The Environment widget displays the resources which collects data. You can create one or more lists in VMware Aria Operations for the resources that you add to your custom dashboards.

How the Environment Widget and Configuration Options Work

The Environment widget lists the number of resources by object or groups them by object type. You can add the Environment widget to one or more custom dashboards and configure it to display data that is important to different dashboard users. The data that appears in the widget is based on the configured options for each widget instance.

You edit an Environment widget after you add it to a dashboard. The changes you make to the options help create a custom widget to meet the needs of the dashboard users.

Screenshot of the widget lists two virtual machines, 13 datasores, and four host systems.

Where You Find the Environment Widget

The widget might be included on any of your custom dashboards. From the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards to see your configured dashboards.

To customize the data that appears in the dashboard widget, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. To create your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, click Create. To edit your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, select the dashboard you want to edit and select Actions > Edit. Toggle between the Views and Widgets option to view and add a widget or view to the dashboard. The widgets list panel displays a list of all the predefined widgets. Drag a widget to the dashboard workspace in the upper panel.

Environment Widget Configuration Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Edit Widget icon to configure the widget.

The configuration options are grouped into one or more sections. You can select the objects on which you want to base the widget data and refine the objects in the following sections. Each section filters the objects further and pushes the filtered objects to the next section. The widget data is based on the objects that are the output of the last section.

The Configuration section provides general configuration options for the widget.

The Input Data section provides options to specify input for the widget. This section appears when the widget is in self provider mode.

Option Description
Title

Enter a custom title that identifies this widget from other instances that are based on the same widget template.

Configuration
Refresh Content

Activate or deactivate the automatic refreshing of the data in this widget.

If not activated, the widget is updated only when the dashboard is opened or when you click the Refresh button on the widget in the dashboard.

Refresh Interval

If you activate the Refresh Content option, specify how often to refresh the data in this widget.

Self Provider
Indicates whether the objects for which data appears in the widget are defined in the widget or provided by another widget.
  • On. You define the objects for which data appears in the widget.
  • Off. You configure other widgets to provide the objects to the widget using the dashboard widget interactions options.
Input Data
Object

Search for objects in your environment and select the object on which you are basing the widget data. You can also click the Add Object icon and select an object from the object list. You can use the Filter text box to refine the object list and the Tag Filter pane to select an object based on tag values.