vRealize Network Insight provides a robust search for all the entities in your environment.

vRealize Network Insight provides a list of pre-defined list of search queries out-of-the-box under Help > Useful Searches. You can refer or use these queries as a syntax to structure the search query, and modify them as per your requirement. Each of these queries are associated with a description and a set of tags. You can also filter these search queries based on a keyword or a specific tag.

To run the query, you can click on a query in the list. When you select a query that does not require a parameter value, the query would be executed directly. If a query requires a parameter value, the homepage of vRealize Network Insight opens in a new tab which shows the query with the sample value. You can replace them with the actual values like host name, application name, that exists in your setup.

The Supported Properties option on the Help page displays the list of entities, which when expanded displays all the supported properties, description, sample queries and tags of the particular entity. You can filter the properties based on the tags.

You can use the View Search Query option on the widget to see the search queries that are associated with each widget on the dashboards and pinboards. Also vRealize Network Insight enables you to copy the query, which you can modify and execute on the search bar. If multiple sub-widgets exists in a widget (for example, an Overview widget on a dashboard), you can see the queries for each sub-widget that are associated with the respective name.
Note: As of now, the View Search Query option is available on the following dashboards only:
  • NSX Manager Dashboard
  • Flow Insights Dashboard
  • Application Dashboard
  • Home Page
  • VM Dashboard
  • Host Dashboard
Here are some of the terms that can help you with the search feature in vRealize Network Insight:
  • Entities: A data center consists of physical and logical building blocks such as host, virtual machine, switch, router, NSX Manager and so on. The instances of these blocks are entities.
  • Property: An entity consists of multiple properties. A property can be either a configuration property or a metric property.
    1. Configuration Property: An entity can be described by its configuration properties. A configuration property can be either integer or real value or a string or a boolean value.
      • Name, CPU cores, and operating system for virtual machines
      • Name, and number of virtual machines for hosts
    2. Metric Property: Any property which measures a particular characteristic of an entity is a metric property. The values of metric properties are captured at regular intervals of time. CPU usage, memory usage, and network usage for virtual machines are some examples of metric properties.
  • Aggregate Functions: They can be used in the search queries to compute the total number of instances of a particular entity type or maximum property of an entity. vRealize Network Insight supports following aggregation functions.
    1. sum
    2. max
    3. min
    4. avg

When you search for entities, the software displays the entities that match your search query on the Results page.

For each search query, the search bar suggests you the next term that you can use to narrow down your search results. For example, when you enter the term vm, the search bar displays a possible list of terms that you can add to your existing term to narrow down your search results. The search bar also validates each search query. A check mark denotes a valid search query and a cross mark denotes an invalid search query.