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: OpsRamp recommends using the latest Gateway version for full coverage of recent bug fixes, enhancements, etc.

Hierarchy of Nutanix Elements

  Cluster
   - Host
    - VM
    - Disks
  - 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. From All Clients, select a client.
2. Go to Setup > Account.
3. Select the Integrations and Apps tab.
4. The Installed Integrations page, where all the installed applications are displayed. Note: If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the Available Integrations and Apps page.
5. Click + ADD on the Installed Integrations page. The Available Integrations and Apps page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.
6. Click ADD in the Nutanix Prism Central application.
7. In the Configurations page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
8. Enter the following BASIC INFORMATION:

Notes:

• By default the Is Secure checkbox is selected.
• Ip Address/Host Name and Port should be accessible from Gateway.
• Select the following:
  • App Failure Notifications: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure.
  • Alert Configuration: map alert configuration for third party alerts into OpsRamp.
• Below are the default values set for:
  • Alert Severity: Possible values of Alert Severity Filter configuration property are kWarning, kCritical, kinfo.
  • Alert Severity Mapping: Possible values of Alert Severity Mapping Filter configuration property are kWarning, kCritical, kInfo.

9. Select the below mentioned CUSTOM ATTRIBUTE:

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).

10. 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.

11. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select recurrence pattern to add one of the following patterns:

    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Click NEXT.

15. (Optional) Click +ADD to create a new collector. You can either use the pre-populated name or give the name to your collector.

16. Select an existing registered profile.

17. 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

The Nutanix Prism Central integration is displayed in the Infrastructure > Resources > Cluster. You can navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details, and 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 Event/Alert Severity Filter configuration property are kWarning,kCritical,kInfo.
• OpsRamp has given sample mappings to map Nutanix Severity with OpsRamp Severities as part of the Event/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 Critical, Warning, Ok, Info.
• 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 log and applied time.
• Support for the option to get Latest snapshot metric.
• This application supports both Classic Gateway and NextGen Gateway