How to filter VMware clusters with virt-who?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Satellite 6
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • VMware ESX

Issue

  • How to filter VMware clusters instead of hosts/hypervisors in virt-who?
  • How to make sure that only the required clusters are reporting to satellite 6 using virt-who?
  • How to exclude some ESX clusters from getting reported to Satellite 6 when using virt-who?

Resolution

  • Edit the configuration file and add the paramters:

    # vi /etc/virt-who.d/config.conf
[config]
type=hypervisor_type
server=vcenter/esx_host
username=vcenter/esx_username
owner=owner
env=Library
filter_host_parents=domain-xx,domain-yy OR
exclude_host_parents=domain-zz,domain-xx

    NOTE: Use either filter_host_parents or exclude_host_parents.

    filter_host_parents => Clusters to be reported.
    exclude_host_parents => Clusters not to be reported.

Supported Hypervisor Environment:

  • ESX

    • PowerCLI command to find the Cluster Names in Vmware:


      > Get-Cluster
Name                         HAEnabled  HAFailover DrsEnabled DrsAutomationLevel 
                                      Level
----                           ---------  ---------- ---------- ------------------
Cluster-ESXA-00X                False      1          True       FullyAutomated
Cluster-ESXB-00X                True       1          True       FullyAutomated

    • PowerCLI command to find the Cluster ID in Vmware:

      > Get-Cluster "ClusterName" | Select ID

    • Replace the ClusterName with the actual ClusterName and execute the query:

      For example:-
> Get-Cluster "Cluster-ESXA-00X" | Select ID

For more KB articles/solutions related to Virt-who and Virtual Datacenter (VDC) Subscriptions Issues, please refer to the Consolidated Troubleshooting Article for Virt-who and Virtual Datacenter (VDC) Subscriptions Issues

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4 Comments

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MJ Newbie 5 points
1 October 2018 1:46 PM

Hi. Just to mention that this configuration only worked if the ID of the vCluster is specified. The name didn't work.

Not only this, but also the ID has to be stripped from the initial part, leaving only "domain-XXXXX".

For instance, cluster with ID "ClusterComputeResource-domain-c6979" had to be specified as "domain-c6979" for the filters to work.

AE Newbie 5 points
16 November 2021 5:21 PM

Thanks! it works for me, just remove the "ClusterComputeResource-" from the cluster ID as Maria Jover said, delete all virt-who hosts from the content-host view, and restart the virt-who service.

MT Active Contributor 144 points
5 April 2019 6:06 PM

I cannot make it work at all. Names, full IDs, stripped IDs, nothing works. It either scans everything in vSphere or nothing.

JG Community Member 23 points
8 June 2022 3:53 AM

This powershell command provides more human friendly output:

Get-Cluster * | Select Name,ID

Name                         Id
----                         --
Cluster01                ClusterComputeResource-domain-c101
Cluster02                ClusterComputeResource-domain-c500
Cluster-Test01           ClusterComputeResource-domain-c404

As stated by Maria only "domain-XXXXX" portion is required.

In your virt-who-config-#.conf

filter_host_parents=domain-c101,domain-c500

Watch out for removing virt-who configs in the Satellite GUI as it does NOT remove the config in /etc/virt-who.d/