[VMware] Editing autodiscovered VMs

[henrikejg]

We got a need to add more Templates to autodiscovered VMs.

As we know, autodiscovered hosts and VMs are "read only" and new templates cannot be added. I have found a bunch of materials dealing with this, but none of them has a definitive solution.

I made some tests, and found that a database field of hosts table appers to be the key.

Every zabbix autodiscovered host has the value 4 in the "flags" field.
Every editable host (manually added) has the value 0 instead.

In the attachments we can see that the same autodiscovered host can be editable, or readonlye, depending on the value of the "flags" field of hosts table.

My point is, what is/are the impact/s of that change?

Tryed to found more info at the souce code, but it's too much for me.
A keyword that I found in the sources is ZBX_FLAG_DISCOVERY_RULE, that appers to deal with this field, but again I cant follow the entire flow.

Anyone knows the purpose of that field, and the impact of manually changing it?

Thanks

[onallion]

I would suggest you take a look at this:

https://github.com/dav3860/vmbix/tree/e9353d239cd5632cb71db1ceb9fbe01dc03a068b

You can also just manually create the hosts and attach whatever templates you want to them, if there aren't too many this would be the fastest solution.
Also, if you're using this to discover VMs, I wouldn't. Install Zabbix Agent on them and create a network discovery. I only use the Vmware template for the ESXi hosts.

[henrikejg]

I would suggest you take a look at this:

https://github.com/dav3860/vmbix/tree/e9353d239cd5632cb71db1ceb9fbe01dc03a068b

You can also just manually create the hosts and attach whatever templates you want to them, if there aren't too many this would be the fastest solution.
Also, if you're using this to discover VMs, I wouldn't. Install Zabbix Agent on them and create a network discovery. I only use the Vmware template for the ESXi hosts.

We used to use vmbix in an old zabbix 2.0 installation, but now we really want to use the regular methods.

Our environment consists in around 1000 of VMs, so the manual insertion is not that effective.

In addition, the regular autodiscovery method monitors the VMs by the VMware perspective, and the zabbix agent gives the O.S. perspective. We want both, and thats que objective.

[onallion]

Is there really a difference between VM and OS perspective anymore?
I remember reading an old VMWare article that tested this and found almost no difference.