/logs

  • catalina-web.log
  • localhost-web.log
  • manager-web.log
  • host-manager-web.log

This is referenced in the VMware KB Article 2032786.

 

Adding Storage for vCenter Operations Manager

Things have changed a lot since the first version of the vCenter Operations Manager 1.0. The data stored on both virtual machine that forms the vApp is now using the Logical Volume Manager, so adding more space to the Analytics VM or the User Interface VM, is very easy. Simply add a new Disk (Thick Provision Eager Zeroed for performance) to the virtual machines. On restart the new disk will be added the the data_vg (data volume group).

Let’s just check the Analytics VM before adding a new disk


localhost:~ # <strong>lvdisplay</strong>
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name /dev/data_vg/data
VG Name data_vg
LV UUID aTXaIF-ZhHn-uUhg-0F6o-qHjy-9sI8-Q0QmlN
LV Write Access read/write
LV Status available
# open 1
LV Size 400.00 GB
Current LE 102399
Segments 1
Allocation inherit
Read ahead sectors auto
- currently set to 1024
Block device 253:0

localhost:~ # lvs
LV VG Attr LSize Origin Snap% Move Log Copy% Convert
data data_vg -wi-ao 400.00G

localhost:/data # df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3              8111996   2177068   5522864  29% /
udev                   3580976       100   3580876   1% /dev
tmpfs                  3580976         0   3580976   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1               132206     18149    107231  15% /boot
/dev/mapper/data_vg-data
412845232 100011536 291862384  26% /data

When I power-down the Analytics VM, I added a 16GB hard disk to the VM, after restart we clearly see the new size.


localhost:~ # <strong>lvdisplay</strong>
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/data_vg/data
VG Name                data_vg
LV UUID                aTXaIF-ZhHn-uUhg-0F6o-qHjy-9sI8-Q0QmlN
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                415.99 GB
Current LE             106494
Segments               2
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     auto
- currently set to     1024
Block device           253:0

localhost:~ # lvs
LV   VG      Attr   LSize   Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%  Convert
data data_vg -wi-ao 415.99G

localhost:~ # df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 8111996 2177952 5521980 29% /
udev 3580976 104 3580872 1% /dev
tmpfs 3580976 0 3580976 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 132206 18149 107231 15% /boot
/dev/mapper/data_vg-data
429355112 100014632 307530516 25% /data

This is referenced in the VMware KB Article 2016022.