Nutanix Prism Central

Application Version and Upgrade Details

Introduction

Prism is a distributed resource management platform which allows you to manage and monitor objects, and services across the Nutanix environment, whether hosted locally or in the cloud.

Prism is broken down into two main components:

• Prism Central (PC)
  • Multiple Nutanix Clusters are managed by Multi-cluster managers and also provide a single, centralized management interface. This is an optional software appliance (VM) which can be deployed in addition to the AOS Cluster (can run on it).
  • 1-to-many cluster manager
• Prism Element (PE)
  • Localized cluster manager responsible for local cluster management and operations. Every Nutanix Cluster has a Prism Element built-in.
  • 1-to-1 cluster manager.

Monitoring Use cases

The device monitoring collects the metric values with respect to time and sends alerts to your team to act up immediately in case of any threshold breach or unexpected metric behavior based on configurations. In a way it helps you with smooth functioning of business with minimal or zero downtime in case of any infrastructure related issues occurring.

The below figure illustrates the conceptual relationship between Prism Central and Prism Element:

Prerequisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
• OpsRamp NextGen Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
• Note: We recommends using the latest Gateway version for full coverage of recent bug fixes, enhancements, etc.

Hierarchy of Nutanix Elements

• Nutanix Cluster Manager
       • Nutanix Cluster
              • Nutanix Host
                      • Nutanix Controller VM
                      • Nutanix VM
                      • Nutanix Disks
              • Nutanix Storage_container

Supported Metrics

Default Monitoring Configurations

Nutanix Prism Central has default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global Metrics in OpsRamp. You can customize these default monitoring configurations as per your business use cases by cloning respective Global Templates and Global Device Management Policies. We recommend doing this activity before installing the application to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policies

   You can find the Device Management Policy for each Native Type at Setup > Resources > Device Management Policies. Search with suggested name in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: nutanix-prism-central Nutanix Storage Container - 1 (i.e, appName = nutanix-prism-central, nativeType = Nutanix Storage Container, version = 1)

2. Default Global Templates

   You can find the Global Templates for each Native Type at Setup > Monitoring > Templates. Search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: nutanix-prism-central Nutanix Storage Container Template - 1 (i.e, appName = nutanix-prism-central, nativeType = Nutanix Storage Container Template, version = 1)

3. Default Global Monitors

   You can find the Global Monitors for each Native Type at Setup > Monitoring > Monitors. Search with suggested name in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: Nutanix Storage Container Monitor nutanix-prism-central Nutanix Storage Container 1(i.e, monitorKey = Nutanix Storage Container Monitor, appName = nutanix-prism-central, nativeType = Nutanix Storage Container, version = 1)

Configure and Install the Nutanix Prism Central Integration

1. To select your client, navigate to All Clients, and click the Client/Partner dropdown menu.
   Note: You may either type your client’s name in the search bar or select your client from the list.
2. Navigate to Setup > Account. The Account Details screen is displayed.
3. Click Integrations. The Installed Integrations screen is displayed with all the installed applications.
   Note: If you do not have any installed applications, you will be navigated to the Available Integrations and Apps page with all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
4. Click + ADD on the Installed Integrations page.
   Note: Search for the integration either by entering the name of the integration in the search bar or by selecting the category of the integration from the All Categories dropdown list.
5. Click ADD in the Nutanix Prism Central application.
6. In the Configuration screen, click + ADD. The Add Configuration screen appears.
7. Enter the following BASIC INFORMATION

8. CUSTOM ATTRIBUTES: Custom attributes are the user-defined data fields or properties that can be added to the preexisting attributes to configure the integration.

Note: The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the integration. You can add a maximum of five custom attributes (key and value pair).

9. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:
   • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
   • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.
10. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select recurrence pattern to add one of the following patterns:
    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly
11. Click ADD.

Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it.
Note: From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration.
12. Under the ADVANCED SETTINGS, Select the Bypass Resource Reconciliation option, if you wish to bypass resource reconciliation when encountering the same resources discovered by multiple applications.
Note: If two different applications provide identical discovery attributes, two separate resources will be generated with those respective attributes from the individual discoveries.
13. Click NEXT.
14. (Optional) Click +ADD to create a new collector. You can either use the pre-populated name or give the name to your collector.
15. Select an existing registered profile.

16. Click FINISH.
    The integration is installed and displayed on the INSTALLED INTEGRATION page. Use the search field to find the installed integration.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select Nutanix Prism Central.

View the Nutanix Prism Central Details

To discover resources for Nutanix Prism Central

1. Navigate to Infrastructure > Search > HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE > Nutanix Prism Central.
2. The Nutanix Prism Central page is displayed, select the application name.
3. The RESOURCE page appears from the right.
4. Click the ellipsis (…) on the top right and select View Details.

5. Click the Metrics tab to view the metric details for Nutanix Prism Central.

Resource Filter Input Keys

Nutanix Prism Central Resources are filtered and discovered based on below keys:

Supported Alert Custom Macros

Customize the alert subject and description with below macros then it will generate alert based on customisation.
Supported macros keys:

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure notifications for below two cases when user enables App Failure Notifications in configuration
  • Connectivity Exception (ConnectTimeoutException, HttpHostConnectException, UnknownHostException)
  • Authentication Exception (UnauthorizedException)
• Application will send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification for every 6 hours.
• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts.
• Metrics can be used to monitor Nutanix resources and can generate alerts based on the threshold values.
• Event/Alert polling will be started only if the user enables Event/Alert Polling in configuration.
• Possible values of Alert Severity configuration property are [“warning”,“critical”].
• OpsRamp has given sample mappings to map Nutanix Severity with OpsRamp Severities as part of the Alert Severity Mapping configuration file. Users can modify them as per their use-case at any point of time from the sdk application configuration page. Possible OpsRamp Severities are {“warning”:“Warning”,“critical”:“Critical”}.
• For VM resources there is no metric support as of now.
• Application is not compatible with Cluster Gateway.
• A user may be able to access the Prism WebUI, but may not have access to RestAPIs. User credentials used in configuration needs to have RestAPI access to perform discovery and monitoring.
• Support for Macro replacement for threshold breach alerts (i.e, customisation for threshold breach alert’s subject, description).
• No support of showing activity logs.
• The Template Applied Time will only be displayed if the collector profile (Classic and NextGen Gateway) is version 18.1.0 or higher.
• Support for the option to get Latest snapshot metric.
• This application supports both Classic Gateway and NextGen Gateway.
• Events generated in nutanix will be pulled based on frequency poll and not instantaneous

Troubleshooting

If the Nutanix integration fails to discover or monitor resources, follow these steps:

• Check if any alerts have been generated on the Nutanix Prism Central resource, the gateway, or if there are any error logs in the vprobe.

• If the alert or error is related to End Device Connectivity or Authentication, check the reachability of the end device from the gateway by executing the following commands:

  • Use the ping command to check the device’s IP address:

  ping <IP Address>
  

  • Use the telnet command to check connectivity to a specific port:

  telnet <IP Address> <port>
  

• Follow the steps in SDK App Debug GCLI Command Requests (Target API / SSH Command) and check if there are any errors during the execution of the commands.

1. Use the following sample request to prepare the request payload:

   
   {
       "apiVersion": "debug/v1",
       "module": "Debug",
       "app": "nutanix-prism-central",
       "action": "Reachability",
       "payload": {
           "protocol": "<http or https>",
           "ipAddressOrHostName": "<ipAddressOrHostName>",
           "port": "<port>",
           "userName": "<Username>",
           "password": "<Password>",
           "requestPath": "<RequestPath mentioned in the table>",
           "requestMethod": "<RequestMethod mentioned in the table>",
           "requestBody": "<RequestBody mentioned in the table>"
       }
   }
   
   

2. Encode the request payload to Base64 format.
3. Login to the gateway console and connect to the GCLI terminal using the following command:

gcli

4. Execute the command by replacing the <base64 encoded string> with the Base64-encoded request payload generated in Step 2:

sdkappdebug base64 encoded string

Refer to the following table for preparing the requestPath, requestBody, and requestMethod:

Native Type	Discovery	Monitoring
Nutanix Cluster Manager	requestPath : api/nutanix/v3/clusters/list requestMethod : POST requestBody : {"kind": "cluster","offset": 0, "length":1000}	-
Nutanix Cluster	requestPath : api/nutanix/v3/clusters/list requestMethod : POST requestBody : {"kind": "cluster","offset": 0, "length":1000}	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/clusters requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""
Nutanix Host	requestPath : api/nutanix/v3/hosts/list requestMethod : POST requestBody : {"kind": "host","offset": 0, "length":1000}	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/hosts requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""
Nutanix VM	requestPath : api/nutanix/v3/vms/list requestMethod : POST requestBody : {"kind": "vm","offset": 0, "length":1000}	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v1/vms?filterCriteria=is_cvm==0 requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""
Nutanix Disk	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/disks requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/disks requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""
Nutanix Storage Container	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/storage_containers requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/storage_containers requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""
Nutanix Controller VM	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v1/vms?filterCriteria=is_cvm==1 requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""	requestPath : PrismGateway/services/rest/v1/vms?filterCriteria=is_cvm==1 requestMethod : GET requestBody : ""

For example, to verify the Nutanix Host Discovery Response, use the following payload:

{
    "apiVersion": "debug/v1",
    "module": "Debug",
    "app": "nutanix-prism-central",
    "action": "Reachability",
    "payload": {
        "protocol": "http",
        "ipAddressOrHostName": "172.25.251.190",
        "port": "9988",
        "userName": "SvcOneAccessMonitoring",
        "password": "P!4psefokklibaulgyfcz0I!",
        "requestPath": "api/nutanix/v3/hosts/list",
        "requestMethod": "POST",
        "requestBody": "{\"kind\": \"host\",\"offset\": 0, \"length\":1000}"
    }
}

And for a GET API Call, use the following sample payload:

{
    "apiVersion": "debug/v1",
    "module": "Debug",
    "app": "nutanix-prism-central",
    "action": "Reachability",
    "payload": {
        "protocol": "http",
        "ipAddressOrHostName": "172.25.251.190",
        "port": "9988",
        "userName": "SvcOneAccessMonitoring",
        "password": "P!4psefokklibaulgyfcz0I!",
        "requestPath": "PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/hosts",
        "requestMethod": "GET",
        "requestBody": ""
    }
}