Foglight for VMware 5.7.7 - User and Reference Guide

Configuring monitoring agents for data collection

VMware Monitoring in Foglight® for Storage Management uses the VMware Performance Agent to collect information from monitored environments. Creating a VMware Performance Agent instance creates the agent process on the Agent Manager host. Activating the VMware Performance Agent starts that agent process while starting an agent instance’s data collection enables the agent to start collecting data from the monitored vCenter® and to send it to VMware Monitoring in Foglight for Storage Management.

When the VMware Performance Agent package is successfully deployed, create one or more agent instances, activate them, and start their data collection. To perform these steps in a single operation for one or more monitored hosts, use the Agents view on the Administration tab.

Each VMware Performance Agent monitors a single Virtual Center. When you create a VMware Performance Agent instance and the Agent Setup wizard determines that the Virtual Center was not previously monitored by this Foglight for Storage Management instance, it starts importing historical data into Foglight for Storage Management. This data is not immediately available as it takes some time to collect it. This process can import data collected over 30 days or less, depending on the amount of data available in the Virtual Center. This allows you to explore VMware metrics as soon as the data is imported, instead for waiting for the agent to collect some data from the Virtual Center. The Metric History column in the Agents table indicates the progress of the historical data import. Historical data is intended for charting, trending, and general presentation purposes. It does not cause any alarms to fire.

To import vCenter historical data, the minimum recommended vCenter Statistics Levels must be at least 2 in the samples that are collected for one month for the agent to populate 30 days of historic collections. The following table lists the minimum Statistics Levels for all collection frequencies. For more information about vCenter Statistics levels, see your VMware® documentation.

IMPORTANT: Before creating your first VMware Performance agent, you must configure a Virtual Center user with sufficient privileges. For more information, see “Enabling VMware Performance Agents to Collect Data from a Virtual Center” in the Foglight for VMware Installation Guide.

IMPORTANT: The Virtual Center user account must have sufficient privileges. For more information, see “Enabling VMware Performance Agents to Collect Data from a Virtual Center” in the VMware Monitoring in Foglight for Storage Management User and Reference Guide.

Investigating performance metrics

The VMware Explorer allows you to monitor a wide range of elements in your virtual infrastructure. It contains a number of informative views through which you can quickly and easily access detailed information about any of the available components (physical or virtual) within the infrastructure. Its hierarchical interface includes drilldown capabilities that display various performance metrics and alarms within the virtual infrastructure.

NOTE: The VMware Explorer dashboard is inventory-based. The VMware Explorer dashboard counts all virtual machines (VMs), including template VMs, for each vCenter. The Virtual Environment Summary dashboard is service-based. The VMware service created by VMware Monitoring in Foglight® for Storage Management for a particular vCenter does not contain template VMs. Therefore, the number of VMs for a particular vCenter is different when you view it through the VMware Explorer dashboard than the number that appears when you view it through the Virtual Environment Summary dashboard.

To access this dashboard, from the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click VMware > VMware Explorer. For complete reference about the data appearing on this dashboard, see VMware Explorer views .

The Virtual Infrastructure view contains a navigation tree on the Topology tab that represents the various virtual infrastructure objects: Virtual Centers, Datacenters, Clusters, ESX Hosts, Resource Pools, and Virtual Machines. For each individual object or group of objects, a status indicator appears, showing the alarm of highest severity that is outstanding for the that object or objects. For example, there are 25 virtual machines configured for a vCenter. Twenty of the virtual machines have a normal status, three have a warning status, and two have a critical status. In the Topology view, the virtual machines container for that vCenter displays a critical status indicator to show that at least one of the virtual machines associated with the vCenter has an outstanding critical alarm.

The Hierarchy tab shows the logical layout of vCenter management servers.

Hovering over an object in the Virtual Infrastructure view, you see a popup that provides a summary of the present state of that object.

Selecting an object or group of objects on either tab of the Virtual Infrastructure view displays performance details about your selection in the VMware Explorer Primary view. The VMware Explorer Primary view takes up the entire display area of the VMware Monitoring in Foglight for Storage Management browser interface. This view provides significant value to administrators who leverage VMware Monitoring in Foglight for Storage Management to monitor their virtual infrastructure.

The alarm summary in the top-right shows the number of alarms at each severity level that are outstanding for the selected object. Clicking an alarm count lists the active alarms for the object.

A set of tiles displayed along the top indicate the type of the selected object or objects, and the related alarm counts.

Additionally, a collection of navigation tabs appears in this view. These navigation tabs vary from object to object, but generally contain a tab to an object summary (typically the default view), a tab to an object performance overview, and one or more tabs to other relevant information.

The display area changes in appearance and content, depending on the selected object or group of objects. For example, if you select an object type container from the Topology view, the Summary tab displays a consumption graph and a table that are representative of the group of objects within that container.

However, selecting a Resource Pool container from the Topology tab displays a Resource Pools Relationship Tree on the Summary tab. This tree contains every resource pool that belongs to the clusters within the associated vCenter. This is useful if you want to see how those resource pools are laid out, or if you want to take a look at the utilization statistics for each configured resource pool on the vCenter.

If you select an individual resource pool from the Virtual Infrastructure view, the Summary displays summary and utilization information for that resource pool. This is typically the type of information you see on the Summary tab when you select any individual object from the Virtual Infrastructure view.

The metrics and the amount of detail displayed in the display area vary depending on the type of the selected object. For example, in the image below, the tiles indicate that the selected object is the STL DEV datacenter, and that it is connected to one vCenter, one cluster, four ESX® Hosts, and so on.

The Utilizations view, typically located across the center of the display area tab, provides numerical and graphical representations of utilization metrics associated with the selected object or group of objects. For example, selecting a single resource pool from the Virtual Infrastructure view and opening the Performance tab in the display area, displays four graphs in the Utilizations view, showing CPU, memory, disk, and network resource utilizations for the selected resource pool.

From there, clicking a graph or a spinner shows a larger view of the graph with descriptive text about each metric appearing in the graph.

If you open the VMs tab for that same resource pool, the Utilizations view displays one graph illustrating the percent-used and percent-ready CPU utilization for the virtual machines of the resource pool.

If, however, you select a collection of ESX Hosts from the Virtual Infrastructure view and you open the Summary tab, an informative graph appears in place of a Utilizations view. Selecting a collection of objects in the Virtual Infrastructure view always shows a composite view displaying information about all object instances contained in that collection.

In addition to the Utilizations view, one or more Related Objects views may appear at the bottom of the display area. These views take the form of tables and list either the parent or child objects or both (whichever are applicable) of the object being viewed, and provide pertinent details about each one. Their appearance depends on the type and range of objects selected in the Virtual Infrastructure view.

For example, if you select a single cluster, two Related Objects views appear: one displaying the ESX hosts that belong to their cluster, and another listing the virtual machines running on those hosts. The views also display the performance metrics associated with each list item.

However, when you select a cluster container, the Summary tab shows a Related Objects view that lists all of the clusters in that container and provides pertinent details about each one.

Viewing baseline ranges

Foglight for Storage Management can estimate system performance by comparing metric values against a baseline range. A baseline establishes expected data patterns during a given time period. This feature is only available when your Foglight for Storage Management system includes a baseline cartridge with applicable metric definitions. VMware Monitoring in Foglight for Storage Management uses the capabilities of the IntelliProfile cartridge, which enables the appearance of baseline data for ESX hosts and virtual machines on the VMware Environment and VMware Explorer dashboards.

Baseline data can also be displayed on custom dashboards and views for the following metric properties.

Start creating a custom dashboard by clicking Create dashboard on the action panel. From there, create a view and add one or more of the data elements listed above. For complete information about custom dashboards and how to get started, refer to the Foglight for Storage Management User Help and the Creating Custom Dashboards learning video.

Before finishing, edit the view properties and enable the appearance of the baseline minimum and maximum values by selecting one or more of the Show baseline min/max as check boxes.

When you finish creating the custom dashboard, the blue line in the chart indicates metric values over time, while the grey shaded area represents the baseline range for the selected metric.

Setting the alarm sensitivity level

The VMware Agent Administration dashboard enables you to configure the level of alarm sensitivity. The VMware Monitoring in Foglight® for Storage Management alarm sensitivity reflects the level of alarms the system stores and displays.