Installing TAS Integration for Tanzu Observability on vSphere

In my last post, Installing Tanzu Application Service on vSphere with NSX-T Networking, I walked through the process of installing TAS on vSphere with NSX-T providing the virtual networking. An arguably necessary addition to this installation is the TAS Integration for Tanzu Observability product, which will allow great insight into the health and performance of your TAS installation.

The first thing to do is download the TAS Integration for Tanzu Observability by Wavefront tile from https://network.pivotal.io/products/wavefront-nozzle/.

Click the Import a Product button in Opsman and choose the TAS Integration for Tanzu Observability tile file. When the tile is imported, click the + button next to it on the left side of the Opsman UI to move it over to the installation dashboard (it will be named Tanzu Observability by Wavefront Nozzle in Opsman).

Click on the Tanzu Observability by Wavefront Nozzle tile. Configure the AZs as appropriate for your environment. In my last post, Installing Tanzu Application Service on vSphere with NSX-T Networking, I deployed TAS to the TAS-Deployment AZ so I will deploy the TAS Integration for Tanzu Observability to the same AZ.

Click the Save button and move on to the Wavefront Proxy Config page.

Before you can configure the Wavefront Proxy Config page, you must have access to Tanzu Observability. If you don’t already have access, you can sign up for a free trial at https://www.wavefront.com/sign-up/.

Once logged in to Tanzu Observability, you’ll need to get your API URL and token. These can be obtained by clicking on the gear icon at the top right and then clicking on your user name.

Click on the API Access tab and make note of the URL and token values.

In this example, the URL is https://vmware.wavefront.com/api/ (we remove the v2/source from the end) and the token is cf391585-ca50-4ca3-a681-8e539dddd59c.

Back in Opsman on the Wavefront Proxy Config page, enter the Tanzu Observability URL and API token noted previously in the Wavefront Instance URL and Wavefront API Token fields, respectively. Enter a unique name in the User friendly hostname field.

Click the Save button and move on to the Telegraf Agent Config page.

The only thing that you have to configure on the Telegraf Agent Config page is the Foundation Name field. This will be useful when viewing metrics from multiple TAS installations as you can filter by foundation name in Tanzu Observability.

Click the Save button and move on to the Metrics Exporters page.

The only item that has to be configured on this page is the BOSH Health Check Availability Zone and you should only be able to chose the same AZ that was selected on the Assign AZs and Networks page.

Click the Save button and then click the Installation Dashboard link.

You can see that the Tanzu Observability by Wavefront Nozzle is now configured so you can can click the Review Pending Changes button.

You can unselect the TAS and NSX-T tiles as there are no changes being made to these components.

Click the Apply Changes button and watch the progress in the Opsman UI.

As the deployment progresses, you will see the bosh VM get deleted and redeployed. Once this stage is complete you should see seven new VMs get deployed and a new bosh deployment created.

bosh -d wavefront-nozzle-503e448d34a3c83b57cc vms

Using environment '172.31.0.11' as client 'ops_manager'

Task 225. Done

Deployment 'wavefront-nozzle-503e448d34a3c83b57cc'

Instance                                                     Process State  AZ              IPs          VM CID                                   VM Type  Active  Stemcell
pas-exporter-container/e82423f8-199e-4af9-bd9c-4cab80a1d16a  running        TAS-Deployment  172.31.1.19  vm-8685fe54-f0b6-404d-ac6f-76b1cfbb0c52  xlarge   true    bosh-vsphere-esxi-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.256
pas-exporter-counter/e88200ee-61bf-4be8-8afd-df80459f188d    running        TAS-Deployment  172.31.1.17  vm-24845e2c-a8f2-4fa5-9af3-30f8203a259e  medium   true    bosh-vsphere-esxi-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.256
pas-exporter-gauge/ad8bbe3e-5a31-44d4-9bd3-0195e44d46c5      running        TAS-Deployment  172.31.1.18  vm-d86c349a-642c-4cbd-a84d-6bcac78c24e5  xlarge   true    bosh-vsphere-esxi-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.256
pas-exporter-timer/840f0e70-2738-46a8-bc30-ca4602591684      running        TAS-Deployment  172.31.1.20  vm-61b8d57f-2b2f-4370-92a7-539920c8f448  medium   true    bosh-vsphere-esxi-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.256
tas-exporters/f6118014-53d8-49e2-990c-7f3e8a8eb9ff           running        TAS-Deployment  172.31.1.21  vm-768e67e3-93b4-4004-8a90-0abe764bb6c6  medium   true    bosh-vsphere-esxi-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.256
telegraf_agent/0bbf4dd7-ba66-4456-8344-f9be91bca9e6          running        TAS-Deployment  172.31.1.22  vm-1d5cfe0a-21eb-43da-a7dc-ff99927d4c1b  medium   true    bosh-vsphere-esxi-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.256
wavefront_proxy/0024ccb7-b0c5-48c6-b3ac-e58341d9a458         running        TAS-Deployment  172.31.1.16  vm-833ce605-d6c1-4529-b025-98071ba24f68  medium   true    bosh-vsphere-esxi-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.256

7 vms

Succeeded

With the deployment done, you can now look for metrics showing up in the Tanzu Observability UI. Click on the Integrations tab and then search for Tanzu Application Service. You should only see two results.

Click on the Tanzu Application Service search result and then click on the Tanzu Application Service integration.

Click on the Dashboards link to see a listing of the pre-built dashboards for the TAS integration.

You can click on any of these dashboard links to see details on the health of the component noted. For example, this is what the BOSH Director Health dashboard looks like:

Note that the Foundation value at the top right is set to “*” by default, meaning that you will see metrics from all TAS foundations reporting to your Tanzu Observability instance. You can narrow this down by selecting a specific foundation from the dropdown.

In this example, the only foundation reporting in is the one that I just deployed, cjl-tas-foundation, which matches the foundation name supplied on the Telegraf Agent Config page of the Tanzu Observability by Wavefront Nozzle tile in Opsman.

There are numerous dashboards that you can use to better understand the health of your TAS deployment and you can also pick individual metrics to view that may not be included on any particular dashboard (from the Metrics tab of the TAS Integration page).

Leave a Comment

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