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    Device > VM Information Sources

    Use this tab to proactively track changes on the Virtual Machines (VMs) deployed on any of these sources—VMware ESXi server, VMware vCenter server or the Amazon Web Services, Virtual Private Cloud (AWS-VPC).
    When monitoring ESXi hosts that are part of the VM-Series NSX edition solution, use Dynamic Address Groups instead of using VM Information Sources to learn about changes in the virtual environment. For the VM-Series NSX edition solution, the NSX Manager provides Panorama with information on the NSX security group to which an IP address belongs. The information from the NSX Manager provides the full context for defining the match criteria in a Dynamic Address Group because it uses the service profile ID as a distinguishing attribute and allows you to properly enforce policy when you have overlapping IP addresses across different NSX security groups.
    Up to a maximum of 32 tags (from vCenter server and NSX Manager) that can be registered to an IP address.
    There are two ways to monitor VM Information Sources:
    • The firewall can monitor the VMware ESXi server, VMware vCenter server and the AWS-VPC environments and retrieve changes as you provision or modify the guests configured on the monitored sources. For each firewall or for each virtual system on a multiple virtual systems capable firewall, you can configure up to 10 sources.
      If your firewalls are configured in a high availability configuration:
      • in an active/passive setup, only the active firewall monitors the VM information sources.
      • in an active/active setup, only the firewall with the priority value of primary monitors the VM information sources.
      For information on how VM Information Sources and Dynamic Address Groups can work synchronously and enable you to monitor changes in the virtual environment, refer to the VM-Series Deployment Guide.
    • For IP address to user mapping, you can either configure the VM Information Sources on the Windows User-ID agent or on the firewall to monitor the VMware ESXi and vCenter server and retrieve changes as you provision or modify the guests configured on the server. Up to 100 sources are supported on the Windows User-ID agent; support for AWS is not available for the User-ID agent.
      Each VM on a monitored ESXi or vCenter server must have VMware Tools installed and running. VMware Tools provide the capability to glean the IP address(es) and other values assigned to each VM.
    To collect the values assigned to the monitored VMs, the firewall monitors the attributes in the following table.
    Attributes Monitored on a VMware Source
    Attributes Monitored on the AWS-VPC
    • UUID
    • Name
    • Guest OS
    • VM State — the power state can be poweredOff, poweredOn, standBy, and unknown.
    • Annotation
    • Version
    • Network — Virtual Switch Name, Port Group Name, and VLAN ID
    • Container Name —vCenter Name, Data Center Object Name, Resource Pool Name, Cluster Name, Host, Host IP address.
    • Architecture
    • Guest OS
    • Image ID
    • Instance ID
    • Instance State
    • Instance Type
    • Key Name
    • Placement—Tenancy, Group Name, Availability Zone
    • Private DNS Name
    • Public DNS Name
    • Subnet ID
    • Tag (key, value) (up to 18 tags supported per instance)
    • VPC ID
    Add
    —To add a new source for VM Monitoring, click
    Add
     and then fill in the details based on the source being monitored:
    Refresh Connected
    —Click to refresh the connection status; it refreshes the onscreen display. This option does not refresh the connection between the firewall and the monitored sources.
    Delete
    —Select a configured VM Information source and click to remove the configured source.

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