Send VM annotations from VMAN to orion console

Any comment form SolarWinds?

I've been trying to get an update on this as well and I haven't been able to get anywhere. I've thought of some DIY solutions but I don't like any of them.

My first was to make the first trigger action in an alert be a PowerShell query that gathers the VMNotes using PowerCLI. From there you can pass that variable into another trigger action that sends the e-mail alert.

My next thought was to edit the SolarWinds database and manually input the data. Using a mix of powershell (particularly PowerCLI) and SQL to first gather the data then store it in that database could work. A scheduled task could run daily that gathers the VM Notes from all VMs then finds the relevant node in Orion and puts it in that database. Tons of room for error here though, especially once you consider that you might not be monitoring every single node + a VM's VM Name could differ from its Host Name, which Orion seems to use Host name as the Node Name.

The thought of using PowerCLI for any of this is not ideal though because you have to connect to your vCenter servers first then run the query. Too many moving parts for something triggering as often as these solutions would.

Then of course its simply SolarWinds actually implementing this feature to make all of our lives easier. I don't see how it can be very hard for them to add - they are already collecting boat loads of data about our virtual infrastructures.

I've been trying to get an update on this as well and I haven't been able to get anywhere. I've thought of some DIY solutions but I don't like any of them.

My first was to make the first trigger action in an alert be a PowerShell query that gathers the VMNotes using PowerCLI. From there you can pass that variable into another trigger action that sends the e-mail alert.

My next thought was to edit the SolarWinds database and manually input the data. Using a mix of powershell (particularly PowerCLI) and SQL to first gather the data then store it in that database could work. A scheduled task could run daily that gathers the VM Notes from all VMs then finds the relevant node in Orion and puts it in that database. Tons of room for error here though, especially once you consider that you might not be monitoring every single node + a VM's VM Name could differ from its Host Name, which Orion seems to use Host name as the Node Name.

The thought of using PowerCLI for any of this is not ideal though because you have to connect to your vCenter servers first then run the query. Too many moving parts for something triggering as often as these solutions would.

Then of course its simply SolarWinds actually implementing this feature to make all of our lives easier. I don't see how it can be very hard for them to add - they are already collecting boat loads of data about our virtual infrastructures.

I found a solution! I have simply spent xmas memorizing the annotations to all my 3000 virtual machines Seriously though, SolarWinds dev, get the finger out! This would be an obvious feature ins any size environment. VM names mean nothing anymore in modern deployments.