The VM service monitors allow you to monitor and alert based on the performance and status your virtual resources. These monitors can watch for threshold violations with computing resources for VMs, ESX servers, and changes in power states.
Most of these service monitors use metrics collected by Hyper-V or VMware vCenter that are made available to Uptime Infrastructure Monitor through Sync for Hyper-V or vSync for VMware. These monitored components, combined with more granular agent-based server monitoring, provide you with choice between breadth and depth.
The VM performance monitors allow you to monitor and alert on specific VM-related components: datacenters, clusters, resources pools, and vApps (VMware only); and VM hosts, instances, and snapshots.
The metrics collected through VM servers can be used by Uptime Infrastructure Monitor through Sync or vSync, and subsequently used to trigger Uptime Infrastructure Monitor’s own alerts and actions, allowing you to integrate both your virtual-managed and non-virtual resources.
These performance monitors can answer questions such as the following:
The Datacenter Performance and Cluster Performance monitors can trigger alerts on metrics collected through vSync.
The following VM metric types for datacenter or cluster performance can be used to configure thresholds in Uptime Infrastructure Monitor:
Time Interval | A positive integer indicating the number of minutes’ worth of performance data samples to average, then compare against threshold definitions (default: 30). | |
Number of Running VMs: | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the average number of VMs powered on during the time interval. | |
Number of Running Hosts: | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the average number of vSphere ESX servers powered on during the time interval. | |
CPU Consumed: | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the total percentage of CPU cycles consumed by VMs belonging to this datacenter or cluster. | |
Memory Consumed: | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the total percentage of memory consumed by VMs belonging to this datacenter or cluster. |
To configure a Datacenter Performance or Cluster Performance monitor, do the following:
The Resource Pool Performance and vApp Performance monitors can trigger alerts on metrics collected through vSync.
The following VM metric types for resource pool and vApp performance can be used to configure thresholds in Uptime Infrastructure Monitor :
Time Interval | A positive integer indicating the number of minutes’ worth of performance data samples to average, then compare against threshold definitions (default: 30). | |
Number of Running VMs: | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the average number of VMs powered on during the time interval. | |
CPU Consumed: | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the total percentage of CPU cycles consumed by VMs belonging to this resource pool or vApp. | |
Memory Consumed: | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the total percentage of memory consumed by VMs belonging to this resource pool or vApp. |
To configure a Resource Pool Performance or vApp Performance monitor, do the following:
The VM Host Performance Check and VM Instance Performance monitors can trigger alerts on metrics collected through Sync or vSync.
The following VM metric types for VM host and instance performance can be used to configure thresholds in Uptime Infrastructure Monitor:
Time Interval | A positive integer indicating the number of minutes' worth of data samples to average, then compare against threshold definitions (default: 15). | ||
CPU Value | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for a specific CPU-related value pertaining to a VM host or instance:
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Memory Value | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for a specific memory-related value pertaining to a VM host or instance:
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Swap Value | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for a swap-related value:
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Disk Device I/O Value | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the aggregate disk I/O rate for the VM.
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Disk Device Errors Check (VM Host Performance Check) | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the aggregate error rate.
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Network I/O Value | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the aggregate received and transmitted rate, in KBps.
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Network Errors Check (VM Host Performance Check) | Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the aggregate error rate.
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To configure a VM Host Performance Check or VM Instance Performance monitor, do the following:
To configure a VM Snapshot Performance Check monitor, do the following:
ESX Server monitors focus on the ESX server host, as a physical computing resource, for monitoring and alerting.
The following monitors are ESX related:
The metrics collected for these ESX server monitors can be used to trigger Uptime Infrastructure Monitor alerts and actions. These performance monitors can answer questions such as the following:
The ESX (Advanced Metrics) monitor offers greater visibility into your ESX environment by expanding on the high level usage metrics for a virtual machine’s CPU, memory, and disk activity.
The following ESX server metrics can be used to configure thresholds:
Percent Wait | Guest metric - The percentage of time that a virtual CPU was not running. A non-running CPU could be idle (halted) or waiting for an external event such as I/O. | |
Memory Balloon (Avg) | Guest metric - The average amount of memory, in KB, held by memory control for ballooning. | |
Memory Balloon Target | Guest metric - The total amount of memory, in KB, that can be used by memory control for ballooning. | |
Memory Overhead (Avg) | Guest metric - The average amount of additional host memory, in KB, allocated to the virtual machine. | |
Memory Swap In (Avg) | Guest metric - The average amount of memory, in KB, that was swapped in. | |
Memory Swap Out (Avg) | Guest metric - The average amount of memory, in KB, that was swapped out. | |
Memory Zero (Avg) | Guest metric - The average amount of memory, in KB, that was zeroed out. | |
Memory Swap Used (Avg) | Host metric - The average amount of memory, in KB, that was used by the swap file. | |
Memory Swap Target | Guest metric - The total amount of memory, in KB, that can be swapped. | |
Disk Total Latency | Host metric - The average time, in milliseconds, taken for disk commands by a guest OS. This is the sum of kernelCommandLatency and physical deviceCommandLatency . | |
Disk Kernel Latency | Host metric - The average time, in milliseconds, spent in the ESX Server VMkernel per command. | |
Disk Device Latency | Host metric - The average time, in milliseconds, taken to complete a command from the physical device. | |
Disk Queue Latency | Host metric - The average time, in milliseconds, spent in the ESX Server VMkernel queue per write. | |
Disk Commands Aborted | Host metric - The number of disk commands aborted during the defined interval. | |
Disk Commands Issued | Host metric - The number of disk commands issued during the defined interval. | |
Disk Bus Resets | Host metric - The number of bus resets during the defined interval. |
To configure an ESX (Advanced Metrics) monitor, do the following:
The ESX Workload monitor collects a set of metrics from all of the instances that are running on an ESX v3 or v4 server over a specified time period.
This monitor is a legacy monitor that cannot be added to your Uptime Infrastructure Monitor configuration as a new service monitor; it exists in upgraded configurations that originally included it, and works only with the VMware ESX type Element. |
The monitor the compares the highest values returned by the instances and then compares them to the thresholds that you set. If the values exceed the thresholds, Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues an alert. The monitor does not pinpoint the specific instance(s) that have exceeded the defined thresholds.
For example, you are monitoring an ESX server that is running three instances. You configured the ESX Workload monitor to collect data samples every 10 minutes, and to issue a warning when memory usage exceeds 300 MB. The three instances are using the following amounts of memory: 110 MB, 227 MB, and 315 MB. The ESX Workload monitor focuses on the value of 315 MB and, because it exceeds the warning threshold, issues an alert.
The following metrics are used by the ESX Workload monitor:
Time Interval | The amount of time, in minutes, at which the monitor will collect data samples from the ESX server. | |
CPU Warning Threshold | The amount of CPU resources, measured in megahertz (MHz), that the instances on the ESX server must consume before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a warning. | |
CPU Critical Threshold | The amount of CPU resources, measured in megahertz MHz, that the instances on the ESX server must consume before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a critical alert. | |
Network Bandwidth Warning Threshold | The amount of network traffic in and out of the server, measured in megabits per second (Mbit/s), that must be exceeded before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a warning. | |
Network Bandwidth Critical Threshold | The amount of network traffic in and out of the server, measured in megabits per second (Mbit/s), that must be exceeded before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a critical alert. | |
Disk Usage Warning Threshold | The amount of data written to the server’s hard disk, measured in kilobytes per second (KB/s), that must be exceeded before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a warning. | |
Disk Usage Critical Threshold | The amount of data written to the server’s hard disk, measured in kilobytes per second (KB/s), that must be exceeded before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a critical alert. | |
Memory Usage Warning Threshold | The amount of overall system memory, measured in megabytes (MB), that must be exceeded before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a warning. | |
Memory Usage Critical Threshold | The amount of overall system memory, measured in megabytes (MB), that must be exceeded before Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a critical alert. | |
Percent Ready Warning Threshold | The percentage of time that one or more instances running on an ESX server is ready to run, but cannot run because it cannot access the processor on the ESX server. If the valued returned from the server exceeds this threshold, then Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a warning. | |
Percent Ready Critical Threshold | The percentage of time that one or more instances running on an ESX server is ready to run, but cannot run because it cannot access the processor on the ESX server. If the valued returned from the server exceeds this threshold, then Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a critical alert. | |
Percent Used Warning Threshold | The percentage of CPU time that an instance running on an ESX server is using. If the valued returned from the server exceeds this threshold, then Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a warning. | |
Percent Used Critical Threshold | The percentage of CPU time that an instance running on an ESX server is using. If the valued returned from the server exceeds this threshold, then Uptime Infrastructure Monitor issues a critical alert. |
To modify the configuration of a legacy ESX Workload monitor, do the following:
The power state monitors help you manage both available computing resources within your clusters, resource pools, and other logical divisions in your vSphere-managed infrastructure, as well as power consumption in your physical datacenters. Power state changes to your hosts, and the VMs running on them, can be alerted and acted on.
The power state monitors can answer questions such as the following:
The ESX Server Power State monitor watches for changes to the power states of an ESX server that is managed by VMware vSphere, and can run alert or action profiles based on the change.
In Uptime Infrastructure Monitor, vSphere hosts will be in one of the following states:
Powered On | The host is running. | |
Powered Off | The host was powered off by an administrator through the vSphere Client. | |
Put on Standby | The host was put in standby mode either explicitly by an administrator, or automatically by vSphere Distributed Power Management (DPM). | |
Put in Maintenance | The host state is determined to be “unknown” if it is disconnected or not responding, implying it is in maintenance. |
To configure an ESX Server Power State monitor, do the following:
When selecting an Element associated with this service monitor, only ESX servers monitored in Uptime Infrastructure Monitor via vSync will appear in the Single System list. |
In the main ESX Server Power State Settings section, in the Powered On sub-section, do the following:
In the Powered Off sub-section, do the following:
In the Put on Standby sub-section, do the following:
In the Put in Maintenance sub-section, do the following:
Complete the following settings:
Click Finish.
The VM Instance Power State monitor watches for changes to the power states of a VM running on an ESX server that is managed by vSphere, and can run alert or action profiles based on the change.
See Power State Monitors for more information.
A virtual machine’s three basic power states are as follows:
Powered On | The VM instance is running. | |
Powered Off | The VM instance is not running. | |
Suspended | The VM instance is not running, but a snapshot of its running applications and processes is retained. |
To configure a VM Instance Power State monitor, do the following:
When selecting a VM associated with this service monitor, only VMs monitored in Uptime Infrastructure Monitor via vSync will appear in the Single System list. |
In the main VM Instance Power State Settings section, in the Powered On sub-section, do the following:
In the Powered Off sub-section, do the following:
In the Suspended sub-section, do the following:
Complete the following settings:
Click Finish.