Resolved issues and enhancements

Resolved issues and enhancements

The following is a list of issues addressed and enhancements implemented in this release.

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Known issues

Known issues

The following is a list of issues known to exist at the time of Foglight for Hyper-V release.

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Upgrade and compatibility

Upgrade and compatibility

Foglight Evolve 9.0 includes a new version of Foglight for Hyper-V 5.8.0.

Each monitored server must be running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, or Windows Server 2016. For complete information about the upgrade procedure, see the Foglight Upgrade Guide.

When upgrading from version 5.7.4 or earlier (included with Foglight for Virtualization 8.7 or earlier, or Foglight 5.6.7 or earlier), Hyper-V Agents are automatically transitioned to use credential management. This transition requires that all agents be upgraded through the Hyper-V Environment Administration tab.

Using other methods to upgrade Hyper-V Agents results in agents without configured credentials and requires additional configuration before collections can resume.

The following is a list of Foglight product versions and platforms compatible with this release.

To upgrade to the latest version of Foglight for Hyper-V:

1. Deactivate all Hyper-V/SCVMM/SOFS agent instances.
2. On the Cartridge Inventory dashboard, install the following cartridge files. Do not remove the older version of these cartridges. Install version 5.8.0 over the older version.
   • DRP-5_8_0.car
   • Virtual-HyperV-5_8_0.car
     Note: Monitoring of Hyper-V and Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) is enabled by the Virtual-HypeV-5_8_0.car file.
   • Virtual-HyperV-Admin-5_8_0.car
3. To enable System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) monitoring, install the SCVMM-5_8_0.car file.
4. On the Hyper-V Environment dashboard, on the Administration tab, update all of the existing agent instances.
5. Activate all agent instances.

For more information, see the Foglight Upgrade Guide.

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System requirements

System requirements

Before installing Foglight for Hyper-V, ensure your system meets the following minimum hardware and software requirements:

Note: 32-bit Windows and Linux Agent Manager installers are not included in the Foglight Evolve 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 Hyper-V Management Capabilities guide.

Hyper-V Agent and Agent Manager configuration

On 64-bit hosts meeting the minimum system requirements, the embedded Agent Manager can be used to run Hyper-V Agents to monitor up to 500 virtual machines. If the total number of virtual machines to be monitored from a single agent host is greater than 500, an Agent Manager should be installed on a separate host.

Important: Foglight Evolve 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.

Foglight Hyper-V Agent host system requirements

* Additional CPUs may be required for larger environments.

Deploying more than 10 Hyper-V agents

The following calculations are guidelines for setting the amount of connections required for the Agent Manager.

Note: The following sample is for the calculation of Hyper-V agents only. If there are additional agents to be monitored by the Agent Manager in your environment, update the existing connection quantity to add this number that is required for the Hyper-V agents.

To change the JVM settings:

1. Determine the amount of connections required for the Agent Manager. Each agent requires 15 connections. For example, if 12 agents are deployed in the Agent Manager, the amount of required connections is 15 x 12 =180.
2. On the agent machine, open the baseline.jvmargs.config file for editing. The file is located in the <Agent_Manager_home>/state/default/config directory.
3. Configure the pool size by adding the following lines in the Settings section:
   
   vmparameter.0 = "-Dcom.quest.connection.regulator.percentAvailableConnectionsThreshold=40"
   vmparameter.1 = "-Dcom.quest.connection.regulator.maxActiveConnectionsCap=300"
   
   The pool size will be maxActiveConnectionsCap multiplies the value subtracted percentAvailableConnectionsThreshold from 100%. In the sample above, this is 300 x (100-40)% = 180 connections.
   
   Note: If this file has been previously edited, increase the numeric parameters accordingly.
4. Delete the existing deployed negotiation configuration settings directory:
   
   <Agent_Manager_home>/state/default/config/deployments
   
5. Restart the Agent Manager for these settings to take effect.

Monitoring more than 4000 virtual machines from a single agent host

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 Hyper-V Servers that will be monitored from all Hyper-V 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 Hyper-V agents are calculated using the following formula:

512 MB + 0.5 MB x VM#

According to the above formula, monitoring 4000 virtual machines requires 2560 MB of memory:

512 MB + 2048 MB = 2560 MB

The 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

This requires the default Agent Manager settings to be changed.

To change the JVM memory settings:

1. Determine the amount of additional memory required. This will be the total from the last step above minus the default value of 2560 MB. In the sample above, this is 4608 – 2560 = 2048 MB.
2. On the agent machine, open the baseline.jvmargs.config file for editing. The file is located in the <Agent_Manager_home>/state/default/config directory.
3. Add the following lines in the Memory Settings section:
   
   vmparameter.2 = "-Xms2048m";
   vmparameter.3 = "-Xmx2048m";
   
   Note: If this file has been previously edited, increment the numeric parameters accordingly.
4. Delete the existing deployed negotiation configuration settings directory:
   
   <Agent_Manager_home>/state/default/config/deployments
   
5. Restart the Agent Manager for these settings to take effect.

Host system recommendations

Dedication

When monitoring larger Hyper-V environments, the Agent Manager machine hosting the Hyper-V 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.

Memory

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 Hyper-V 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

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:

When the Agent Manager and Hyper-V 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 Hyper-V dashboards.

Foglight Management Server minimum memory requirements

* 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.

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