Foglight for VMware 6.1.0 - User Guide

Using Foglight for VMware

This introduces you to the VMware® virtual infrastructure and provides you with essential foundational information.

For more detailed information about VMware virtualization products and solutions, consult the appropriate VMware documentation.

Introducing the virtual infrastructure

VMware® vSphere® provides an innovative mechanism for organizing and viewing any virtual infrastructure built on its platform. Using a unique combination of physical and logical components, this mechanism effectively and efficiently fulfills the VMware vision of the modern virtual infrastructure.

Foglight® for VMware accommodates customers of all sizes that leverage the VMware virtualization platform by examining and enhancing eminently knowledgeable VMware view of the virtual world.

The following figure highlights the components or objects that make up a typical vSphere implementation. The figure makes a clear distinction between objects that exist in the physical world and those that are considered to be virtual.

VMware vCenter® allows for the configuration of a hierarchical organizational structure that resides primarily within the virtual domain. This enables an organization to easily configure physical VMware ESX® Servers and virtual machines to reside in logical groups that dictate the various aspects of the virtual infrastructure (like physical object location, resource allocations and limitations for virtual machines, and high availability settings for physical and virtual components).

Object roles

Before we get too far into discussing the layout and capabilities of Foglight® for VMware, we must understand the different roles the various physical and virtual objects play within the overall virtual infrastructure.

The vCenter® Server and VMware® ESX® Servers provide the physical foundation for the vSphere® infrastructure.

Virtual machines on the other hand are classified as virtual components for the purpose of management and monitoring, even though they have many of the same characteristics (like direct network and storage access) as physical systems. At any given time, a virtual machine must be contained within a single VMware ESX Server. The particular ESX Server in which a given virtual machine is contained may change of course over the lifetime of the virtual machine through the use of unique VMware technologies such as VMware vSphere® vMotion® or VMware vSphere® High Availability (VMware HA).

Physical objects

The physical objects within the VMware® virtual infrastructure are those with which you can physically interact. The virtual components or objects that make up the virtual environment cannot exist without the presence of underlying physical components.

A VMware ESX® Server is an example of a physical component.

To have Foglight® for VMware monitor a virtual infrastructure, the virtual infrastructure must consist of at least one vCenter Server that is used to manage the virtual infrastructure and at least one ESX Server that is used to run virtual machines.

NOTE: Each ESX Server that is used to run virtual machines must have its own managing vCenter Agent installed on it.

An ESX Server Host is the single physical component required to begin building a virtual infrastructure. An ESX Server provides a hypervisor based architecture for controlling and managing resources for the virtual machines that run on it. The virtual machines running on the host share the resources it provides. Should resources become over-committed, the ESX Server hypervisor determines which virtual machines have priority access to the shared resources (based on manual virtual machine configurations) and distributes the available resources accordingly.

Each ESX Server is managed by a single vCenter Server instance, and can be configured to exist logically within either a datacenter or cluster virtual object within the overall virtual infrastructure.

Although a vCenter Server can technically exist as a virtual machine, it is considered a physical component within the VMware virtual infrastructure.

VMware vCenter is the software tool used to manage virtual environments that are built on the VMware virtualization platform. vCenter creates a hierarchical structure of virtual objects that enables a system administrator to logically lay out his virtual infrastructure configuration. vCenter also introduces other advanced VMware functionality such as Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS), VMotion, and High Availability (HA) that can be used to enhance the benefits of a virtual infrastructure.

vCenter provides a robust WSDL that Foglight for VMware leverages to capture and manipulate key characteristics and performance metrics of the various object types and objects found within the virtual infrastructure configuration. Each vCenter instance that is to be monitored using this product must have a VMware Performance Agent configured for it that points to the Web service interface. As mentioned in the Foglight for VMware Installation Guide, this agent can be installed on the vCenter Server itself because all of the required components for the proper operation of the agent come pre-configured.

A single vCenter Server can monitor approximately 100 VMware ESX Servers and 1500 virtual machines before performance and scalability challenges demand the introduction of a second vCenter Server. Multiple vCenter instances can be disbursed geographically to localize the management of large, distributed vSphere implementations.