As part of vExpert, I could get a license for ControlUp. I was curious about it so I was thinking of putting it in my lab. I got a demo the other day from one of the technical marketing guys (thanks Trentent Tye) and with that demo for sure it is going in my lab. It is most interesting stuff with a range of features no other monitoring software I am familiar with has.
So lets get started.
Prep
- Get the bits from the web site. If you are vExpert check out the goodies section (vExpert Goodies) and you will get the bits and a license. You can also get a trial from the ControlUp web site.
- Get a VM to run a monitor agent. I used a Win2K16 VM with 8 GB RAM and 47 GB storage. It needs FQDN and IP in DNS.
Background
There is a controlupconsole.exe that we will start with. It can connect to VMs and hypervisors and do some amazing monitoring. But when you quit that exe you don’t have monitoring. That is why we will put a monitor in the VM I mentioned above and that will make sure we are always have monitoring so that if there is time between you running controlupconsole.exe you will not miss anything.
Install
Once you have the bits - which is a zip archive containing controlupconsole.exe you are good to start.
You will need to authenticate. This is the account you did to download. vExperts have a license applied to this account as well.
After log in you will see something like below.
Before we get a monitor working, I want to see some stuff in the console. In the middle of the screen - see above - there is an Add Hypervisors button.
Push that button and add your vCenter info.
It will only take a moment to see quite a bit of stuff!
Adding a Monitor
Now we want to get a monitor going so things are always monitored.
Use the Add Monitor button seen above in the screenshot.
Scroll the list of machines to find the VM you have ready for the monitor service. In my case it is the MON01 VM seen above. Once you select the VM use the Install button.
Once it is done select the Finish button. You should see something like below. You may need to press the green arrow if it is availabile.
Now when we quit the console the monitor will continue to monitor! What happens is when the monitor starts it checks the Common Configuration file. That is what the console writes too for configuration. This makes it really easy for the monitor when the console is not running.
Adding Agents
We will now add agents to some of our VMs to increase the reporting they do. For example, see what you get when you right click on a VM running an agent.
There is an amazing amount of functionality there, not just all the agents but all the other choices too!
So lets right+click on a VM and select Deploy ControlUp Agent.
In the next screen select OK. It will only take a minute or three and you will see the VM in the left window.
Conclusion
Now we have our hypervisors monitored, and all the VMs but yet some VMs are monitored more closely.
BTW, I am told that agent updates update every 3 seconds. I also confirmed they use less than 100 MB of RAM, and around 1% of the processor so they are low footprint agents. The Hypervisor updates every 5 seconds.
I hope that this article helps you get you started with ControlUp. I will be doing other ControlUP articles so if there is something you would like to see or learn let me know and I will do my best.
Michael
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