Foglight for VMware 6.1.0 - User Guide (Lite version)

Sortable lists

In certain Foglight® for VMware dashboards, some levels of views contain sortable lists. An example of this is the VMware Explorer dashboard Related Objects view displayed below.

It is possible to sort this list by column using any of the column headings. Click a column heading once to sort the list in ascending order. The list is redrawn according to your specification. Click the column heading again to re-sort the list in descending order.

This is handy when you want to have an organized view of virtual machines or host objects sorted by name, status, or some other criterion.

Alarms and their status indicators

Foglight® for VMware uses status indicators to show the alarm states of the objects within the virtual infrastructure. Four status indicators (fatal, critical, warning, and normal), similar to those displayed in the following image, are used throughout the Foglight for VMware dashboards.

The Foglight for VMware alarm types respond to thresholds that are defined within the Foglight for VMware rules. As metrics change and move through thresholds, alarms are raised. As a metric moves through thresholds, the severity of an alarm changes, which causes the associated status indicator to change.

For detailed information about the rules included with the product, see Rules .

It is important to note that any events that trigger an alarm for an object do not trigger an alarm for any of the object’s parents. For example, a single virtual machine running at a high CPU utilization does not trigger an alarm for its parent ESX® Server. An alarm would only be triggered for the parent ESX Server if the server itself was running at a high CPU utilization.

Mouse-over actions

Many items within the Foglight® for VMware dashboards display additional information when you hover the cursor over them. For example, when you hover the cursor over a graph you are likely to see a specific value or values that correspond) to the position of the cursor. When you hover the cursor over an individual metric, you are likely to see a small descriptive popup.

Interacting with Foglight for VMware

When you deploy Foglight® for VMware, a set of predefined dashboards enables you to view the performance of your virtual system at a glance. They allow you to ensure consistent application performance by drilling down for details from higher-level components such as clusters, hosts, and virtual machines, to viewing detailed specifics about each component, such as CPU utilization and network I/O.

First, familiarize yourself with roles needed to access different parts of the browser interface included with the product (see Exploring the VMWare Agent Administration Dashboard). Then, ensure your monitored agents are configured for data collection. You do that by navigating to the VMware Agent Administration dashboard. This dashboard lists the available agents and shows their status, and provides access to other administrative tasks. For more information, see Exploring the VMWare Agent Administration Dashboard and Configuring monitoring agents for data collection .

Start by navigating to the VMware Explorer. Use this dashboard to see specific performance details related to a specific component, such as its CPU load, network I/O, total memory, or consumed disk space. For more information, see Investigating performance metrics.

Next, review the alarms that are generated against your environment and, if required, set their sensitivity level. The VMware Agent Administration dashboard enables you to configure the level of alarm sensitivity. The alarm sensitivity reflects the level of alarms the system stores and displays.

To read about additional features, such as creating OS mapping rules, or reviewing topology object instances and expired data, see Additional features .