Managing VIM Socket License

timt  wrote: I have a question, that somehow support does not seem to know the answer. I brought a 320 Socket license. I added a few vCenters, and within those vcenters, there are over hundreds of ESX host. At the time of purchase, this 320 license count was recommended by solarwinds. Now, after having expanded and deploying more ESX, the VIM is alerting me for max license usage.  That is a given, if the ESX host are automatically taking up license count when added into vCenter. What I am finding out is that SolarWinds VIM does not have the capability to 'manage' the socket license directly on the VIM module.  Techinical support is telling me I must manage the license from vCenter itself.  It just does not make sense, how am I supposed to manage the ESX host license count from vCenter?  Am I supposed to enable monitoring from vCenter if I want to monitor with VIM, then remove from vCenter if I do not?  This sounds so backward.  Virtualization Manager Licensing Model

Exclude hosts from monitoring

If there are not enough SolarWinds Virtualization Manager licenses to cover every powered on virtual machine managed by a vCenter server, change the access permissions of the vCenter user account to limit what it can access. Restricting the virtual machines accessible by the user account reduces the number of virtual machines or sockets SolarWinds Virtualization Manager can collect data from. This way you can control which virtual machines are being monitored. You can control access permissions in the VMware client by assigning the No Access role to the vCenter account for the hosts and virtual machines you want to restrict.

This is correct advice from SolarWinds support. In this case, you've configured a monitoring account that allows SolarWinds access and visibility into your monitored environment. This monitoring account grants VMAN access to your vCenter which knows about which entities you'd like to exclude. By managing the permissions of that monitoring account that is configured in vCenter, you essentially will limit the visibility of the entities that are less important to you.

timt  wrote: I have a question, that somehow support does not seem to know the answer. I brought a 320 Socket license. I added a few vCenters, and within those vcenters, there are over hundreds of ESX host. At the time of purchase, this 320 license count was recommended by solarwinds. Now, after having expanded and deploying more ESX, the VIM is alerting me for max license usage.  That is a given, if the ESX host are automatically taking up license count when added into vCenter. What I am finding out is that SolarWinds VIM does not have the capability to 'manage' the socket license directly on the VIM module.  Techinical support is telling me I must manage the license from vCenter itself.  It just does not make sense, how am I supposed to manage the ESX host license count from vCenter?  Am I supposed to enable monitoring from vCenter if I want to monitor with VIM, then remove from vCenter if I do not?  This sounds so backward.  Virtualization Manager Licensing Model

Exclude hosts from monitoring

If there are not enough SolarWinds Virtualization Manager licenses to cover every powered on virtual machine managed by a vCenter server, change the access permissions of the vCenter user account to limit what it can access. Restricting the virtual machines accessible by the user account reduces the number of virtual machines or sockets SolarWinds Virtualization Manager can collect data from. This way you can control which virtual machines are being monitored. You can control access permissions in the VMware client by assigning the No Access role to the vCenter account for the hosts and virtual machines you want to restrict.

This is correct advice from SolarWinds support. In this case, you've configured a monitoring account that allows SolarWinds access and visibility into your monitored environment. This monitoring account grants VMAN access to your vCenter which knows about which entities you'd like to exclude. By managing the permissions of that monitoring account that is configured in vCenter, you essentially will limit the visibility of the entities that are less important to you.

From a user perspective, I am going to have to agree with timt​, that is not what the answer *should* be.  I should be able to disable polling for a host in the virtualization manager page in Orion, and it no longer counts against my licenses. 

From the programming perspective, I understand that there is a LOT of work that vman does is at the vcenter level.  So if I move a VM to a host that is not being monitored, you would actually have to add code to exclude this VM from gathering the virtual machine details, exclude it from all of the app stack mappings, etc.  Then go and delete all of the existing vmware historical information, because from vmans perspective it is no longer a VM, though it might still be a node in NPM/SAM.  Why add code, complexity, and bugs when there is a workable solution.

Brian Scott​ you nailed this plain and simple.

If by default, VMAN Basic is included with SAM for all Host, then why am I not allowed to change to basics for the ones I don't need extensive VIM polling and only use VIM on the ones that I need?  If I was to manage this via vCenter, and exclude it entirely, I would not be able to even get the basic VMAN Polling.

If this was the case, then why should I even need VIM even at all?  This is absurd for SolarWinds to even think that we have to manage our license on the vCenter permission console. 

At this point, I feel betrayed by SolarWinds, as when I purchased this module, this 'HUGE' fact was not brought to my attention, having known this, I would have purchased a different solution.

I was able to manually change the polling method using SWQL Studio. Here's what I did:

1. Find the URI of the ESX host you want to change using this SWQL query:
   select URI from Orion.VIM.Hosts where HostName = '<the name of the ESX host>'
2. In the Object Explorer, find Orion.VIM.Hosts.
3. Right-click on Orion.VIM.Hosts and choose "Update" from the pop-up menu. This will open a new tab, "Update - Orion.VIM.Hosts"
4. In the Value column of the SwisUri row, paste the ESX Host URI.
5. In the Value column of the PollingSource row, enter either 0 (to switch to Basic polling) or 2 (to switch to VMAN Orion polling).
6. Click the "Update" button.

Is there a new version of SWQL that can update directly to the DB?

I ran the query and does not have a 'right-click' option to update.

I have SWQL Studio 2.5.0.214. If you install the current Orion SDK, you'll get the newest SWQL Studio.

m-milligan​ can you take a SS of how to do this?  I have the same SWQL version, but do not have a 'right-click' to-update option.

Sure! Here's what you should see: