Before installing Foglight for VMware, ensure your system meets the following minimum hardware and software requirements:
| Operating System |
Foglight for VMware can be installed on any supported Foglight Management Server configuration. |
| Platform, Memory and Hard Disk Space | The platform, memory, and hard disk space requirements for the monitored servers must match the Agent Manager requirements. For complete information, see the System Requirements and Platform Support Guide. |
Note: 32-bit Windows and Linux Agent Manager installers are not included in the Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition installer. New installations should use 64-bit Agent Managers. If you are upgrading 32-bit agent hosts, you can obtain 32-bit Agent Manager Installers from Quest Support.
For a complete list of system requirements, refer to the Installing the Virtualization Management Capabilities guide.
On 64-bit hosts meeting the minimum system requirements, the embedded Agent Manager can be used to run VMware Performance Agents to monitor up to1000 virtual machines. If the total number of virtual machines to be monitored from a single agent host is greater than 4000, an Agent Manager should be installed on a separate host.
Important: Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition Virtual Appliance comes pre-configured to support up to 4,000 virtual machines. If you are using this product, there is no need to follow the configuration procedure described in this section.
If additional cartridges and agents are added to the environment, product performance should be monitored and agents moved off of the embedded Agent Manager to reduce the load.
| Minimum CPU | Minimum Memory | Minimum Host Memory | Total Monitored VMs | |
| Windows 64-bit |
2* |
2 GB |
4 GB |
1000 |
| Linux 64-bit |
2* |
2 GB |
4 GB |
1000 |
* Additional CPUs may be required for larger environments.
The Agent Manager JVM usually requires additional memory to monitor more than 4000 virtual machines. The total number of virtual machines is the total from all vCenters that will be monitored from all VMware Performance agents running on the Agent Manager.
The following calculations are guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Memory requirements can vary greatly from installation to installation with similar VM counts. If insufficient memory is configured, the failure mode is easily recognizable: all agents on the Agent Manager host will go into a broken state after the agent(s) were activated for a short period of time, usually within 24 hours. In addition, the Agent Manager log will contain a line similar to the following:
Caused by: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
If this is the case, add memory greater than what is shown in the calculations below, in increments of 512 MB until the agents stabilize.
JVM memory requirements for VMware Performance agents are calculated using the following formula:
512 MB + 0.5 MB/VM
According to the above formula, monitoring 4000 virtual machines requires 2512 MB of memory:
512 MB + 2000 MB = 2512 MB (round up to 3 GB)
he default setting for agents deployed on 64-bit systems is 2560 MB, which suffice this environment.
Similarly, monitoring 8192 virtual machines requires 4608 MB of memory:
512 MB + 4096 MB = 4608 MB
Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition Virtual Appliance comes pre-configured to support up to 4,000 virtual machines. This requires the default Agent Manager settings to be changed.
When monitoring larger vCenters, the Agent Manager machine hosting the VMware Performance agents should be dedicated to this task. No other Foglight agent types should run on the host and the host should not run any other applications.
Regardless of the values set for JVM memory above, Agent Manager never allocates more than 80% of system memory. So the machine hosting the Agent Manager and VMware Performance Agents must have sufficient memory. Beyond the memory requirements of the Agent Manager, a minimum of 2 GB should be free for the operating system. In the example above for 8000 VMs and an Agent Manager memory requirement of 4608 MB, the host should have a minimum of 6656 MB - the greater of:
1.25 x 4608 MB = 5760 MB
Or:
2048 + 4608 MB = 6656 MB
If the Foglight Agent Manager is configured on a virtual machine, it is recommended that the VM use a memory reservation to ensure maximum performance.
CPU usage on the Agent Manager host is relatively low most of the time. However, usage peaks dramatically during the performance metric collection. This is normal and expected. CPU utilization consistently over 50% is an indication that additional processing power is required. As with memory, usage can vary between different installations with similar numbers of virtual machines. The following guidelines should be followed:
| Up to 1000 VMs |
2 CPUs |
| 1000 – 4000 VMs |
4 CPUs |
| 4000+ VMs |
add 1 CPU per 1000 VMs – round up when necessary |
When the Agent Manager and VMware Performance agents are running on a virtual machine, the VM should be configured with CPU reservation whenever possible to ensure best performance. Lack of processing power on the Agent Manager manifests in missed collections and gaps in the data usually noticeable in various graphs throughout the Foglight for VMware dashboards.
| # of virtual machines | Memory* Foglight JVM settings |
| 1000 |
Xms|Xmx=4G |
| 2500 | Xms|Xmx=9G |
| 5000 | Xms|Xmx=17G |
| 10000 | Xms|Xmx=32G |
| 20000 | Xms|Xmx=62G |
* Edit the Foglight Management Server JVM settings in the server.config file located under Quest\Foglight\config\. When running Foglight on a virtual machine, full memory needs be reserved at the hypervisor level.
Foglight includes a licensing capability that restricts access to those features that are defined in the license. Any Management Server installation requires a license that grants access to server-specific parts of the browser interface and the features associated with them. Foglight cartridges are also license-protected. While some cartridges are covered by the base Foglight license (such as Foglight Agent Manager cartridges and the Foglight for Infrastructure), others may require an additional license.
Foglight for VMware is covered by the Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition license. A separate additional license is required for installation in the base Foglight product. This license covers both Foglight for VMware and Foglight for vCloud Director.
To activate a trial or a purchased commercial license:
Foglight for VMware release package contains the following:
Foglight for Virtualization EE 8.8.5 includes a new version of Foglight for VMware 5.7.7. This new version of Foglight for VMware is installed with Foglight for Virtualization EE 8.8.5
Important: To enable the VMware Performance Agent to monitor your virtual environment, you must grant the agent privileges for accessing the Virtual Center and collecting data from it, as described in "Granting the VMware Performance Agent Privileges to Collect Data from a Virtual Center" in the Foglight for VMware Installation Guide. However, when you create an administrative role in the Virtual Center for that purpose, in addition to the Datastore > Browse Datastores and Sessions > View and Terminate Sessions privileges, that role must also include the Performance > Modify intervals privilege. When collecting traffic-type network metrics from the monitored ESX hosts, this privilege enables the VMware Performance Agent to change the performance metric counter levels in order to collect this data. Also, any existing Virtual Center accounts that the VMware Performance Agent already uses to log in to the monitored Virtual Center must be granted the Performance > Modify intervals privilege.
After installing all of the cartridge files, the following cartridges appear on the list of installed cartridges:
For more information, see the Foglight for VMware Installation Guide.
Additional information is available from the following:
This section contains information about installing and operating this product in non-English configurations, such as those needed by customers outside of North America. This section does not replace the materials about supported platforms and configurations found elsewhere in the product documentation.
This release is Unicode-enabled and supports any character set. In this release, all product components should be configured to use the same or compatible character encodings and should be installed to use the same locale and regional options. This release is targeted to support operations in the following regions: North America, Western Europe and Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Far-East Asia, Japan.
This release has the following known capabilities or limitations: This release is localized for English only but supports the Unicode character set.
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