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ESX Server Monitors (VMware only)

ESX Server monitors focus on the ESX server host, as a physical computing resource, for monitoring and alerting.

The following monitors are ESX related:

  • ESX (Advanced Metrics): uses an Uptime Infrastructure Monitor agent on the ESX server
  • ESX Server Power State: uses metrics transferred to Uptime Infrastructure Monitor using vSync

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:

  • Are CPU or memory usage on the host too high?
  • Are network and disk I/O usage or latency within acceptable limits?
  • Are disk and network error rates too high?
  • Are memory ballooning targets exceeded?

vSphere ESX Server Performance

The vSphere ESX Server Performance monitor allows you to alert based on performance checks on ESX server Elements managed by VMware vSphere, but monitored in Uptime Infrastructure Monitor via vSync.

vSphere ESX Server Performance Monitor Metrics

The following vSphere metric types for ESX server 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).

CPU Check:
value type, warning threshold, and critical threshold

Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for average CPU usage as either percentage usage, or average MHz usage.

Memory Check:
value type, warning threshold, and critical threshold

Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for one of the following value types:

  • Usage (%) - percentage of total configured or available memory used
  • Memory Consumed (MB) - amount of memory consumed by VMs on this host
  • Memory Active (MB) - amount of memory actively used by VMs on this host
  • Balloon Memory (MB) - amount of memory allocated by vmmemctl across all VMs on this host
  • Zero Memory (KB) - memory that only contains 0s allocated to VMs

Swap Check:
value type, warning threshold, and critical threshold

Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for either swap space used (in MB), or swap rate (the combined swap-in rate and swap-out rate, in KBps, across all VMs on this host).

Disk Device I/O:
coverage, value type, warning threshold, and critical threshold

Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for one of the following value types:

  • Usage (KBps) - aggregate disk I/O rate across all VMs on the host
  • Physical Device Command Latency (ms) - average time to process a read and write from the physical device
  • Queue Command Latency (ms) - average time spent in the VMkernel queue per SCSI command
  • Command Latency (ms) - average time taken to process a SCSI command issued by the Guest OS to the VM

Checks are made against the average for all detected disk devices, or any individual device that is violating the threshold.

Disk Device Errors Check:
coverage, value type, warning threshold, and critical threshold

Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for either the number of SCSI command aborts per minute, or the number of bus resets per minute.

Checks are made against the average for all detected disk devices, or any individual device that is violating the threshold.

Network I/O:
coverage, warning threshold, and critical threshold

Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the aggregate received and transmitted rate (in KBps).

Checks are made against the average for all detected network interfaces, or any individual network interface that is violating the threshold.

Network Errors Check:
coverage, value type, warning threshold, and critical threshold

Warning- and critical-level thresholds can be set, using positive integers, for the aggregate received and transmitted packets dropped per minute.

Checks are made against the average for all detected network interfaces, or any individual network interface that is violating the threshold.

 

Configuring vSphere ESX Server Performance Monitors

To configure a vSphere ESX Server Performance monitor, do the following:

  1. On the Infrastructure tree, click Add Service Monitor.
  2. In the VM Monitors section, click the name of the monitor you want to configure, and then click Continue.

  3. Complete the monitor information fields.
    See Monitor Identification for more information on configuring service monitor information fields.

    Info

    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

  4. In the vSphere ESX Server Performance Settings section, in the Time Interval sub-section, enter the number of minutes’ worth of time samples that will be used to compare thresholds.
  5. For the following metric categories, select the metric unit of measurement, then configure the monitor’s warning- or critical-level threshold values:
  6. Complete the following settings:
  7. Click Finish.

ESX (Advanced Metrics)

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.

ESX Advanced Metrics Monitor Metrics

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.

 

Configuring ESX (Advanced Metrics) Monitors

To configure an ESX (Advanced Metrics) monitor, do the following:

  1. On the Infrastructure tree, click Add Service Monitor.
  2. In the VM Monitors section, click the name of the monitor you want to configure, and then click Continue.
  3. Complete the monitor information fields.
    See Monitor Identification for more information on configuring service monitor information fields.
  4. In the ESX (Advanced Metrics) Settings section, configure the monitor’s warning- and critical-level alerting thresholds by completing the following fields:
    • Percent Wait
    • Memory Balloon
    • Memory Balloon Target
    • Memory Overhead
    • Memory Swap In
    • Memory Swap Out
    • Memory Zero
    • Memory Swap Used
    • Memory Swap Target
    • Disk Total Latency
    • Disk Kernel Latency
    • Disk Device Latency
    • Disk Queue Latency
    • Disk Commands Aborted
    • Disk Commands Issued
    • Disk Bus Resets
    • Response time
      For more information on these metrics, see ESX Advanced Metrics Monitor Metrics.
      For more information about setting thresholds and response time, see Configuring Warning and Critical Thresholds.
  5. Complete the following settings:
  6. Click Finish.

ESX Workload

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.

Info

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.

ESX Workload Monitor Metrics

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.

 

Modifying an ESX Workload Monitor Configuration

To modify the configuration of a legacy ESX Workload monitor, do the following:

  1. On the Infrastructure tree, click Add Service Monitor.
  2. In the VM Monitors section, click the name of the monitor you want to configure, and then click Continue.
  3. If required, change the monitor information fields.
    See Monitor Identification for more information.
  4. In the ESX Workload Settings section, modify any of the monitor’s existing warning- or critical-level threshold values:
  5. Complete the following settings:
  6. Click Finish.

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