Monitoring the Virtual Infrastructure for authentication attempts with Perl

Rick Vanover recently wrote a terrific blog on how to monitor the VI database for authentication attempts. While you can certainly monitor the database directly, VMware does not support this option. A supported alternative would be using the SDK to collect historical authentication events and monitor the VI servers in real-time for new ones.

Collecting historical authentication events is quite easy. I whipped up a quick Perl script that shows you how to do just that. printloginhistory.pl will print out a VI server’s authentication events with the ability to filter on a specific user. The script is extremely short and easy to modify.

In order to collect authentication events in real-time, you need to monitor the latest events as they occur. Luckily I also have an arsenal in my handy-dandy utility belt that does just this - Monét.

As Rick’s and my methods show, there is almost always more than one way to accomplish a task. Just pick the one that you’re most comfortable with and forge ahead.

Happy forging!