========================================= Introduction

This script is designed to leverage the existing VMWare vCenter alarms interface to forward alerts to Nagios.

========================================= Pre-Install Requirements

• NRDP Must be installed and configured on the Nagios server

========================================= Upgrading

There is no upgrade path for this plugin. The old plugin should be removed and the full install instructions for this version should be followed.

========================================= Installation

Extract the vmware_sender directory onto your vCenter servers. Ensure there are NO SPACES to the extracted path. NOTE: As of the the time of writing, I've been unable to get vCenter to execute a Powershell script if there is a space in the path. If you have a workaround please contact me.

========================================= Configuration

Below is a list of valid commands for the vmware_sender.ini file and what they are for:
[main]
strip_fqdn - 1 = Remove the fully qualified domain name from a hostname, 0 = Do not remove FQDN from a hostname.
process_perfdata - 1 = Attempt to process performance data if possible, 0 = Do not process perfdata.
hostname_case - lower = Convert the hostname to lowercase, upper = convert the hostname to uppercase, first-upper = convert the first letter of a hostname to uppercase, none = do not convert case.

[logging]
log_enable - 1 = Enable writing information to the log file, 0 = Do not write to log file.
log_dir - The directory or full path to the directory that contains the vmware_sender log files.
log_name - The logfile name.
log_rotate - daily = Rotate log files daily, weekly = Rotate log files weekly, monthly = Rotate log files monthly log_backlogs - Number of backlogs to keep.

[map_]
nrdpurl - Nagios NRDP URL e.g. http://nagios/nrdp/
nrdptoken - The NRDP token required for auth.
hostname - The Nagios host to send the alarm information to.
service - The Nagios service on the above host to send the alarm information to.
state - The state to send to Nagios, this can be in either numeric (0,1,2,3), string(ok, warning, critical, unknown) or vmware(green, yellow, red) format.
output - The information to display for the alarm in Nagios.
checktype - 0 = Send alarm as passive, 1 = Send alarm as active.

Any values assigned to variables under a map_ heading wrapped in dollar ($$) symbols will attempt to access an environment variable.

You can find more information on special VMWare alarm environment variables at: http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx-vcenter/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.bsa.doc_40/vc_admin_guide/working_with_alarms/r_alarm_environment_variables.html

========================================= Usage

Command line options:
./vmware_sender.ps1 [-nrdpurl -nrdptoken -hostname -service -state -output -activecheck <0/1>] | [-map ] | [-help]

VMWare execution usage:
"cmd.exe" "/c echo.|powershell -NonInteractive -File C:\Path\To\vmware_sender\vmware_sender.ps1"

With no command line options as shown above the script will automatically use map_default in the vmware_sender.ini for its configuration.

The below example shows you how to define a custom map using map_vsc which is included by default:
"cmd.exe" "/c echo.|powershell -NonInteractive -File C:\Path\To\vmware_sender\vmware_sender.ps1 -map vsc"

If you define the hostname or any of the other nagios options via the commandline it will always take precedence anything specified in the INI files.
Below is a list of all the available command line switches:
-nrdpurl
The URL used to access the remote NRDP agent. i.e. http://nagiosip/nrdp/
-nrdptoken
The authentication token used to access the remote NRDP agent.
-hostname
The name of the host associated with the passive host/service check result.
-service
The name of the service associated with this check result.
-state
The state of the service. Valid values are: OK, Green, WARNING, Yellow, CRITICAL, Red, UNKNOWN
-output
Text output to be sent as the passive check result.
-activecheck
Used to specify active or passive check, 0 = active, 1 = passive. Defaults to passive.
-help
Display this help text.

========================================= Patch notes

v2.0

• Plugin ported to Powershell v2.0
• Improved logging, including better output and log rotation.
• More options for configuring the Nagios output and how the alarm maps back to Nagios.
• Significant improvements to the robustness of the script execution, no more failures to execute by vCenter.
• For those crazy enough to try to use it for gathering performance data it now attempts to learn about more kinds of metrics.

v1.0

• First Relase.