One of the tasks after adding the vRealize Operations Content Pack to vRealize LogInsight, is configuring the vRealize LogInsight agent (liagent) on your vRops nodes. The liagent is installed by default on the vRops appliance, however you have to do some configuration steps on each vRops node before the agent becomes active.

Enable SSH on the vROps node

It’s preferable to use SSH to configure the liagent. By default SSH isn’t enabled on a vRops node. To enable SSH, logon to the vRops console through the remote console option in vSphere. By default the root account has an empty password. The first time you log on to the console, you will be asked to configure a password.

After a succesful logon, start de SSH daemon:

/etc/sshd start

And if you want to start automatically after the node is rebooted enter:

chkconfig sshd enable

More info here.

Edit liagent.ini

The liagent configuration file can be found here: /etc/liagent.ini (which is actually a symbolic link to /var/lib/loginsight-agent/liagent.ini). Set the following parameters in this file:

hostname=loginsight.viktorious.local protocol=cfapi port=9543 ssl=yes ssl_ca_path=/etc/ssl/certs/root-viktorious-ca.pem

Specific settings that are required for an SSL setup with CA signed certificates is the port, ssl and ssl_ca_path setting. The file root-viktorious-ca.pem (or whatever its named in your environment) should contain the CA certificate and certificate chain if applicable. Creating this certificate is pretty simple:

touch root-viktorious-ca.pem chmod 644 root-viktorious-ca.pem

Now open the file with an editor (VI) and paste the certificate information into this file.

As a last step you should edit and add the following line to the liagent.ini file:

[common|filelog] tags={"vmw_vr_ops_appname":"vROps", "vmw_vr_ops_clustername":"backend-cluster", "vmw_vr_ops_clusterrole":"master", "vmw_vr_ops_nodename":"vrops-master", "vmw_vr_ops_hostname":"vrops.viktorious.nl"}

You don’t have to specify other tags, because these are pushed through the agent configuration in Log Insight itself (a lot of other articles are talking about this, but since vRops 6.4 this is not required anymore). The values for the vmw_vr_ops_clusterrole tag are: Master, Replica, Data, Remote Collector. Also, don’t change the vmw_vr_ops_appname tag. You can change the other values according to your needs.

Now restart the Log Insight agent:

/etc/init.d/liagent restart

And check if everything is working as expected in the liagent log in /var/log/loginsight-agent/.

Configure an Agent Group

For vRealize Log Insight to know it’s dealing with log files from a vRealize Operations node, you have to create a vRops Agent Group and link your vRops node(s) to this Agent Group. This process is straightforward:

Select the vRops 6.4 or higher template in vRealize LogInsight under Administration->Agents; Click copy template and enter a descriptive name and click copy; You have a new group available. Now link your vRops node(s) to this new group through the hostname or IP address.

That’s it, after a short while the vRops dashboards from the vRops Content Pack will be populated with data!