How to disable monitoring of Virtual Machines with nworks MP

In some environments, there is no need to monitor certain (or any) virtual machines.

With nworks MP, it is possible to:

  - Disable discovery of all virtual machines, and

  - Disable discovery of specific virtual machines (workaround available since 5.6).

Disable discovery of virtual machines

To disable discovery of virtual machines, it is necessary to:

Uncheck "VM and Core metrics" in nworks UI -> "Enterprise Manager" tab -> Collection Settings; then save the settings.

Disable discovery of virtual machines per container:

Large scale discovery was introduced in nworks 5.6. When SV102LS is enabled, it creates a number of VM containers per host. The discovery can be disabled per container in SCOM.

nworks allows the user to configure the number of VMs per container. To access the setting, go to nworks UI -> "Enterprise Manager" tab -> select top node on the left -> Advanced Settings -> VMsPerLargeScaleGroup. If the setting equals "1", there will be only one VM per container, so:

1. Set "VMsPerLargeScaleGroup" to "1".

2. Once you do this, wait until the topology is updated in SCOM so that there is only one VM per container. Then find the container, which holds the VM you do not want monitored.

3. Override SV102LS, disabling it for the container(s) you selected in the previous step (SCOM Authoring -> Object Discoveries -> SV102LS).

4. In nworks UI, go to "Enterprise Manager" tab -> Collection Settings and uncheck "VM and Core metrics".

5. Wait until the VMs disappear completely from SCOM topology.

6. In nworks UI, go to "Enterprise Manager" tab -> Collection Settings -> enable "VM and Core metrics".

The container will be empty in the end. It may change its health state, but the alerts view will be empty. The health is  not rolled up to the parent.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If the VM ID changes, the VM might have been moved to another container. If collection of VM and Core metrics is disabled, some of the host metrics will no longer be available since they are calculated based on VM activity.  See the Operations Guide -> Changing Data Collection Settings for details.