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Verax NMS VMware ESX/ESXi/vSphere management plugin enables easy monitoring, alerting, health check, management and performance reporting for VMware ESX/ESXi and vSphere servers. Supported versions include 3.5, 4.x and higher. VMware vSphere API is used as the management protocol.

General view

The view presents general server information:

• Visualization of hierarchical vCenter structure: data center, computing resources, hosts, data stores and virtual machines (VMs)
• Server configuration information:
  • Product ID, vendor, name, version and build info (e.g. VMware ESXi 5.0.0 build-469512, Locale build: 000, Locale version: INTL)
  • API version and type (e.g. HostAgent 5.0)
  • Provisioning and shell access support status
• VMware event log: event creation time, message, user and host name

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Datacenter view

This view presents datacenter level information (a datacenter is a logical entity containing multiple compute resources):

• Networks: name, IP pool, accessibility flag
• Virtual machines: power state, guest operating system name, status, last modification date and uptime
• Datastores: inventory of datatstores with:
  • Name, accessible flag, capacity/free/uncommitted space, URL, filesystem, maintenance mode flag
  • Datastore parameter list, such as "maximum file size", "per-file provisioning" and others
  • List of virtual machines using the datastore
• Detailed vCenter statistics: number of virtual machines, data stores, CPU loads, datastores usage and others
• Detailed statistics for each datastore: write rate, I/O control maximum queue depth, such as power status, uptime CPU usage, memory usage and others, reads per second, writes per second, average read and write rates and others

Compute resources view

Compute resources are logical entities grouping hosts, CPUs, network and other resource pools. The compute resources view presents the following information:

• CPU and memory: total/effective CPU GHz, effective memory, CPU cores, CPU threads, hosts, etc.
• Datstores
• Other resource pools

Hosts view

The view displays information about a physical host (containing multiple VMs):

• General information: powerOn status, uptime, hardware model (e.g. VMware Virtual Platform), CPU cores, memory size license product name (e.g. VMware ESX server), BIOS version, API type, etc.
• Performance statistics for: CPUs, memory, disk and network transfers, etc.
• Capability parameters such as "VLAN tagging supported", "Max running VMs", etc.
• CPU: # of cores, assigned sockets, speed information, statuses, hyper-threading status and performance statistics such as utilization, idle, user and wait times, etc.
• Detailed information about assigned resources: memory, datastores and networks
• Virtual machines:
  • General information: name, power state, OS name, fault tolerance, vMotion status and others
  • Virtual devices
  • Runtime statistics
  • Flags and capabilities
  • Compute resources: CPU, memory, disks and networks

Health sensors

The plugin offers predefined, built-in health sensors for instant health checking of virtualization infrastructure elements such as CPUs, software components and others.

Management actions

The plugin offers virtual machine management actions such as shutdown or start, that can be used in conjunction with NMS business rules in order to create IT automation scenarios. For instance, when a web service running on an Apache Tomcat instance within a virtual machine stops responding, restart the entire machine.

Sensors, counters and alarms

The plugin contains predefined templates for most commonly monitored items (e.g. threads, CPU, memory, applications and others) with default sensors and counters compatible with the vSphere client. Most important, selected templates are provided in the table below (other additional sensors and performance counters can be added as required):

CPU

VMware CPU usage as a percentage during the interval

VMware Total CPU capacity reserved by virtual machines

VMware Total CPU usage

VMware Total time that the CPU spent in an idle state

VMware CPU utilization as a percentage during the interval

VMware CPU utilization of the corresponding core

VMware Total CPU capacity reserved by and available for virtual machines

 

Datastore

VMware Average number of read commands issued per second to the datastore during the collection interval

VMware Average number of write commands issued per second to the datastore during the collection interval

VMware Rate of reading data from the datastore

VMware Rate of writing data to the datastore

VMware The average time a read from the datastore takes

VMware The average time a write to the datastore takes

VMware Storage I/O Control size-normalized I/O latency

VMware Storage I/O Control aggregated IOPS

 

Disk

VMware Average amount of time taken during the collection interval to process a SCSI command issued by the Guest OS to the virtual machine

VMware Average amount of time spent in the VMkernel queue, per SCSI command, during the collection interval

VMware Highest latency value across all disks used by the host

VMware Maximum queue depth

VMware Average number of disk reads per second during the collection interval

VMware Average number of disk writes per second during the collection interval

VMware Average number of SCSI commands issued per second during the collection interval

VMware Aggregated disk I/O rate. For hosts, this metric includes the rates for all virtual machines running on the host during the collection interval.

VMware Number of disk reads during the collection interval

VMware Number of disk writes during the collection interval

VMware Average number of kilobytes read from the disk each second during the collection interval

VMware Average number of kilobytes written to disk each second during the collection interval

VMware Number of SCSI commands issued during the collection interval

VMware Number of SCSI commands aborted during the collection interval

VMware Number of SCSI-bus reset commands issued during the collection interval

VMware Average amount of time, in milliseconds, to complete read from the physical device

VMware Average amount of time, in milliseconds, spent by VMKernel processing each SCSI read command

VMware Average amount of time taken during the collection interval to process a SCSI read command issued from the Guest OS to the virtual machine

VMware Average amount of time taken during the collection interval per SCSI read command in the VMKernel queue

VMware Average amount of time, in milliseconds, to write to the physical device

VMware Average amount of time, in milliseconds, spent by VMKernel processing each SCSI write command

VMware Average amount of time taken during the collection interval to process a SCSI write command issued by the Guest OS to the virtual machine

VMware Average amount time taken during the collection interval per SCSI write command in the VMKernel queue

VMware Average amount of time, in milliseconds, to complete a SCSI command from the physical device

VMware Average amount of time, in milliseconds, spent by VMkernel processing each SCSI command

 

Memory

VMware Memory usage as percentage of total configured or available memory

VMware Amount of machine memory or physical memory that is mapped for a virtual machine or a host

VMware Amount of memory that is actively used, as estimated by VMkernel based on recently touched memory pages

VMware Amount of guest memory that is shared with other virtual machines, relative to a single virtual machine or to all powered-on virtual machines on a host

VMware Memory that contains 0s only

VMware Amount of memory that is unreserved

VMware Amount of memory that is used by swap

VMware Amount of machine memory that is shared by all powered-on virtual machines and vSphere services on the host

VMware VMkernel virtual address space dedicated to VMkernel main heap and related data

VMware Free address space in the VMkernel's main heap

VMware One of four threshold levels representing the percentage of free memory on the host. The counter value determines swapping and ballooning behavior for memory reclamation.

VMware Amount of memory allocated by the virtual machine memory control driver (vmmemctl), which is installed with VMware Tools

VMware Memory (KB) consumed by the virtualization infrastructure for running the VM

VMware Total amount of memory reservation used by powered-on virtual machines and vSphere services on the host

VMware Amount swapped-in to memory from disk

VMware Amount of memory swapped-out to disk

VMware Amount of memory consumed by a virtual machine, host, or cluster

VMware VMkernel for core functionality, such as device drivers and other internal uses

VMware Rate at which memory is swapped from disk into active memory during the interval

VMware Rate at which memory is being swapped from active memory to disk during the current interval

VMware Amount of memory actively being written to by the VM

VMware Amount of memory compressed by ESX

VMware Rate of memory compression for the VM

VMware Rate of memory decompression for the VM

VMware Total amount of memory reservation used by and available for powered-on virtual machines and vSphere services on the host

 

Network

VMware Network utilization (combined transmit- and receive-rates) during the interval

VMware Number of packets received during the interval

VMware Number of packets transmitted during the interval

VMware Average rate at which data was received during the interval

VMware Average rate at which data was transmitted during the interval

VMware Number of receives dropped

VMware Number of transmits dropped

 

Power

VMware Current power usage

VMware Maximum allowed power usage

VMware Total energy used since last stats reset

VMware Resource group CPU

VMware CPU active average over N minutes

VMware CPU running average over N minutes

VMware Amount of CPU resources over the limit that were refused, average over N minutes

VMware Group CPU sample count

VMware Group CPU sample period

VMware Storage Adapter

VMware Average number of commands issued per second by the storage adapter during the collection interval

VMware Average number of read commands issued per second by the storage adapter during the collection interval

VMware Average number of write commands issued per second by the storage adapter during the collection interval

VMware Rate of reading data by the storage adapter

VMware Rate of writing data by the storage adapter

VMware The average time a read by the storage adapter takes

VMware The average time a write by the storage adapter takes

VMware Storage path

VMware Average number of commands issued per second on the storage path during the collection interval

VMware Average number of read commands issued per second on the storage path during the collection interval

VMware Average number of write commands issued per second on the storage path during the collection interval

VMware Rate of reading data on the storage path

VMware Rate of writing data on the storage path

VMware The average time a read issued on the storage path takes

VMware The average time a write issued on the storage path takes

 

System

VMware Total time elapsed, in seconds, since last system startup

VMware Amount of disk space usage for each mount point

VMware Amount of CPU used during the interval by the Service Console and other applications

VMware Memory touched by the system resource group

VMware Memory mapped by the system resource group

VMware Memory saved due to sharing by the system resource group

VMware Memory swapped out by the system resource group

VMware Overhead memory consumed by the system resource group

VMware Memory shared by the system resource group

VMware Zero filled memory used by the system resource group

VMware CPU running average over 1 minute of the system resource group

VMware CPU active average over 1 minute of the system resource group

VMware CPU maximum limited over 1 minute of the system resource group

VMware CPU running average over 5 minutes of the system resource group

VMware CPU active average over 5 minutes of the system resource group

VMware CPU maximum limited over 5 minutes of the system resource group

VMware CPU allocation reservation (in MHZ) of the system resource group

VMware CPU allocation limit (in MHZ) of the system resource group

VMware CPU allocation shares of the system resource group

VMware Memory allocation reservation (in KB) of the system resource group

VMware Memory allocation limit (in KB) of the system resource group

VMware Memory allocation shares of the system resource group

See also

Microsoft Hyper-V management plugin 

Citrix XenServer management plugin