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VMware vCenter and ESXi

At the end of this page Ferrule will be reading vCenter 7 or 8: hosts, datastores, virtual machines, and vCenter's own alarms. Standalone ESXi hosts are read through vCenter.

In vCenter

  1. Administration → Single Sign On → Users and Groups: add a user in vsphere.local, such as telemetry, with a long password.
  2. Administration → Access Control → Global Permissions → Add: that user, role Read-only, with Propagate to children ticked.

In Ferrule

  1. Click Settings ⚙ and find Add a source.
  2. Kind: VMware vCenter. Fill in Name (anything you'll recognise), Address and User.
  3. Ferrule writes two lines, such as SOURCE_1=... and SOURCE_1_SECRET=.... Click Copy.
  4. Add both lines to your settings, and replace the placeholder in the _SECRET line with the password:
  1. Open the ferrule stack and find Environment variables.
  2. Add or change the lines. In Advanced mode you can paste several at once.
  3. Click Pull and redeploy.
  1. Open .env in the folder where you cloned ferrule-deploy.
  2. Add or change the lines.
  3. Run docker compose up -d in that folder.

Ferrule never asks for the password

It only goes into your settings. The Settings page shows whether it's set, never what it is.

How to know it worked

  • Settings → Sources lists it, with the state polling. Right after an update it says waiting for first poll for up to a minute.
  • It appears on the Virtualization tab.

What it alerts on

vCenter's own alarms. Ferrule adds no thresholds of its own: you tune the alarms in vCenter as usual. Acknowledging an alarm in vCenter clears it in Ferrule.

Certificates

Most vCenters use their own certificate authority, so Ferrule doesn't check the certificate by default. Once vCenter has one the container trusts, tick Verify TLS certificate in Add a source.