Thank you for the amazing feedback on Dashboard Server 7.0; the VMware integration has generated a lot of excitement as it extends Dashboard Server visualizations to even more critical on-premises applications and infrastructure.

One request that came in was to enable drill down to VCenter from Dashboard Server so that engineers could deep dive an issue that was surfaced in a VMware grid tile. The great news is that you can do that today.

Let's walk through some examples. For all the scenarios, I'll assume you have the VMware provider configured - VMware vSphere provider | SquaredUp SCOM Support

Virtual Machines

Scenario - we have a list of virtual machines in Dashboard Server and we want to be able to click a virtual machine and be taken to that virtual machine in VCenter.

Step 1 - Choose the VMware Grid tile

Step 2 - Select the appropriate VMware provider

Step 3 - Scope the tile to a set of virtual machines

See item 4 here for more details on scoping.

Step 4 - Select columns to show in Dashboard Server

I have left these on the default.

Step 5 - Where the magic happens

First off, you'll need specific information about the VCenter Server:

• Name
• ID that is specified in URLs when accessing resources.

If you look at a virtual machine view in VCenter, you'll see it looks like this:

https://**VCenterServer**/ui/app/vm;nav=v/urn:vmomi:{{type}}:{{id}}:**GUID**/summary

• You will need to replace **VCenterServer** with the name or IP address of your VCenter Server
• You will need to replace **GUID** with the GUID that appears in the URL. The GUID will be the same for all objects within VCenter.
• Don't change {{type}} or {{id}} - Dashboard Server will pick these up and automatically fill them in based on the object you select (virtual machine, host, datacenter, snapshot etc.).

This is the value that you need to fill in for a virtual machine.

The URL includes /ui/app/vm and nav-v/urn:vmomi to show that this is a virtual machine. You will need to change these for other VCenter objects.

Step 6 - Publish and use

Now when I click on a virtual machine in Dashboard Server, it will take me through to VCenter and directly to the virtual machine that I clicked on.

Hosts

The process is the same except you need to:

1. Scope to hosts in step 3.
2. The URL is now

https://**VCenterServer**/ui/app/host;nav=h/urn:vmomi:{{type}}:{{id}}:**GUID**/summary

1. The GUID is the same as for virtual machine but the URL now has host rather than vm in /ui/app/host

Cluster

The URL is updated to have /ui/app/cluster

https://**VCenterServer**/ui/app/cluster;nav=h/urn:vmomi:{{type}}:{{id}}:**GUID**/summary

Datacenter

The URL is updated to have /ui/app/datacenter

https://**VCenterServer**/ui/app/datacenter;nav=h/urn:vmomi:{{type}}:{{id}}:**GUID**/summary