Sensor of The Week: SSH VMware ESX(i) Disk Sensor

If you have based your virtual infrastructure on VMware, the SSH VMware ESX(i) Disk sensor is a great way to monitor the free space on disks of a VMware ESX(i) system via Secure Shell (SSH). It shows the total free disk space in both total and percent values.

In order to being able to start monitoring the disk space of your VMware ESX(i) with this helpful sensor, please make sure you enable SSH on your VMware system. We also recommend you enter the credentials of the VMware root user in the PRTG settings of the parent device or group.

For further insights into your VMware infrastructure, PRTG also offers sensors to monitor:

• The current reading and health status (via WBEM), and
• The general status as shown in vSphere (via SOAP).

In order to keep your virtual machines from failing to power on, or to prevent error messages like, for example, "management agent or vCenter agent cannot start because the root partition is full", just add the SSH VMware ESX(i) Disk sensor to your VMware host hardware and create a notification. This way you can be sure your VMware host doesn't run out of disk space without you knowing about it.

If you want to know more about the SSH VMware ESX(i) Disk sensor and individual settings, please refer to the PRTG manual—and just get started to monitor the free disk space of your VMware host hardware!