The new PRO-Enabled management pack enables integration with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) via PRO-Tips. This integration enables scenarios in which statistics and health events collected from Big-IPs by the core management pack are used to trigger actions by VMM.
One example of this kind of scenario is to use VMM to start up virtual machines when a traffic spike starts overwhelming your existing pool of servers. The same virtual machines can be suspended or stopped when the traffic load returns to normal. We’ve shown how the management pack can be used to enable these scenarios in a series of data orchestration videos. The new PRO-Enabled management gives the VMM administrator control and auditing of the actions that VMM is instructed to take.
When the PRO pack is installed, a new folder installed into Systems Center Operations Manager:
The new views available are:
- F5 PRO Actions: Clicking on this view causes available PRO actions to show up in the actions pane. Currently the only action is “Discover PRO Pool Members”
- F5 PRO Alerts: Any PRO alerts that you enable will be shown here. These alerts cause VMM to generate PRO tips.
- F5 PRO Monitored Pool Members: This view shows all pool members that have PRO alerts enabled.
After the PRO Pack is installed, the PRO monitors need to be enabled and configured in order to start functioning. The configuration page for the “Add Server Resource” monitor is shown below:
By default, the configuration of the monitor is as follows:
- The monitor is disabled
- The Big-IP statistic that it monitors is LTM Pool Member Server Current Connections
- The monitor is in a healthy state when current connections are less than or equal to zero
- The monitor is in a critical state when the current connections are greater than zero
The monitor goes to a critical state when it detects incoming connections because the pool member that is being monitored has been set up on the Big-IP to receive connections only when the primary pool is overwhelmed. The data orchestration videos go into more detail on this setup.
When the monitor goes into a critical state it creates a PRO alert and causes VMM to generate a PRO Tip which can be viewed from the PRO Tip window:
The VMM administrator can then choose to implement the tip or dismiss the tip. Implementing the tip will cause new server resources to spin up. Some details of what the tip actually does can be configured from within Systems Center.
The VMM administrator can also set options that govern how all PRO tips are handled:
- PRO tips can be enabled/disabled by severity level
- Tips can be configured to automatically run by severity level
Once the action has taken place, the Jobs windows from within VMM can be used to view the audit trail of the actions that were taken by implementing the PRO tip:
Please visit the F5 Management Pack downloads page to download the new PRO pack. In the coming weeks we’ll have more in-depth coverage of what you can do with the PRO pack, so stay tuned!
