VMware announced today the addition of partner content packs for the vCenter Log Insight product. So what is a content pack and why should you care?
Content packs are immutable, or read-only, plugins to Log Insight that provide pre-defined knowledge about specific types of events such as log messages. The goal of a content pack is to provide knowledge about a specific set of events in a format easily digestible by administrators, engineers, monitoring teams, and executives. A content pack is made up of information that can be saved from either the Dashboards or Interactive Analytics pages in Log Insight. This includes:
- Queries
- Fields
- Aggregations
- Alerts
- Dashboards
By default, Log Insight ships with the vSphere content pack, but additional content packs can be imported as needed. In addition, any Log Insight user can create a content pack for private or public consumption.
Today, VMware announced (https://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-partners-content-packs-log-insight-081513) a marketplace (https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/loginsight) where content packs can be downloaded. In the marketplace, several partners have already posted content packs. These include content packs from:
- EMC (http://codyhosterman.com/2013/08/09/the-vmax-content-pack-for-vmware-vcenter-log-insight/)
- Hytrust
- Netapp
- VCE
Jon Herlocker also has some great insight about partner content packs in his latest blog post available here: http://cto.vmware.com/log-insight-now-understands-more-of-your-it-environment-with-partner-content-packs. Finally, a new communities site was also made available here: http://loginsight.vmware.com.
© 2013, Steve Flanders. All rights reserved.
