VMware

VMware DRS Fling graphical visibility tool

I had seen just a day or so ago via a tweet by @DuncanYB that a new fling was released giving us a graphical interface to see DRS data from vCenter – very cool!  I wanted to give it a whirl, so downloaded the OVA today and installed.  Let’s take a look at provisioning the VMware DRS Fling graphical visibility tool appliance and a quick walkthrough of the interface.

VMware DRS Fling graphical visibility tool

After you have downloaded the new fling, simply deploy it like any other OVA appliance.  One thing to make sure of as I found out after trying to power on the appliance was that you need to have a Network Protocol Profile setup or else you may receive an error about the gateway and other variables when the vApp tries to boot.

After that, you simply boot the OVA and access the following URLs:

  • https://<drslensipaddress>:5480
  • https://<drslensipaddress>/drs/app

The first thing you are prompted to do when logging into the /drs/app URL is setup a connection to vCenter.

drsfling01

Trust the certificate that is presented.

drsfling02

The interface is HTML 5 and is very responsive.  It will take a little while to start building a dataset so be patient.

drsfling03

Options for monitoring duration, cpu readytime, memory swap, etc…

drsfling04

The menus at the top of the screen provide the various areas of detail into DRS that you get:

  • Summary, Happiness, Cluster Balance, vMotion, Operations

drsfling05

This has to be the best naming ever – Happiness.  This denotes the happiness of the VMs running in the monitored cluster.

drsfling06

The Cluster Balance visual provides a really nice graphical representation of the balance of the cluster resources.

drsfling07

The vMotion graphical shows DRS initiated vMotion, User initiated vMotion, and Exceptions over the specified graphical timeline.

drsfling08

The Operations tab shows various information here:

  • Datacenter-PowerOn, Cluster-Reconfigure, Host-ExitMaintenanceMode, DRS Initiated vMotion, vCenter Notification Checker, User Initiated vMotion, VM PowerOff, and Exceptions.

drsfling09

VAMI interface for DRS Lens Fling

The fling has a familiar interface and port, 5480, for managing system settings such as IP, DNS, and other system configuration.  Here is where you would set any static network addressing, etc.

drsfling10

Thoughts

The VMware DRS Fling graphical visibility tool is a really cool way to visualize DRS operations in a vCenter environment.  It is cool to see the new flings as they most likely represent new functionality and visibility that will be implemented into the HTML5 vCenter interface in future versions.  Again, you can download the VMware fling here.

Subscribe to VirtualizationHowto via Email 🔔

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Brandon Lee

Brandon Lee is the Senior Writer, Engineer and owner at Virtualizationhowto.com and has over two decades of experience in Information Technology. Having worked for numerous Fortune 500 companies as well as in various industries, Brandon has extensive experience in various IT segments and is a strong advocate for open source technologies. Brandon holds many industry certifications, loves the outdoors and spending time with family.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.