Virtualization Manager

Transcription

1 GETTING STARTED GUIDE Virtualization Manager Version 8.0 Last Updated: Thursday, October 5, 2017 Retrieve the latest version from:

2 2017 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced by any means nor modified, decompiled, disassembled, published or distributed, in whole or in part, or translated to any electronic medium or other means without the prior written consent of SolarWinds. All right, title, and interest in and to the software and documentation are and shall remain the exclusive property of SolarWinds and its respective licensors. SOLARWINDS DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, CONDITIONS OR OTHER TERMS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, ON SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION FURNISHED HEREUNDER INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE WARRANTIES OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL SOLARWINDS, ITS SUPPLIERS, NOR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, WHETHER ARISING IN TORT, CONTRACT OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY EVEN IF SOLARWINDS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. The SolarWinds and other SolarWinds marks, identified on the SolarWinds website, as updated from SolarWinds from time to time and incorporated herein, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered or pending registration in other countries. All other SolarWinds trademarks may be common law marks or registered or pending registration in the United States or in other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks contained and/or mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. [[[Undefined variable PDFVariables.BookTitleAll]]], Version 8.0 SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, Version 8.0 SolarWinds Virtual Infrastructure Monitor, Version 8.0 Revised: 10/5/2017 page 2

3 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Table of Contents Welcome to the VMAN Getting Started Guide 6 Monitoring virtual environments with VMAN 7 Navigate your environment 10 Explore your VMAN environment 10 VM management tools 12 Add and manage virtual systems to monitor 13 Learn More about VMAN polling and pollers 14 Poll vcenters and Hyper-V clusters 15 Add the vsphere vcenter server 15 Add the Hyper-V host 16 Integration and Synchronization with VMAN 17 Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard 18 Existing VMAN appliance polling and Synchronization 18 Synchronize entities with the Orion Platform 19 Manage virtual servers 20 Manage snapshots 21 Change CPU or Memory Resources 22 Move to a different host 23 Move to a different storage 24 Manage VM resources 25 Resource management with VMAN 25 How recommendations work 26 Strategies 26 Types of recommendations 27 Recommendation actions 27 page 3

4 Active recommendation: solve a memory utilization issue 28 Predictive recommendation: solve a storage capacity issue 32 Best practices for recommendations 36 Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring 38 Configure Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring for VMAN 38 Monitor cloud instances with VMAN 42 Alerts 45 How alerts work 45 Best practices for alerts 47 Create an alert copy 47 Customize thresholds 49 How thresholds work 49 Edit a VM global threshold 50 Edit a VM specific threshold 51 Edit a global Orion threshold 54 Reports 56 Best practices for reports 56 Customize the recommendations report 57 Review the recommendations report 59 Resource optimization 60 Optimize VM resources 60 Sprawl dashboard 60 AppStack 62 Performance Analysis Dashboard 62 Evaluate VMs using the Sprawl dashboard 63 Manage snapshots 66 Manage orphan VMDK files 67 Manage and troubleshoot VMs using AppStack 68 page 4

5 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Troubleshooting environmental issues with Performance Analysis dashboards 72 Compatible SolarWinds products 72 Create analysis projects 73 Create analysis projects from the Performance Analysis dashboard 73 Create analysis projects from the entity details page 74 Update charts in real-time 74 Modify the time range for all charts 75 View the polled data for a plotted metric 75 Remove entities or metrics 76 Share analysis projects 76 View your saved analysis projects 77 Delete analysis projects 77 Investigate VM performance with Performance Analysis 77 VMAN features 82 VMAN and NPM VM monitoring 82 VMAN and SAM AppStack 84 VMAN and SRM VM storage management 85 page 5

6 Welcome to the VMAN Getting Started Guide Welcome to the SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) Getting Started Guide. This guide gives you the fast track to start monitoring virtual and cloud environments, troubleshoot issues, and apply recommendations. Navigate your environment. Look over the Virtualization Summary and key tools to access VM clusters, hosts, and resources. Manage VM resources. How to manage your VM resources using recommendations and alerts. Monitor Cloud infrastructures. Configure and add AWS accounts and monitor your cloud instances and volumes. Manage alerts. Best practices for creating and managing alerts. Customize thresholds. If alerts and recommendations trigger, you may need to review and modify thresholds globally and per VM. Manage reports. Best practices for creating and managing reports. Optimize resources. How to right-size your virtual environment and troubleshoot VM resources in your environment. VMAN features and benefits. Learn more about how VMAN works and integrates with the Orion Platform. Ensure your long term success with SolarWinds VMAN by following the guidelines described in this guide. Depending on your workload, getting started with VMAN should take you one week or less. Existing customers: Following the recommendations in this guide ensures your system capabilities are appropriate and your production environment is sized correctly. Minimum system requirements used during evaluation are not sufficient for a production environment. Access your licensed software from the SolarWinds Customer Portal. If you need implementation help, search our Success Center or contact support. Evaluators: If you are evaluating SolarWinds VMAN, download a free 30-day evaluation. The evaluation version of SolarWinds VMAN is a full version of the product, functional for 30 days. After the evaluation period, you can easily convert your evaluation license to a production license by obtaining and applying a license key. If you need assistance with your evaluation, search our Success Center or contact sales@solarwinds.com. page 6

7 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Monitoring virtual environments with VMAN Maintaining a virtual or hybrid environment requires using native tools to review mountains of data. Virtual machines allow companies to exponentially expand and scale environments far cheaper and faster than adding physical systems. The ease of expansions can lead to sprawling environments with numerous clusters and hosts, under or over allocated resources, and difficulties in finding and understanding the metrics needed to manage VMs effectively. Virtualization Manager provides intensive metrics gathering and data breakdowns into dashboards and details pages so you can easily evaluate environments and react to issues. Use VMAN to manage your sprawling VM virtual and cloud environment through a single console with account management and direct VM tool capabilities. The Virtualization Manager (VMAN) connects directly to your vcenters or Hyper-V hosts, clusters, datastores, network, and VMs to collect and provide detailed metrics. Features include: Discovering virtual objects: add and monitor virtual machines, hosts, clusters, and datastores using VMAN Orion pollers (recommended) or other polling methods. Monitoring virtual environments: review and study collected metrics for virtual objects, cloud instances, and other systems and applications depending on your VMAN and Orion Platform products. Learn more about monitoring data, setting alerts, and managing events and reports. Recommendations: optimize resource allocation based on performance metrics, historical data, available resources, and storage capacity. Recommendations calculate trends and risks based on enabled strategies, providing plans of action to consider and apply to resolve immediate issues or preemptively prevent issues from occurring. Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: provides visibility into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure including cloud EC2 instances and attached EBS volumes. This feature completes the Orion tools you need to monitor and administer hybrid environments. Optimize options: provide troubleshooting and resource management with tools including PerfStack, Sprawl dashboard, and tracking of snapshots and orphan VMDKs. VMAN installs with a full Orion Platform and expands the basic data collected by the Virtual Infrastructure Monitor (VIM). VMAN monitors and manages all virtual objects in a virtual environment, including clusters, hosts, and VMs. page 7

8 VMAN connects to multiple systems, as displayed in this image, with ports listed. The Orion Web Console provides direct access into VMAN and additional Orion Platform products. The VMAN appliance also includes an administrative console. page 8

9 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER page 9

10 Navigate your environment Learn more about your Virtualization Manager environment: Explore your VMAN environment VM management tools Explore your VMAN environment All VM data displays through VMAN into the Orion Web Console in a set of dashboards including the Virtualization Summary, Sprawl dashboard, VM specific dashboards, and more. These examples show how to drill-down and manage VM resources in details pages. Each page displays specific resources and options for clusters, hosts, datastores, networks, and virtual machines. Use the Virtualization Summary as a stepping off point to review monitored VMs, manage resources, and respond to recommendations and alerts. Getting Started resource Provides immediate options to integrate and configure recommendations. You can remove this resource anytime after getting started to reuse the space. page 10

11 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Virtualization Assets and Asset Summary Recommendations resource All Active Virtualization Alerts resource Expand to select VMs within your environment. The virtual environment includes virtual centers (VMware), clusters, hosts, datastores, networks, and VMs. The Asset Summary provides an overall breakdown information of VMs per VMware and Hyper-V. Lists all active and predictive recommendations listed per VM host or cluster. Select the recommendations link to troubleshoot all recommendations. Lists all active alerts triggered per VM with a detailed message and triggering resource. Select alerts to review details and troubleshoot the issue. Expand Virtualization Assets to drill-down into your VM environment. Selecting a VM at any level opens a details page displaying status resources, management tools, alerts, and recommendations. For example, selecting a VMware virtual center provides a details page with an expandable virtualization assets view, an AppStack view, alerts, and supported management tools. This example displays a VM within a host. Selecting the VM opens a details page with specific resource usage data. The Resource Utilization resource provides key data over time for your VMs. Moving your mouse across the line graphs displays a tooltip with percentages for CPU, memory, network usage, IOPs, and latency. page 11

12 VM management tools VMAN includes native VM management tools directly through the Orion Web Console to troubleshoot, manage VM status, manage snapshots, and more. Credentials entered at deployment connect the management tools to vcenter and Hyper-V native tools. To access the tools, select a cluster, host, datastore, network, or VM in the Virtualization Assets environment tree. The details page opens with a Virtualization Manager Tools resource, providing different options based on the VM server type. If an option is not accessible, make sure that your account has the necessary permission levels. The availability of the options also depends on the current state of a virtual machine. For example, if the virtual machine is offline, the Power off VM option is not displayed. page 12

13 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Add and manage virtual systems to monitor VMware server versions supported for monitoring: vcenter Server 5.0 Update 3g vcenter Server 5.1 Update 3d vcenter Server 5.5 Update 3e vcenter Server 6.0 Update 3b vcenter Server 6.5 Update 1 Hyper-V and Windows servers supported for monitoring: Hyper-V 2008R2 Windows Server 2012 Windows Server 2012 R2 Windows Server 2016 Options for adding systems to monitor: Add a new vcenter or Hyper-V host. Configure Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring for VMAN: monitor AWS cloud instances and volumes. After you have added these systems, you can manage them using management options through the details page. To fully monitor and manage virtual systems, you should manage them as nodes. Each managed system counts as a socket against the VMAN license. You can manage the following systems as nodes: Hyper-V nodes, VMware vcenter, ESX servers, and virtual machines in the Orion Web Console. You should add the virtual system as a node. Do Not use Discovery Central or Discover Network options to add vcenters or Hyper-V clusters to VMAN. Use only the Add Node option in the Orion Web Console. Do not use the Setup Virtualization Manager Integration wizard. This step is not necessary for VMAN 8.0. If you are an existing customer with an appliance, you need to migrate polling over from the appliance to VMAN Orion. page 13

14 Learn More about VMAN polling and pollers Virtualization Manager supports multiple polling options for monitoring your virtual environment. Regardless of the type of poller used, the poller consumes a license either as a node or socket. For best results, SolarWinds recommends always using the VMAN Orion poller, which collects extensive data and metrics for virtual systems including clusters, hosts, datastores, and virtual machines. Not all pollers collect deep data for virtual items. If you are an existing customer with a VMAN appliance, you need to migrate polling over from the appliance to VMAN Orion. When adding a new system for monitoring, you can select from one of the following polling methods: Basic: polls using Orion polling methods (Orion agents, WMI, SNMP) for general metrics per managed node. This method is not recommended for virtual systems in VMAN. The poller consumes a node license and only collect basic data for the virtual item for only the specified system. For example, if you monitor a virtual host with Basic polling, you do not receive metrics for children VMs. VMAN Orion - Recommended: polls using the VMAN Orion poller for extensive metrics for the host and child VMs. This poller consumes a VMAN licensed socket and uses a poller directly through the Orion Web Console. This option is available for new VMAN customers, without the VMAN appliance. VMAN Appliance: polls using the VMAN appliance for extensive metrics for the host and child VMs. This poller consumes a VMAN licensed socket. This option is only available and typically used by existing VMAN customers with a VMAN appliance deployed in the Orion environment. VMAN pollers access metrics and data through VMware and Hyper-V virtual systems, capturing alerts and events, virtual resource usage, and additional information available through resources and dashboards. Numerous troubleshooting options also access this data: Recommendations for generating active and predictive solutions for issues in your virtual environment. Sprawl Dashboard for quickly viewing specific data including orphaned VMDKs, snapshots, and more. PerfStack for troubleshooting any issue or performance trend encountered in your environment. Drag and drop any metric monitored by the Orion Web Console including VMAN and other Orion Platform products installed or integrated in your environment. If you are an existing user on an appliance, you can synchronize your VMAN entities using the recommended option to migrate all entities and use VMAN Orion poller. See Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard. page 14

15 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER For Hyper-V - if you set poller option at cluster level, all hosts and VMs in the cluster use the same polling method. You cannot change per virtual entity. Poll vcenters and Hyper-V clusters When you launch VMAN for the first time, you are dropped into the VMAN Integration Console. Cancel out the Virtualization Manager Integration screen, and add the polling entities through the Orion Web Console. Do Not use Discovery Central or Discover Network options to add vcenters or Hyper-V clusters to VMAN. Use only the Add Node option in the Orion Web Console. Do not use the Setup Virtualization Manager Integration wizard. This step is not necessary for VMAN 8.0. Add the vsphere vcenter server 1. Click Settings > All Settings > Add Node. 2. Enter the host name or IP address of the vcenter server in the Polling Hostname or IP Address field. 3. Under Polling Method, select Status Only: ICMP. 4. Select the checkbox for Poll for VMware. page 15

16 5. Enter your vcenter credentials in the vcenter or ESX credentials field. 6. Click Next. 7. Click Add Node. When the vcenter server is added successfully, VMAN begins polling. Add the Hyper-V host 1. Click Settings > All Settings > Add Node. 2. Enter the host name or IP address of the vcenter server in the Polling Hostname or IP Address field. 3. Under Polling Method, select Windows Servers: WMI and ICMP. page 16

17 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 4. Enter your Hyper-V credentials. 5. Click Next. 6. Click Add Node. When the Hyper-V host is added successfully, VMAN begins polling. Integration and Synchronization with VMAN With VMAN 8.0 and later, VMAN recommends new installations using the single deployment of VMAN with the Orion Platform or into an existing Orion Platform environment. Once installed with an activated license, a fresh installation automatically has fully integrated features for VMAN directly within the Orion Platform. For existing customers upgrading to 8.0 and later, VMAN supports an installation of the VMAN appliance with integration into a stand-alone or existing Orion Platform. In this deployment, you have a deployed appliance with a secondary license, a primary license in the Orion Platform, and integration completed for VMAN in the Orion Web Console. For extensive details, architecture diagrams, and information for installing and upgrading VMAN, see the following guides: VMAN Installation Guide: details fresh, new installations of VMAN as a stand-alone application or into an existing Orion Platform. Both installations include a full implementation of the Orion Platform. This guide may also include links and information to the Orion Installer Guide. VMAN Upgrade Guide: details how to upgrade VMAN, including existing versions. page 17

18 To fully poll and monitor virtual environments, VMAN must be installed and activated. For Orion Platform environments with VMAN recently installed or upgraded, you may need to run the Synchronization wizard. This wizard verifies the activated VMAN product, virtual systems (VMs, hosts, clusters, and datastores), and updates all resources in the Orion Web Console with monitored metrics. For details and instructions, see Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard. Did you use VMAN previously? In versions of VMAN 7.2 and earlier, you may have had two licenses and two installations for a full VMAN product solution. With VMAN 8.0 and later, you receive one installation and license to provide full access to VMAN and the Orion Platform. Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard For new and existing deployments using the VMAN appliance, you may see resources displaying no data and information about integration and the Synchronization wizard. This wizard syncs your monitored virtual entities (VMware, vcenter, and Hyper-V) with the Orion Platform and displays metrics and management options through the Orion Web Console. Synchronization only affects your monitored virtual environment, not your monitored cloud infrastructure using Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring. The Synchronization wizard provides the following options: Recommended: migrates all entities into the Orion Platform and changes the polling method to the VMAN Orion poller. Virtualization Manager nodes will be monitored and managed through the Orion Web Console. Data sources are migrated into the Orion Platform and polled by the VMAN Orion poller, replacing the VMAN appliance. Licenses will be consumed for monitored nodes according to the polling method used. We recommend the VMAN Orion poller. For new and existing VMAN deployments, we strongly recommend using the Recommended option for VMAN entity migration and VMAN Orion poller. Advanced: allows selection of specific entities to display in the Orion Web Console for managing, access, displaying metrics, running alerts and reports. It continues using the polling method of VMAN appliance. To modify the polling method, go to Virtualization Settings > Virtualization Polling Settings. Regardless of selection, existing VMAN deployments using the appliance should read the section Existing VMAN appliance polling and Synchronization. You may encounter performance issues due to double polling. Existing VMAN appliance polling and Synchronization For existing VMAN deployments using the VMAN appliance and selecting the VMAN Orion poller, VMAN continues double polling entities. What this means is, the VMAN appliance continues polling every entity until modified directly through the appliance console regardless of the selected polling method of VMAN Orion or Basic (which is Orion agent for Windows or Linux, WMI, or RPC). page 18

19 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER To only poll once using the VMAN Orion poller, you must access the VMAN appliance console directly and unmanage the entities. Every entity continues polling strictly through the selected poller in the Orion Web Console: VMAN Orion poller (recommended) or Basic (not recommended for virtual environments). For more information on poller options in VMAN, see Learn More about VMAN polling and pollers. Synchronize entities with the Orion Platform To move polling over from the VMAN appliance to VMAN Orion poller, follow these steps: 1. Open the Orion Web Console. 2. Click Settings > All Settings. 3. In the Product Specific Settings section, click Virtualization Settings. 4. In the Virtualization Settings section, click VMware Settings. 5. Select the nodes you want to modify the settings for. page 19

20 6. Click Polling Method > VMAN Orion. The polling method changes from VMAN appliance to VMAN Orion polling. Manage virtual servers VMAN includes native VM management tools directly through the Orion Web Console to troubleshoot, manage VM status, manage snapshots, and more. Credentials entered at deployment connect the management tools to vcenter and Hyper-V native tools. You need an Orion administrator account to complete these tasks. To access the tools, select a cluster, host, datastore, network, or VM in the Virtualization Assets environment tree. The details page opens with a Virtualization Manager Tools resource, providing different options based on the VM server type. page 20

21 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER If an option is not accessible, make sure that your account has the necessary permission levels. The availability of the options also depends on the current state of a virtual machine. For example, if the virtual machine is offline, the Power off VM option is not displayed. The options includes general management options including: Power off/on VM: use to power down and up a VM. Suspend/Resume VM: use to pause the VM when you want to save the current state of the VM in a snapshot. Toggle to Resume to continue services. Depending on VMware and Hyper-V, the suspend action creates a file containing the state of the VM. Reboot VM: use to reboot the VM as a restart action. Manage snapshots A snapshot captures all data, applications, configurations, and more for an entire virtual machine. Snapshots provide a great method for backing up data and a server at a point in time. For each VM, you can create and delete snapshots. directly through the Details page. The Sprawl dashboard also provides an option for reviewing and removing snapshots based on age and size. Create a snapshot 1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Virtualization > Summary. 2. In the Virtualization Assets, locate a VM you need to move and select a VM that needs a new host. 3. In the Management resource, click Take Snapshot of VM. A screen displays to accept the name or select Custom name and enter a specific name. A snapshot generates and saves for the current VM. page 21

22 Delete a snapshot 1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Virtualization > Summary. 2. In the Virtualization Assets, locate a VM you need to move and select a VM that needs a new host. 3. In the Management resource, click Delete Snapshots. A screen displays with a list of snapshots to delete. 4. Select a snapshot to delete. If you select a parent, you can select the Also delete all children of the deleted snapshot option to remove all children. 5. Click Delete. Change CPU or Memory Resources For each system, you can change the virtual CPU or memory allocated to the virtual system. For example, you may have a VM running high performance applications and services on a host. Adjust the allocated virtual resources to add additional processors or memory. page 22

23 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Virtualization > Summary. 2. In the Virtualization Assets, locate a VM you need to move and select a VM that needs a new host. 3. In the Management resource, click Change CPU/Memory Resources. A screen displays with the current allocations and options to increase or decrease amounts. 4. To add or remove virtual CPUs, modify the number of processors. 5. To add or remove virtual memory, modify the memory value. You can select from a drop-down list of preset amounts in GB (1, 2, 4, 8, 16) or select Custom Amount. 6. Optionally, select the option to complete a set of steps when making these changes: power off the VM, change the configuration, and power on the VM. 7. Click Save. Changes take place, taking additional steps if selected. Move to a different host You may need to move a virtual machine to a new host due to resource consumption, noisy neighbors, or performance. This movement shifts a VM from one host to another. For example, a report VM may consume high amounts of resources during peak hours when running consecutive reports across an organization. Moving the VM to a sizable host with lower resource consumption during peak hours. page 23

24 1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Virtualization > Summary. 2. In the Virtualization Assets, locate a VM you need to move and select a VM that needs a new host. 3. In the Management resource, click the Move to a Different Host. A list of available hosts displays including the current host. 4. Select a new host for the VM. 5. Click Migrate. The virtual machine moves to the new host, freeing resources and space on the original host. Move to a different storage When a VM experiences storage space issues, you can move it to a new storage server with more space. 1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Virtualization > Summary. 2. In the Virtualization Assets, locate and click a VM that requires a new storage server. 3. In the Management resource, click the Move to a Different Storage. A list of available storage servers displays including the currently used storage. Usage bars show the available free space and used space currently for the drive. 4. Select a new storage server and click Relocate. The virtual system is moved, using the storage and freeing space on the original server. page 24

25 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Manage VM resources Learn more about Virtualization Manager resource management: Resource management with VMAN How recommendations work Active recommendation: solve a memory utilization issue Predictive recommendation: solve a storage capacity issue Best practices for recommendations Resource management with VMAN Resource management is a constant evaluation and allocation of storage and resources across a virtual environment. With vcenter and Hyper-V systems, you review historical data and use native tools to properly size and manage virtual resources. Virtualization Manager and the Orion Platform provide a single console to take action with integrated management tools, alerts, and one-click recommendations to resolve issues without manual steps. Using VMAN, you can: Verify and balance allocations for VMs. Over-allocated systems can be rebalanced to provide resources to under-allocated systems. Determine and resolve issues with performance and allocated resources for clusters, hosts, datastores, and VMs to handle performance-intensive CPU and memory loads. Review and redistribute VMs across the entire environment to balance storage and performance for hosts and clusters. You can view triggered recommendations and alerts through the Orion Web Console to manage resources: Recommendations provide resolutions to active issues in your environment and predictive optimizations to resolve potential issues. Each recommendation includes a detailed list of automated actions when applied, such as moving VMs and reallocating resources for CPU contention or critical levels of CPU usage. Alerts identify immediate issues and system status in your environment, comparing condition triggers against polled data and thresholds. As recommendations and alerts trigger, you can further customize triggers by customizing virtualization thresholds. page 25

26 How recommendations work After you have deployed and configured VMAN, begin monitoring your virtual environment for active or potential bottlenecks, allocation needs, or performance issues. Depending on the size of your virtual environment, the amount of data to review can be staggering. To help pinpoint problems and optimization opportunities, VMAN lists recommendations for VM balancing, troubleshooting, and issue resolution. As you monitor your entire environment, you can review your recommendations through My Dashboard > Virtualization > Recommendations. Recommendations trigger for vcenter and Hyper-V hosts, ESX hosts, clusters, and VMs. Every recommendation includes: Description of the active or predictive recommendation with metrics Steps of actions the Orion Web Console completes when applied, without requiring manual steps using VM tools Detailed statistics and charts show the before and after results based on the steps to take and issue determined Further information on affected virtual systems, with links to drill down into the data Through one page, you can investigate the issue, review the recommended resolutions, and apply the solution. Strategies Recommendation strategies look at the environment to solve specific issues and adjust allocations, performance, and storage. The strategies help manage VM sizing, host storage, and performance: VM right sizing optimizations - Identifies and recommends changes for under- and over-allocated VM resources. Host Performance and Capacity Assurance - Identifies hosts with resource and capacity issues. Storage Capacity Assurance - Identifies datastores with storage capacity issues. page 26

27 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Balancing VMs on hosts - Identifies VMs to redistribute to new hosts for balanced resources, capacity, and performance. Migrating VMs is only possible between hosts that are in the same cluster and have shared storage. Types of recommendations VMAN provides to types of recommendations: active and predictive. Active recommendations provide immediate resolutions for triggered alerts and issues that have already occurred on your system. An active recommendation requires a minimum of 1 hour of historic data to trigger. Example: You receive a memory utilization recommendation flagged as NOW on a host. The active recommendation immediately resolves the active issue when applied, properly balancing VMs to remove consumption issues. Predictive recommendations provide advised actions based on historical data and usage trends. These actions require a minimum of 7 days of monitored VM data to trigger. Example: You receive a space utilization recommendation. A predictive resolution indicates reallocation steps for resources to resolve the issue for the affected VM and any linked datastores. The key to predictive recommendations is compiled data over time. Optimal recommendations trigger with over 4 weeks of accumulated data. You can further create constraints using policies: Exclusion policies specify virtual objects to exclude from generated recommendations. You can set up an exclusion policy for specific virtual objects including virtual machines, hosts, clusters, and datastores. When creating an exclusion policy, you select monitored virtual objects in you environment from generating recommendations. Disallow action policies specify virtual objects to not run additional actions for a recommendation. Recommendations may require actions selected to complete environment and virtual object changes. These changes include moving the VM to a different host or storage and changing resource configurations such as CPU and memory amounts. Options differ between virtual object types. Recommendation actions You can take one of the following actions for a recommendation: Perform Now: immediately resolves the issue. Schedule Recommendation: select a date and time to complete the steps. The Recommendation moves from the Current tab to the Scheduled tab. You may want to schedule the changes for maintenance times. page 27

28 Ignore Recommendation: if you do not want to take the recommended actions, you can click More Actions and select Ignore Recommendation. This creates a short term exclusion policy for the VM for the recommendations with a custom amount of time. Active recommendation: solve a memory utilization issue Active recommendations trigger for alerts and issues that occur in your environment and cause issues for your users. Recommendations display with a NOW flag and a clear set of resolution steps and data so you can respond quickly to verify and resolve the issue. For example, a VM host machine in your environment triggers an active recommendation due to high memory usage. The total used memory of all the VM's on the host machine reached a critical point. To resolve, you need to move VMs to a new host. The following example solves a memory utilization issue actively triggered and alerted in your environment: 1. Click My Dashboard > Virtualization > Virtualization Summary. A list of recommendations is displayed in the dashboard. The Tokyo ESX cluster shows a critical recommendation. 2. Select All Recommendations to open the Recommendations page. The Recommendations page shows a critical alert that triggered with a NOW flag. The memory utilization on host stp-esx-02.lab.tex has reached critical threshold. page 28

29 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 3. Click the NOW recommendation. In this example, the VM host stp-esx-02.lab.tex has reached 95% memory consumption. Using data compilations, the recommendation identifies the VM lab-2k8-fc-02 requires far more memory than provided by the host. Move this VM to a larger host to resolve the memory issues. 4. Select the Power off option in the step to perform. The steps update to power down, move, and power up to migrate the server. page 29

30 5. Click Statistics to review the affects of the trending issue and recommended solution. Each step includes an expandable chart with detailed metrics that show the tracked usage and calculated resolution. The memory and CPU load is excessive and overwhelming the current host. Expand stp-esx-02.lab.tex to view details and the affects of applying the resolution. By moving stp-esx-02.lab.tex to a new host, the usage reduces within normal limits from 95% to 70%. page 30

31 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 6. Expand stp-esx-01.lab.tex to review the change and ensure they do not adversely affect the new host. Recommendations calculate the affects of moving VM stp-esx-02.lab.tex to the new host based on trending data over 4 weeks. The image below shows the that moving the VM does not overwhelm the target host. It remains within normal limits of 65% usage for CPU and memory, a 25% increase from trending usage data for the host. See the predicted usage marked in the image below. page 31

32 7. Click Perform Now and Apply this Recommendation. The resolution steps begin immediately. Because this issue affects the VMs and users, scheduling the changes is not recommended unless necessary for a maintenance window. Predictive recommendation: solve a storage capacity issue Recommendations solve issues before they occur. As trends calculate for CPU, memory, and capacity usage, network traffic fluctuation, and other VM resource metrics, recommendations tracks the trends and determines areas of potential issues. For example, a VM trends with a rising and consistent spike of capacity usage in a week. A recommendation triggers with a critical alert due to the speed and consistent usage and decline of free capacity. It provides a severity, message, steps to resolve, and statistics. The recommendation message provides the severity, steps to resolve, and VM statistics. Move the VM to a larger datastore to allow the VM additional disk space. VMs on the critical datastore have additional disk space available. page 32

33 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 1. Click My Dashboard > Virtualization > Virtualization Summary. The Tokyo ESX cluster shows a critical recommendation. 2. Select the Tokyo ESX 4.1 Cluster or All Recommendations to open the Recommendations page. page 33

34 3. Select the recommendation "The space utilization on datastore tok-esx-01:localstorage02 has reached critical threshold." In the image below, the kmiele-vman is overwhelming the smaller datastore. Move the VM to a larger datastore (LocalStorage01). LocalStorage02 receives more capacity for other assigned VMs and kmiele-vman VM continues service without capacity issues. 4. Select the Power off option in the step to perform. The steps update to power down, move, and power up to migrate the server. page 34

35 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 5. Click Statistics to review the effects of the trending issue to show the recommended solution. Each step includes an expandable chart with detailed metrics that show the tracked usage and calculated resolution. In the image below, the capacity dramatically increases for the VM when the datastore moves to a larger host. LocalStorage02 regains about 22 GB of space for other VMs, giving the larger kmiele-vman VM a better datastore for usage needs. To investigate further, expand and review the space utilization expectations for LocalStorage01 and details pages on each VM, including kmiele-vman, through More details links. page 35

36 6. Click Schedule Recommendation and select a date and time. You may be unable to take the servers down during production hours. This option allows you to run the recommendation during a maintenance window. 7. Click Apply This Recommendation. The recommendation moves to the Scheduled tab on the Recommendations page. The recommendation runs at the configured date and time. Best practices for recommendations Recommendations provide intelligent resolutions for active and predictive issues in your environment. Depending on the issue and resolution steps, recommendations may be inter-linked or affect each other after every resolution and polling. For example, allocation warnings and CPU contention could have related underlying issues. To better apply and manage recommendations: Apply active recommendations quickly as possible. The NOW flag indicates the issue has occurred in the environment. These issues actively affect users. Use alerts until recommendations have collected enough data to effectively resolve issues. Active recommendations require 1 hour of data. Predictive recommendations require a minimum of 7 days of data, providing better resolutions and trend tracking with 4+ weeks of data. Select power cycle steps when moving VMs. Hot swapping a VM could cause potential issues if under heavy, constant load during business hours. Schedule virtual system moves during maintenance hours. Moving VMs may require power cycling the VM or interrupting service. Complete these moves during off-peak hours. page 36

37 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Monitor environment performance before issuing additional recommendations. Recommendations may affect multiple clusters, hosts, datastores, and other recommendations when allocating resources and moving VMs. Monitor your environment and recommendations as changes and polling completes. Review alerts with active recommendations. If available, recommendations provide links to related alerts. Predictive recommendation may have related potential virtualization alerts, without a displayed link. Recommendations trigger based on: Alerts that occurred on a cluster, host, datastore, network, or VM in your virtual environment Not all alerts have triggered recommendations. If a recommendation has an associated alert, it is linked in the recommendation. VM resource allocations and performance trends and data that project potential issues Enabled strategies for recommendation settings: VM right sizing optimizations, host performance and capacity assurance, storage capacity assurance, and balancing VM workloads on hosts Configured virtualization threshold settings for VMs If not enough data has been collected, a message displays on the page: Recommendations do not trigger for VMs with assigned exclusion policies. page 37

38 Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring This section includes the following topics: Configure Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring for VMAN Monitor cloud instances with VMAN Configure Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring for VMAN Unlike application and server discovery jobs, adding cloud instances and volumes to monitor requires configuring Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring and selecting instances. Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring provides visibility into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure including cloud EC2 instances and attached EBS volumes. This feature completes the Orion tools you need to monitor and administer hybrid environments. With access to your cloud services account, Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring polls the cloud service APIs for cloud metrics and status. This data aggregates and displays through the Orion Web Console to monitor, manage, and troubleshoot issues in your cloud environment. Want to learn more? See the Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring guide. AWS monitoring requires the following account information: Amazon Web Services (AWS) IAM user accounts (up to 10 accounts) Assigned permissions for your AWS accounts AWS Access Key ID and Secret Address Key To create an AWS account, see the Amazon documentation. To set up required permissions for AWS IAM accounts, see Learn more about Amazon EC2 credentials for cloud monitoring. page 38

39 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 1. On the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Cloud. 2. Locate the Getting Started: Monitor Cloud Instances and click Monitor My Cloud Instances. A page displays with a walk-through of steps. page 39

40 3. Click Get Started. A page displays to add an AWS account and configure cloud settings. 4. Enter a name to display in the Orion Web Console for the account. 5. Enter the AWS Access Key ID and Secret Address Key located in the AWS console. 6. Optionally, enter a description to help identify the account. Use this description to keep track of the IAM user accounts added. The Orion display name and AWS account name can differ. 7. Click Test Connection to verify the access keys to AWS. If issues occur, check the access keys and IAM user account in the AWS console. page 40

41 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 8. Keep the following options enabled and configured as is: Automatic Monitoring: automatically adds instances for monitoring when launched for the account. This feature acts as a discovery job detecting new instances. These instances add for monitoring. To add as nodes, use the manage as node option per Instance Details page. The default is enabled. CloudWatch Instance Polling: enables CloudWatch API polling for metrics through AWS into the Orion Platform. The default is enabled. CloudWatch Instance Polling Frequency: sets the polling frequency for the instances associated with the account. The default is 5 minutes. 9. Click Next. A page opens to select instances for monitoring accessed with the AWS account IDs and Amazon APIs. page 41

42 10. Select instances and click Monitor to enable monitoring. All metrics poll using Amazon API calls, including CloudWatch. All monitored metrics count against the 1 million free requests provided by Amazon. Any requests beyond 1 million will incur additional costs. Other tools in your environment making CloudWatch API calls also count against your free requests limit. 11. Click Save. The cloud instance displays in the cloud instance and infrastructure resources in the Cloud Summary page. You can manage the cloud instance as a node, assign templates, and monitor metrics in VMAN. Monitor cloud instances with VMAN Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring provides visibility into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure including cloud EC2 instances and attached EBS volumes. This feature completes the Orion tools you need to monitor and administer hybrid environments. Migrating your on-premise systems to the cloud gives you growing opportunities to distribute workloads, deliver applications, and expand resources for growing databases. Despite the ease of standing up cloud instances manually or through automation, your infrastructure can become difficult to map with lost resources or hidden instances in the sprawling environment. With access to your cloud services account, Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring polls the cloud service APIs for cloud metrics and status. This data aggregates and displays through the Orion Web Console to monitor, manage, and troubleshoot issues in your cloud environment: Discover your EC2 cloud instances and EBS volumes in your cloud infrastructure Automatically discover and monitor new instances when launched from your cloud account Provide a consolidated view for cloud, hybrid, and on-premise systems Configure cloud alerts for cloud issues including AWS throttling, AWS exceeded limits, Orion cloud and global thresholds exceeded, polling issues, and health status Manage global cloud monitoring threshold settings to indicate warning and critical thresholds Poll for application and OS metrics on cloud instances using application monitors and templates page 42

43 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER For example, add a series of EC2 cloud instances from your AWS account for the east coast. Select My Dashboards > Cloud to review overall AWS infrastructure data and cloud details. Use the Cloud Instances Status Summary and Cloud Server Infrastructure resources to review status and health at-a-glance. To quickly review cloud status, metrics, and node management for a cloud instance, hover over any cloud instance name in the Orion Web Console. The tooltip provides quick information for the cloud service and status. When managed as a node, the tooltip provides enhanced data. Any cloud instances encountering issues display in the following resources with linked instances and nodes to investigate: page 43

44 Active Cloud Alerts lists all active alerts affecting monitoring and managed cloud instances. Cloud Applications with Problems lists all applications with issues on cloud instances managed as nodes in SAM. Select a cloud instance to view the Cloud Instance Details page. This page displays for monitored nodes, or as a Cloud tab in a cloud instance managed as a node. Any exceeded thresholds show in warning and critical values, charts and graphs with hover over points to compare all collected data, and linked alerts. The following resources provide important data for determining issues and tracking performance and usage trends: Active Alerts lists all active alerts affecting the cloud instance. Min/Max/Average of Average CPU load displays average CPU load collected and calculated for the cloud instance. Min/Max/Average of Network Utilization provides a chart of the minimum, maximum, and average bits per second transmitted and received over a cloud instance for a custom period of time. page 44

45 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Alerts Learn more about VMAN alerts and monitoring: How alerts work Best practices for alerts How alerts work Alerts notify you when an issue or error occurs in the virtual environment. The Orion Platform provides alerts for all monitored nodes and applications, including alerts for integrated products. VMAN provides over 40 virtualization alerts to identify common issues in virtual environments including clusters, hosts, datastores, and VMs. These alerts include: Threshold-based alerts: monitor network utilization, CPU load, memory usage, IOPS, latency, and capacity. Activity-based alerts: monitor specific actions in an environment including authentication failures, syslog, changes in network configurations, and events. Network-based alerts: monitor connections between networked servers and devices including latency, connection state, and IOPS. Monitor alerts after deployment to troubleshoot and maintain your environment. Virtualization alerts trigger for real-time monitored data and events using virtualization thresholds (global and specific to VM). Recommendations require collected data over 1 hour for active to 7 days for predictive to effectively trigger. Until the Orion Web Console collects the required data for recommendations, monitor alerts through the Virtualization Summary. Issues bubble up through the Recommendations and Alert resources. page 45

46 Recommendations Lists all triggered active and predictive recommendations. If available, active recommendations include a link to a related alert: All Active Virtualization Alerts Potential Virtualization Lists all triggered alerts for active issues in your virtual environment. Alerts display in order: critical, serious, and warning. Lists triggered informational virtualization alerts. page 46

47 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Issues Informational alerts indicate trends in status, usage, and capacity. For example, an informational alert triggers when VM management tool access times out between the Orion Platform and a VM. Alert categories without triggered issues display as green. Best practices for alerts All alerts for virtualization and the Orion Platform are enabled by default in the Orion Web Console. To reduce noise, you can refine or disable unused alerts. To modify existing trigger conditions and actions, SolarWinds recommends you create a copy of an alert and customize the copy. To better monitor issues with alerts: Adjust thresholds. (recommended) Alerts trigger when monitored usage exceeds global or specific VM thresholds. Critical active alerts indicate spikes in usage and capacity. Potential alerts indicate trends that can lead to an issue. Disable alerts. If an alert is not helpful for your monitoring needs, you can disable it. SolarWinds recommends you create a copy, modify the settings, and disable the original. Create and customize alerts. The out-of-the-box alerts cover a range of issues you may want to customize. You can create a copy of an existing alert, disable the original and customize the copy. If you edit an out-of-the-box alert, a message warns what data can be modified or added. To create alerts, see the SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Administrator Guide. Set notification actions for specific alerts, not all alerts. For large environments, notification actions on every alert can overwhelm your staff. Set notifications for specific alerts. Monitor the Virtualization Summary. Use the Virtualization Summary to continuously monitor all alerts. The alerting resources update with every polling. Triggered alerts display in order of severity. Create an alert copy To quickly create new alerts, duplicate an existing alert and customize the copy. You cannot edit existing conditions and actions for out-of-the-box alerts. For these alerts, you can enable, disable, and add triggers and actions. Use out-of-the-box alerts as an example for defining triggers and actions. Use the Alert Manager to create and edit the alert copy. Review the best practices to ensure good performance. page 47

48 1. Click Alerts & Activity > Alerts, click Manage Alerts. 2. Select Object Type from the Group By drop-down menu. All virtualization alerts are under Virtual Cluster, Virtual Datastore, Virtual Host, and Virtual Machine. 3. To edit, locate and select an alert you want to modify, and click Edit Alert. To create, click Add New Alert. For detailed information on creating and editing conditions and actions, see Create new alerts to monitor your environment. Conditions: set the triggers for alerts. Create as many conditions as needed for multiple scenarios where one or all conditions are met. Example: Trigger alert when CPU usage and capacity spikes above 90%. Reset conditions: configure the event that resets the alert. Example: If an alert triggers when the power state is off, set it to reset when the VM is power state is on. Actions: set the actions and escalation steps completed by the Orion Web Console when an alert triggers. Create as many actions and escalations as needed. Example: Send an notification every 10 minutes until the alert is acknowledged. If the alert is not acknowledged within 10 minutes, send an escalation to management. Reset Actions: configure the actions completed when the alert is reset. Example: Write an event and data to the log when the alert actions complete. page 48

49 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Customize thresholds Learn more about Virtualization Manager and Orion Platform thresholds for alerts and recommendations: How thresholds work Edit a VM global threshold Edit a global Orion threshold How thresholds work Alerts and recommendations are triggered when a monitored value exceeds a threshold. Thresholds set the trigger levels for warning and critical alerts and recommendations. Thresholds include global Orion Platform thresholds, global virtualization thresholds, and specific VM thresholds. As the Orion Web Console collects and calculates data for VM performance, resource consumption, and status, all thresholds are compared against the data to pinpoint active and potential issues. Thresholds include: Orion Platform thresholds - The Orion Platform comes with predefined static thresholds for Orion product modules at the node level including average CPU load, disk usage, percent memory used, percent packet loss, and response time. Virtualization Manager thresholds - VMAN uses a set of virtualization thresholds for triggering virtual system specific alerts and recommendations. These thresholds include network utilization, CPU load, memory usage, IOPS, latency, and capacity. You can configure these thresholds globally or override per cluster, host, datastore, or VM. Specific thresholds support only CPU load, memory usage, and network utilization. If you want to change the predefined value for a threshold, you use a static threshold or a dynamic baseline threshold. Static threshold This threshold is a constant value that you set for your threshold. The value does not change unless edited. Example: You may enter a static value for the response time threshold as warning 500 ms and critical as 1000 ms. Dynamic baseline threshold Data for a threshold is collected for a week and used to calculate mean and standard deviation. The warning and critical threshold values are defined as 2 and 3 standard deviations above the mean, respectively. Dynamic baseline thresholds are the most accurate way to define thresholds for a specific device. You can recalculate baselines on demand after making threshold changes. page 49

50 Example: If the mean value for packet loss for a specific node is 0%, the warning threshold for packet loss would be 3% (+2 standard deviations) and the critical threshold would be 4% (+3 standard deviations). Learn more To manage thresholds: Edit a VM global threshold Edit a VM specific threshold Edit a VM global threshold Recommendations and alerts trigger based on global and specific VIM thresholds in the Orion Web Console. If the global settings are not appropriate for your environment, you can adjust them. Additionally, you can set specific thresholds for VMs that handle vital business applications or services to warn staff prior to performance bottlenecks or issues. In the following scenario, a virtual environment supports multiple heavy load applications and jobs including Microsoft Exchange, the Orion Platform, and automated database backups and snapshots. The VMs fill to capacity, the Exchange servers encounter issues, and new backups and snapshots cannot be saved. To avoid potential storage and capacity issues for Microsoft Exchange, backups, and snapshots, the global threshold for Storage Capacity Usage needs to be reduced. A lower setting triggers alerts and recommendations before an issue occurs. 1. Click Settings > All Settings > Product Specific Settings >Virtualization Settings > Virtualization Global Thresholds. The Virtualization Global Thresholds page displays the global settings for all VMs. page 50

51 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 2. Locate the Storage Capacity Usage threshold. The default amounts are 80% warning and 90% critical. 3. Enter a lower threshold amount to receive alerts earlier. Enter 70% warning and 80% critical. 4. Click Submit. Learn more... To manage thresholds: Edit a VM specific threshold How thresholds work Edit a VM specific threshold As recommendations and alerts trigger, the default global thresholds may need to be adjusted for the baselines of your environment. In some cases, alerts may constantly trigger or cause false positives depending on factors including the amount of network traffic, capacity usage, and intended use of the cluster, host, datastore, or VM. For this example, the CPU load for Microsoft Exchange VM servers can greatly differ than the load by normal application and storage VMs. The default thresholds for CPU load may trigger false positive alerts for the Exchange servers. To better monitor and generate alerts, create specific VM thresholds for the Exchange servers using Dynamic Baselines. page 51

52 1. Click Settings > All Settings. 2. In the Product Specific Settings section, click Virtualization Settings. 3. In the Virtualization Settings section, click Virtualization Thresholds. The Virtualization Thresholds page displays with a list of VMs. 4. Locate and select the checkboxes your Microsoft Exchange VMs, and click Edit Thresholds. An Edit Properties page displays with thresholds to override and edit. 5. For the CPU load and Memory Usage, click Override Global Orion Threshold or Set Dynamic Threshold. For this example, Microsoft Exchange VMs undergoes consistent, heavy CPU load, memory usage, and capacity usage. Setting a specific warning or critical amount could still generate false positives. Due to the constant fluctuation, using dynamic baselines allows the system to calculate the correct baselines based on actual tracked usage and metrics for the VM. page 52

53 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 6. Click Latest Baseline Details to review the latest metrics tracked for the VM. The following example gives you insight to how the baselines are generated. Metric over Time tracks the full bandwidth of CPU load, indicating the actual average CPU usage. A spike in usage as noted in the tooltip shows the above average usage compared to the baseline. VMAN creates a baseline of normal, warning level, and critical level of CPU usage directly from this captured data. Click Cancel to close. 7. Click Use Dynamic Baseline Thresholds. This option calculates and sets baselines based on monitored metrics over time for the Exchange servers, providing more accurate alerting and recommendations. 8. Click Submit. Learn more To manage thresholds: page 53

54 Edit a VM global threshold How thresholds work Edit a global Orion threshold Alerts trigger using built-in global thresholds applied to every monitored node and VM in the Orion Platform. To modify thresholds specifically for VMAN, see Edit a VM global threshold. 1. To edit global statistics, click Settings > All Settings, and in the Thresholds & Polling group, click Orion Thresholds. 2. Enter a value for each of the thresholds you want to modify. 3. Click Save. Results During the next polling, alerts and recommendations trigger using these modified thresholds. page 54

55 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Learn more... To manage thresholds in VIM: Resource management in VMAN How thresholds work page 55

56 Reports Learn more about VMAN reports: Best practices for reports Customize the recommendations report Review the recommendations report Best practices for reports Create and modify custom reports to through the Orion Web Console for virtual environment historical use, alerts, and recommendations. Orion reporting includes over 40 predefined virtualization reports accessible through My Dashboards > Virtualization > Reporting. Click Manage Reports to review the full list of available reports or create a new report. Run reports on-demand or schedule for specific systems and times. As you create reports, assign them to an existing schedule or create a new schedule. Every schedule can have different configurations for frequency to run and actions after completion: Frequency: run the report on a specific date or daily, weekly, or monthly. Example: Run the report daily at 6 a.m., after overnight maintenance hours. Action: steps to complete when the report runs including sending a report in (CSV, HTML, PDF, or XLS format), print, or save to disk. Add multiple actions as needed. Example: a PDF to a network admin mailing list and save a copy in all file types to a snapshot VM. For more information to create reports, see View, create and schedule reports in the Orion Web Console. To better create and run reports: Test reports before scheduling. To test performance and format, run your report for a limited date/time range after you customize it. Verify data, table columns, chart content, and performance of the report during peak times. Limit data by time and filter. To refine and speed up report results, modify the data displayed in the report content to filter and limit data. Every report section can be formatted as a chart, graph, table, gauge, and resource available in views and dashboards displaying only selected data available to objects and resources. page 56

57 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Schedule reports after maintenance. If you have a nightly maintenance, schedule reports to run after the maintenance window ends. Snapshots and recommendations run during the maintenance that can greatly change the virtual environment. Generating reports after maintenance ends provides immediate updates based on completed VM moves and resource allocation. Schedule heavy load reports after business hours. If a report pulls a large amount of data, or you have multiple larger reports, schedule them to run during off-peak hours. Create copies of reports. Use copies of existing reports to quickly customize reports to gather data per configured objects, resources, and conditions. Report copies give you the flexibility to create multiple versions for specific data gathering and schedules. Create reports for specific virtual objects and date ranges. Create multiple reports for specific virtual systems or data sets for better performance when you generate reports and refine content. Configure a report for specific VM objects (cluster, host, datastore, or VM), the Dynamic Query Builder per object properties (example all VMware or all Hyper-V), or database queries to further restrict virtual objects. Customize the recommendations report The Recommendations provides historical data for completed recommendations and actions in the last 30 days. The report provides detailed tables of results: Recommendations current, scheduled, and finished: list all active and predictive recommendations completed with a status of FinishedWithSuccess or FinishedWithError. Actions current, scheduled, and finished: list actions completed in active and scheduled recommendations. If available, you can select a recommendation to power down, move, and power up a VM. Using reporting best practices, create a copy of the Recommendations report. Modify the report to collect data in the last 24 hours, for a specific cluster, with added charts of Effective CPU Load and Effective Memory Load. This report details VM movements and resource allocations with resource status. Schedule the report daily after maintenance. In this scenario, create a copy of a report and customize the recommendations report for a specific host. 1. Select the Recommendations report, and click Duplicate & Edit. 2. Modify the name of the report. 3. For each recommendation content section, select Last 24 Hours for the time period. 4. Click Add Content. page 57

58 5. Select Feature in the Group By drop-down menu, and click Virtualization. All virtualization resources display. 6. Select Effective CPU Load, and click Select and Continue. 7. Select the cluster for the report, and click Add to Layout. For this scenario, select vim-hyperv-cluster-01. To modify the chart format, click Edit Chart. 8. Click Add Content. 9. Select Feature in the Group By drop-down menu, and click Virtualization. All virtualization resources display. 10. Select Effective Memory Load, and click Select and Continue. 11. Select use previously specified objects, and click Add to Layout. The cluster vim-hyperv-cluster-01 should be selected by default. To modify the chart format, click Edit Chart. page 58

59 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 12. Click Next to preview the report. To make additional changes, and click Back. 13. Click Next to enter specific properties for the report including description, report category, and comments. 14. Click Next to set a schedule. For this example, select No schedule needed. 15. Click Next to review the Summary, and click Submit. Review the recommendations report In this scenario, a customized Recommendations report with added memory and CPU charts for vimhyperv-cluster-01 runs on a daily schedule after maintenance at 6 a.m. Any recommendations requiring VM movements are scheduled during this maintenance window, including actions to move VMs between hosts. Review the report to verify the recommendation is completed. In this report, an error occurred with the recommendation. 1. Open the report ed to you after the report runs for the night. A failed recommendation and action have a status of FinishedWithError. 2. To troubleshoot the reported recommendation, click My Dashboards > Virtualization > Recommendations. 3. On the Recommendations page, click the History tab. A list of completed recommendations displays, including the failure. The failed recommendation displays with a critical error, time, and message. 4. Select the recommendation to open the issue and identify which step failed. In this example, the kmiele-vman VM could not be moved due to the management tools for responding. Troubleshoot the possible timeout or account access issues with the native tools to resolve the issue for future recommendation actions. Take additional actions as necessary. page 59

60 Resource optimization Learn more about VMAN resource optimization and troubleshooting: Optimize VM resources Evaluate VMs using the Sprawl dashboard Manage snapshots Manage orphan VMDK files Manage and troubleshoot VMs using AppStack Optimize VM resources Your virtual machine environment can quickly grow in size and number of resources, becoming unmanageable or difficult to monitor over time. To help manage your environment, Virtualization Manager provides tools to easily evaluate current usage, locate possible allocation issues, and manage resources. Recommendations help review and manage VMs with predictive actions for pinpointed trends and metrics for VMs that could cause or encounter issues. VMAN provides additional historical data and metric reporting through dashboards to locate and manage stale, zombie, and rogue VMs. With this continuously polled and collected data, you can better understand and troubleshoot: Active usage of your VMs Allocated resources to over and under utilized systems, requiring balancing Stale, zombie, and rogue VMs costing your company in unused or overused resource Sprawl dashboard Virtualization Manager provides a consolidated view through the Sprawl dashboard to help monitor and manage VMs through resources using specific queries and events. The Sprawl dashboard tracks the vital issues that occur in a sprawling environment: resource allocations, snapshots, alerts, and VM resource status. Using the dashboard, you can reclaim wasted VM resources including idle and stale VMs, optimize performance by right-sizing under- and over- allocated VMs, remove orphaned VMDK files, and manage snapshots. As you review these options, you can click on linked VMs to review additional information. To directly access the VM, use the Virtualization Manager Tools in the node view. Depending on your configured recommendations, some of these resources may not display data when first installed. You can add additional resources by editing the page. page 60

61 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER The Sprawl dashboard includes the following options for reviewing and managing resources: RESOURCE Top 10 VMs by Underallocated vcpus DESCRIPTION Displays powered on VMs with an average CPU load over 70% in the last 7 days. These systems may need additional resources, constantly under heavy load and usage. Top 10 VMs by Overallocated vcpus Displays powered on VMs with two or more CPUs with a peak sum of CPU load has not exceeded 30% in the last 7 days. These systems have resources better balanced and used by underallocated VMs. Top 10 VMs by Underallocated Memory Displays powered on VMs with an average memory consumption over 80% in the last 7 days, ballooning in usage. These systems may need additional resources, constantly under heavy load and usage. Top 10 VMs by Overallocated Memory Displays powered on VMs with 2 or more MBs of memory and the average memory usage has not exceeded 30% in the last 7 days. These systems have resources better balanced and used by underallocated VMs. Top 10 VMs by Snapshot Disk Usage Displays the latest snapshots taken of the VMs with details on location and size. You can review these snapshots and delete as needed to reclaim space and clear out older snapshots. VMs Idle for the Last Week Displays the VMs idle over the past 7 days with an option to power off the VM. The data includes the average CPU, IOPS, and Net throughput, helping identify zombied VMs. Idle VMs are not actively in use, best used by under-allocated VMs needing more CPU load, memory, and space. VMs Powered Off for More Than 30 Days Displays VMs not powered up or in use for over 30 days. These are stale VMs. These VMs are lost space, best removed or reallocated to under-allocated VMs needing more CPU load, memory, and space. VMs that might benefit from decreasing vcpus Displays VMs over-allocated with CPUs compared to the tracked load and usage. page 61

62 RESOURCE DESCRIPTION Reducing the CPUs can help in costs without degrading performance. Do not reduce the amount of CPUs below the recommended amounts for the OS. Orphaned VMDKs Displays orphaned VMDK files: VMDK files with an associated datastore and without a connected VM. You can delete the datastore through the resource to directly manage the VMDK files. If you monitor only a part of your virtual environment in the Orion Web Console, the datastore files that are displayed in this resource might be in use by other, unmonitored hosts. Deleting datastore files that are still in use will irreversibly damage the virtual machine the datastore file belongs to, and you will lose data. AppStack You have access to a powerful troubleshooting tool called AppStack. The AppStack displays a visual representation of the entire environment to quickly scan for warning and critical status issues. As you hover over each item, you can review additional status data for at-a-glance insight into issues. Click a monitored node to drill down into additional details pages to further investigate and resolve problems. Some issues deeper in the environment can bubble up through higher layers. With the visual map of the environment with tooltip status and details, you can clearly pinpoint the originating issue and VM. Performance Analysis Dashboard The Performance Analysis dashboard (PerfStack ) allows you to create troubleshooting projects that visually correlate historical time series data from multiple SolarWinds products and entity types in a single view. Troubleshoot issues Create ad-hoc reports Identify root causes of intermittent issues Make data-driven decisions on infrastructure changes page 62

63 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER Evaluate VMs using the Sprawl dashboard While the AppStack provides troubleshooting of VMs through visual review, the Sprawl dashboard breaks down top issues into resource views with captured metrics. With the ease and scalability of VMs, these environments tend to sprawl over time causing overallocation of resources, systems overwhelmed with snapshots, stale or zombie VMs misusing resources, and orphaned VMDK files. The Sprawl dashboard helps solve these issues by: Pinpointing key areas of VM resource usage and metrics Providing options to directly manage VMs This example resolves issues with over and under allocated systems: 1. To open the Sprawl dashboard, click My Dashboard > Virtualization > Sprawl. The Sprawl dashboard populates with VM data giving a historical view into the environment. page 63

64 2. Examine the Top 10 VMs by Over-allocated vcpus resource to determine which VMs have overallocated CPU amounts. This resource displays powered on VMs with two or more CPUs with a peak sum of CPU load that has not exceeded 30% in the last 7 days. You can directly balance CPU allocation, freeing resources for under-allocated systems. 3. To free up CPUs, click Change CPU/Memory Resources for a virtual system. A recommended amount of CPUs is listed based on usage. The VM AF_Storage has 3 CPUs over-allocated based on the historical CPU load data. 4. Enter 1 for the Number of processors. Select the option to power off and make changes to the VM. 5. Click Save. page 64

65 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 6. Examine the Top 10 VMs by Over-allocated Memory resource to determine which VMs have overallocated memory amounts. This resource displays powered on VMs with 2 or more MBs of memory and the average memory usage has not exceeded 30% in the last 7 days. You can directly balance the Memory allocation, freeing resources for under-allocated systems. 7. To free up memory, click Change CPU/Memory Resources for a virtual system. A recommended amount of CPUs is listed based on usage. The VM lab-vmtools-win10-32bit has 3 GB over-allocated that could be used by under-allocated systems. 8. Select 1024 MB (1 GB) from the drop-down menu. The drop-down menu provides multiple options based on the allocated amount or Custom Value. 9. Click Save. After the next polling, the sprawl dashboard updates with under and over-allocated systems. The released resources on the host can be allocated to other VMs on those hosts. page 65

66 Manage snapshots Snapshots copy the entire VM including configurations and applications, creating large files that require storage in your environment. Over time, snapshots can overwhelm servers or take up space best used by active processes. You can manage snapshots using AppStack, the VM Details page, or with the sprawl dashboard. To manage VMs that are losing capacity to snapshots, SolarWinds recommends using the Sprawl dashboard. The following example shows you have to determine if any snapshots need to be removed from your database backup VM. Reducing these snapshots provides additional capacity for automated database backups: Prior to deleting the snapshot, verify if the snapshot should be deleted or stored. When deleted, the snapshot cannot be recovered. 1. Click My Dashboard > Virtualization > Sprawl. 2. Locate the Top 10 VMs by Snapshot Disk Usage resource. This resource lists the largest snapshots per VM. In this example, syd-hyv-vman-01 holds a number of database backups as snapshots. page 66

67 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 3. To remove snapshots, click Delete Snapshots for syd-hyv-vman-01. A page opens with a list of snapshots and their children. The flag icon shows where you are in the list of VMs and snapshots. 4. Select a snapshot to delete. You can only select one snapshot at a time to delete. For this example, you determine Snapshot 3 and all children can be deleted safely. Select the top most Snapshot 3 and the option to delete all children. 5. Click Delete. The snapshots are deleted from the VM, reclaiming space. The updated capacity and storage usage totals for the VM display during the next polling. Manage orphan VMDK files VMAN continues tracking VMDK files, listing all located orphan VMDK files with detailed information. You can select the datastore to review more information and determine if the VMDK should be deleted. If you do not monitor all virtual systems as nodes in the Orion Web Console, the listed datastore files could be used by unmonitored hosts. Prior to deleting these datastores, verify if the VMDK file can be cleanly deleted. In this example, you may review all orphaned VMDKs once a month to reclaim misused resources and remove obsolete data. With VMs removed, you no longer require these VMDK files. In this example, you review these VMDK files and remove those determined obsolete. page 67

68 1. Click My Dashboard > Virtualization > Sprawl. 2. Locate the Orphaned VMDKs resource. This resource lists the orphaned VMDKs per VM, including all associated VM datastore info, the size, and an option to delete the datastore. Reviewing this information, the rio-vcenter and riovcenter VMDKs should be removed. The VMs were deleted at the beginning of the month, leaving these files taking up a large amount of space with an associated VM. 3. To delete the orphans, click Delete datastore file for rio-vcenter. A message displays verifying if you want to delete the VMDK. 4. Click Delete. Repeat the process for the Riovcenter VMDK. VMAN deletes the orphaned VMDK files from the environment. Manage and troubleshoot VMs using AppStack With VMAN integrated with Server & Application Monitor (SAM) and the Orion Platform, the AppStack maps your entire environment with a visual representation of objects and status. Every node and application, through VM clusters down to datastores, is displayed with icons indicating warning and critical issues. page 68

69 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER At-a-glance, you can troubleshoot issues by reviewing the mapped applications and underlying infrastructure. Selecting an icon highlights related servers, to better track down and resolve the root cause. Regardless of your sprawling environment size, AppStack allows you to immediately detect issues and locate the source. With the expanded features of VMAN, you can further restart or suspend VMs, delete snapshots, and more. In this example, a datastore encounters performance issues displaying a critical alert in the environment: 1. To view the entire network in the AppStack, click My Dashboard > Environment. For this example, we find one of the datastores encountering an issue, possibly causing additional issues up through the AppStack. By resolving this issue, we could solve others. The tooltip displays limited free space compared to the capacity. This could lead to latency issues. page 69

70 2. The AppStack highlights all connected servers to help pinpoint potential issues and related servers. The overview shows the VM has 3 critical and 6 servers offline. Only the related servers display with the datastore selected. page 70

71 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 3. Click the server from this overview to open the details page and further troubleshoot. A server-specific AppStack is also displayed in this page. As you resolve the issues, you can view this AppStack for locating associated issues throughout the environment. 4. Further reviewing the details page, you locate the captured alerts for the specific datastore, related servers, and additional performance metrics. Based on reviewing this data, the datastore shows: A related VM with old snapshots Datastore Overallocation and High Latency alerts for this VM page 71

72 Using management tools and options in the VM details page, resolve these issues to clear the alerts. When resolved, the AppStack updates with the next polling to displays the latest status. If additional alerts are captured, use the AppStack to troubleshoot and drill down into the VMs as with this example. Troubleshooting environmental issues with Performance Analysis dashboards Create troubleshooting projects with the Performance Analysis (PerfStack ) dashboard. Troubleshooting projects visually correlate time series data from multiple SolarWinds products and entity types in a single view. This allows you to Troubleshoot issues in real-time Create ad-hoc reports Identify root causes of intermittent issues Make data-driven decisions on infrastructure changes Drag and drop performance metrics, events, and log data from multiple device types to a chart to perform deep analysis of what was going on in your environment when the issue occurred, including real-time polling for issues you're experiencing now. You can mix and match metrics from data collected across multiple SolarWinds products for both broad and in-depth insight to your infrastructure. For example, you could identify an issue in your application that causes disk I/O to spike and cause slowdowns if you collect SRM and SAM data. After your project is built, share the troubleshooting project with other members of your team for remediation. Compatible SolarWinds products Performance Analysis is most useful in correlating performance data when multiple SolarWinds products are installed. Correlate data from the following SolarWinds products: page 72

73 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER NPM 12.1 or later SAM 6.4 or later VIM 7.1 or later (VMAN integrated with Orion) NTA or later SRM 6.4 or later WPM or later EOC 2.0 or later DPAIM 11.1 or later NCM 7.7 or later configuration changes VNQM or later IPSLA operations If you have at least one of these products installed together on the same server, you can access Performance Analysis dashboards. However, you may not be able to use all collected metrics if you pull data from older product versions. Some data are either not available or partially available in the Performance Analysis dashboard, such as data from the following: SAM Script Component Monitors NetPath For a more complete list, see SolarWinds KB MT Create analysis projects The entities and metrics you can add to your troubleshooting project depends on the SolarWinds products installed on your Orion server. Poll metrics marked with a rocket ship in real-time. The data line may not extend to the end of the chart because it is based on the last polling time. Depending on your account limitations, you may not have access to all available infrastructure data, metrics, or entities. However, all users can create Performance Analysis troubleshooting projects. Create analysis projects from the Performance Analysis dashboard 1. Click My Dashboards > Home > Performance Analysis. If you customize your dashboards, Performance Analysis might not be in the menu bar. Click Settings > All Settings > User Accounts > Edit and verify what you use for HomeTab Menu bar. Click My Dashboards > Configure, and add Performance Analysis to the menu bar you used in HomeTab Menu bar. page 73

74 2. Add entities. You can add a key entity and then add all other related entities. Hover over the entity in the metric palette and click the Add related icon. 3. Select an entity and choose metrics to drag to the dashboard. Create analysis projects from the entity details page Open an analysis project directly from the manage resource on your details page. This opens a project with key metrics from the entity already charted. By default, key metrics for most entities include: Average CPU Load Aerage Percent Memory Used Average Response Time Alerts Events Status 1. Open the details page to an entity. 2. Click Performance Analyzer on the Management resource. You can add more metrics or metrics from related entities. This is supported for nodes, interfaces, IPSLA operations, clusters, datastores, hosts, VMs, LUNs, SRM pools, storage arrays, volumes, cloud instances, and SAM applications. Update charts in real-time Metrics with rocket ships next to them can utilize high frequency polling, one second apart, to update their charts. You can have both real-time metrics and regular metrics in your project. When you turn on realtime polling in your project, only the first 10 real-time metrics are collected at the faster rate to reduce server strain. Your project has a seven minute window of real-time metrics. page 74

75 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER You may not have the option to poll entities in real-time. This option is granted at the account level. EOC installations do not have this option. You can start fast-polling on 15 metrics at a time across all accounts. While you can exceed this number, performance may significantly degrade. When you stop fast-polling, the metrics will continue to poll at the accelerated pace for two minutes before stopping. Click Start Real-Time Polling in the toolbar. All real-time enabled metrics in your analysis dashboard begin to poll the nodes in real-time. Modify the time range for all charts You can set absolute, relative, or custom time ranges simultaneously across all charts in your troubleshooting project at the top of the dashboard. Click and drag to select a time range on a chart and zoom in or out using the hover menu. View the polled data for a plotted metric This is available for Syslog, SNMP Traps, Events, Alerts, and Configuration changes. page 75

76 Click and drag a selection on a chart, and click on the icon with the magnifying glass. The Data Explorer tab opens with the data that for the chart within the time frame you select. Use the Filters menu or the search bar to further reduce the visible data. Remove entities or metrics After you determine what metrics and entities you need to troubleshoot an issue, you can remove extraneous entities or metrics from your project. Hover over the entity in the metric palette, and click the X button. Hover over a metric legend in your chart, and click the X button. Share analysis projects Any troubleshooting project you save is accessible to others by sharing the URL. Click the Share button in your analysis dashboard to copy the project's URL to your clipboard. Share this URL so others can page 76

77 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER use the projects as-is modify the project and sent the URL back to you save it to their own Performance Analysis dashboard by clicking More > Save As For example, you may use a troubleshooting project to identify the root cause of an issue you are experiencing and send the URL in a help desk ticket for a technician to view, or you may share it with members of your team to refine your diagnoses or use as a troubleshooting tool. You can send the URL to anyone with access to the Orion Web Console. When a person views the troubleshooting project, all node access limitations are applied. View your saved analysis projects Click Load at the top of the dashboard to open your most recently used projects, or search for your saved projects. You can only view projects that you have created or saved. Delete analysis projects Click More > Delete to remove a project. You can only delete projects you have created. If a user creates a project and is removed from the SolarWinds user list, the projects that user saved are not removed from the server. If you delete a troubleshooting project that you have shared with others, you are only deleting your copy. Investigate VM performance with Performance Analysis With complex networks consisting of cloud, hybrid IT, virtualization, storage area networks, and so on, multi-faceted IT issues can be difficult to pinpoint and diagnose. When an issue surfaces, for example a badly performing application or server, the investigation can take significant time to locate the core issue. The problem could be in storage, network connectivity, user access, or a mix of resources and configurations. To investigate the issue, create troubleshooting projects with the Performance Analysis (PerfStack ) dashboard that visually correlate historical data from multiple SolarWinds products and entity types in a single view. With Performance Analysis dashboards, you can do the following: Compare and analyze multiple metric types in a single view, including status, events, and statistics. Compare and analyze metrics for multiple entities in a single view, including, nodes, interfaces, volumes, applications, and more. Correlate data from across the Orion Platform on a single shared time line. Visualize hybrid data for on-premises, cloud, and everything in between. Share a troubleshooting project with your teams and experts to review historical data for an issue. For VMAN, the possibilities are endless for application analysis and hybrid environments: page 77

78 Visually walk through historical data for VMs in your environment Verify resource allocation issues in hybrid environments Correlate data to troubleshoot network traffic sent and received by virtual servers (hosts, clusters, datastores, and VMs), on-premises servers, and cloud instances Want to learn more? See the VMAN Administrator Guide. The following example shows you how to identify a root cause for a VM experiencing performance issues. In this scenario, a virtual host encountered a resource and performance issue to the point where users encounter slower responses and access. The issue triggered an alert, which notified your application owner, who escalated the issue to system and network administrators. Create a new troubleshooting project to investigate the issue to compare metrics for the host and all related virtual environment systems to track trends and spikes in usage. 1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Home > Performance Analysis. This opens the Performance Analysis, or PerfStack, dashboard to build charts and graphs using metrics pulled from monitored applications and servers in the Metric Palette. Each chart can hold multiple metrics to directly correlate data. page 78

79 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 2. In the New Analysis Project, click Add Entities. To get started, you need to locate and add the VM in distress. In the search field, enter syd to bring up a list of virtual servers sharing that name. Expand and select Types or Status to filter the list if needed. From the list, we find the virtual host encountering the issues and triggering alerts. Select the host and add it to the dashboard Metric Palette. Click the related entities icon to display all related servers and services to the host. Interested in all associated nodes, applications, servers, and more to this selected node? Click the related entities icon. All related entities display in the Metric Palette providing more options for metrics possibly causing issues. page 79

80 3. Select the syd host node to view and select metrics to drag and drop onto the dashboard. You can drag them into the same chart to compare values between metrics. To start investigating, pull a series of metrics for the host and cluster, comparing metrics to find spikes or high usage. For this scenario, add these host metrics: Maximum Network Usage Maximum Network Transmit Rate Maximum Network Receive Rate Virtual Machines Running For the cluster, add these metrics: Average CPU Load Average CPU Usage The charts and graphs display with data and alerts for the Last 12 hours of metrics. You can expand the date and time to see additional historical metrics over the course of the alert. Add usage metrics for VMs on the host to compare network usage and activity. page 80

81 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 4. Analyzing the data, the issue looks to be a noisy neighbor for one of the virtual machines consuming resources and experiencing high traffic causing bottlenecks and issues for VMs sharing the host. Basically, another server, service, or application is consuming higher bandwidth, disk I/O, CPU, and other resources causing issues for this specific application. This information gives your network and system administrators a direction for further investigation and resolving latency issues. To resolve, they can reallocate resources or move the high-consumption application to another location. 5. Click Save and give the project a name. The project saves as a dashboard with the selected metrics in the set date and time range. When saved, the URL becomes a sharable link. Copy and share the link to the saved dashboard in tickets or s sent by the system and network administrators and the product owner. They can access the link to review the gathered data and troubleshoot. After reallocating resources and making network changes, reopen the dashboard to verify changes and new usage trends for polled metrics. page 81

82 VMAN features Learn more about Virtualization Manager, integration benefits with the Orion Platform: VMAN and NPM VM monitoring VMAN and SAM AppStack VMAN and SRM VM storage management VMAN and NPM VM monitoring Network Performance Monitor (NPM) provides extensive monitoring of managed nodes in your environment. Virtual machine monitoring provides general information in NPM. You would need to continue using native VM tools to locate and compile detailed usage metrics, performance, and health monitoring. VMAN monitors and reports this data automatically into NPM VM nodes without using native tools. Virtualization Manager integration provides: Virtual node (vnode) monitoring without needing to manage VMs as a node Status and information details for clusters, hosts, datastores, networks, and VMs Data details for all VMs in your environment even if not managed Additional VM management tools for monitored VM nodes to power on and off and moving a VM Options to allocate resources and manage VMs through the Orion Web Console Resource utilization and load monitoring for CPU, memory, network, IOPS, and latency Alerts, events, and recommendations for managing VMs and resolving issues These products work together to provide deeper monitoring and alerting for virtual environments: page 82

83 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER 1. Click My Dashboards > Home > Summary. 2. Expand the All Nodes view to locate and select a VM. In this image, hover over the VM syd-esx-01.lab.tex to view additional information. page 83

84 3. Click syd-esx-01.lab.tex to open the details page. Integrated with VMAN, the node details page displays with virtualization resources and collected VM data. The node page for ESX host syd-esx-01.lab.tex provides additional information including an expandable virtual environment, resource usage, and virtualization alerts. The following image displays historical resource usage data for a VM in the ESX host. VMAN and SAM AppStack Server & Application Monitor (SAM) monitors and reports on the applications in your environment as nodes. An integral feature of SAM is the AppStack, a visual representation of your environment from the top most layers of groups and applications, down through to the lowest layers of pools, servers, and storage arrays. Orion Platform products integrated with SAM add additional data to the AppStack. With Virtualization Manager integrated, you can view virtual machines in your environment including hosts, clusters, datacenters, virtual centers, and more. Review the AppStack to locate issues and drill-down through the environment layers to determine the root cause Gain at-a-glance status for all objects Hover over objects to display additional information Select represented nodes to access details pages for additional info and troubleshooting page 84

85 GETTING STARTED GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER VMAN and SRM VM storage management When integrated with Storage Resource Manager (SRM), the Orion Platform provides visibility into all levels of storage layers and servers in your environment, enabling you to locate issues and manage resources at every layer of your infrastructure. SRM works together with VMAN to provides additional storage details at every VM environment level. Every VM includes far more information than total capacity and free space. With SRM and VMAN, you see: page 85

86 Detailed storage summaries and information from the host to the LUN level Every data array and LUN Detailed LUN data through the Storage Summary page Storage troubleshooting alerts and information Predictive storage usage and depletion based on trending data These products work together to enhance the depths of data and server status monitored and reported into the Orion Platform. 1. Click My Dashboards > Virtualization > Virtualization Summary. 2. In the Virtualization Assets resource, expand and click an object in the virtual environment. In this image, select the cluster tex-2k8-2luns to open the virtual details page. 3. In the details page, click Storage. The Storage Details page provides in-depth status data for the VM. The following image displays the Storage Data resource with links to related servers in the environment, total and used capacity, IOPS information, and hover over tooltip information. page 86