Virtual Host Managers
Third party hypervisors and hypervisor managers such as VMWare vCenter are called “Virtual Host Managers” (VHM). VHMs can manage one or more virtual hosts, and each virtual host can contain one or more virtual guests.
To create a VHM, navigate to VMware-based
or File-based
.
Continue according to one of the following procedures.
After it has been created and configured, data collection will be run automatically using Taskomatic. You can also begin data collection from your VHMs manually through the Web UI, by navigating to
, selecting the appropriate VHM, and clicking Refresh Data.SUSE Manager ships with a tool called virtual-host-gatherer
that can connect to VHMs using their API, and request information about virtual hosts.
virtual-host-gatherer
maintains the concept of optional modules, where each module enables a specific Virtual Host Manager.
This tool is automatically invoked nightly by Taskomatic.
Log files for the virtual-host-gatherer
tool are located at /avr/log/rhn/gather.log
.
VMware-Based
After selecting Label
, Hostname
, Port
, Username
and Password
.
Finally click the Add Virtual Host Manager button.
For detailed information on working with a VMware-based Virtual Host Manager, see administration:virtual-hosts.adoc.

File-Based
In a VMWare environment where direct connection to the SUSE Manager is not possible, a JSON file can be exported from the ESXi or vSphere host and later imported into SUSE Manager.
After selecting
enter a label and URL leading to the location of this file.
VMWare vCenter Installations without Direct Access
The file-based is not meant to be used with manually crafted files.
It only meant to be used with the output of The solution is to run |
The following JSON data is an example of the exported information in the file:
{ "examplevhost": { "10.11.12.13": { "cpuArch": "x86_64", "cpuDescription": "AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 4386", "cpuMhz": 3092.212727, "cpuVendor": "amd", "hostIdentifier": "'vim.HostSystem:host-182'", "name": "11.11.12.13", "os": "VMware ESXi", "osVersion": "5.5.0", "ramMb": 65512, "totalCpuCores": 16, "totalCpuSockets": 2, "totalCpuThreads": 16, "type": "vmware", "vms": { "vCenter": "564d6d90-459c-2256-8f39-3cb2bd24b7b0" } }, "10.11.12.14": { "cpuArch": "x86_64", "cpuDescription": "AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 4386", "cpuMhz": 3092.212639, "cpuVendor": "amd", "hostIdentifier": "'vim.HostSystem:host-183'", "name": "10.11.12.14", "os": "VMware ESXi", "osVersion": "5.5.0", "ramMb": 65512, "totalCpuCores": 16, "totalCpuSockets": 2, "totalCpuThreads": 16, "type": "vmware", "vms": { "49737e0a-c9e6-4ceb-aef8-6a9452f67cb5": "4230c60f-3f98-2a65-f7c3-600b26b79c22", "5a2e4e63-a957-426b-bfa8-4169302e4fdb": "42307b15-1618-0595-01f2-427ffcddd88e", "NSX-gateway": "4230d43e-aafe-38ba-5a9e-3cb67c03a16a", "NSX-l3gateway": "4230b00f-0b21-0e9d-dfde-6c7b06909d5f", "NSX-service": "4230e924-b714-198b-348b-25de01482fd9" } } } }
For more information, see the man page on your SUSE Manager server for virtual-host-gatherer
:
man virtual-host-gatherer
The README
file provided with the package provides background information about the type
of a hypervisor, etc.:
/usr/share/doc/packages/virtual-host-gatherer/README.md
The man page and the README
file also contain example configuration files for your reference.
Configuring Virtual Host Managers using the XMLRPC API
VHMs can be managed manually using the Web UI, or programtically using XMLRPC. If you want to to manage your VHMs with XMLRPC, you will need to configure them to use the XMLRPC APIs.
The following APIs allow you to get a list of available virtual-host-manager
modules and the parameters they require:
-
virtualhostmanager.listAvailableVirtualHostGathererModules(session)
-
virtualhostmanager.getModuleParameters(session, moduleName)
The following APIs allow you to create and delete VHMs.
The module parameter map must match the map returned by virtualhostmanager.getModuleParameters
to work correctly:
-
virtualhostmanager.create(session, label, moduleName, parameters)
-
virtualhostmanager.delete(session, label)
The following APIs return information about configured VHMs:
-
virtualhostmanager.listVirtualHostManagers(session)
-
virtualhostmanager.getDetail(session, label)