VMware ESX/ESXi Server Monitoring

• VMware ESX/ESXi Server - An Overview
• Adding a new VMware ESX/ESXi Server Monitor
• User Permissions
• Monitored Parameters
• FAQ

VMware ESX/ESXi Server Monitoring - An Overview

ManageEngine Applications Manager provides comprehensive performance metrics to monitor your VMware ESX/ESXi servers and their guest virtual machines, and helps you ensure they are performing well at all times.

Applications Manager connects with VMware ESX/ESXi servers through standard APIs and determines the health status as well as the performance of the host servers and their corresponding virtual machines. It provides a single console to monitor physical, virtual and cloud components of your IT infrastructure.

Creating a new monitor

Supported Versions: ESX 3.5 and above; ESXi 3 and above.

Using the REST API to add a new VMware ESXi monitor: Click here

Follow the steps given below to create a new VMware ESX/ESXi server monitor:

1. Click on New Monitor link.
2. Select VMware ESX/ESXi under Virtualization category.
3. Specify the Display Name of the VMware ESX server
4. Enter the Host Name or IP Address of the host where the VMware server is running.
5. Enter the Port where the server is running.
6. Enter the credential details like user name and password for authentication, or select the required credentials from the Credential Manager list by enabling the Select from Credential list option.
7. Select the VM Discovery option based on which the virtual machines should be discovered and monitored. The available options are Do not discover, Discover VM but do not monitor metrics, and Discover and Monitor VM metrics.

   For Discover VM but do not monitor metrics and Discover and Monitor VM metrics options, you can also specify the Discovery Filter Regex based on which the virtual machines are to be discovered and monitored. Learn more

8. Specify the Polling Interval in minutes.
9. If you are adding a new monitor from an Admin Server, select a Managed Server.
10. Choose the Monitor Group with which you want to associate the VMware ESX server to, from the combo box (optional). You can choose multiple groups to associate your monitor.
11. Click Add Monitor(s). This discovers the VMware ESX/ESXi server from the network and starts monitoring it.

User Permissions

In the ESXi Virtual Machines, discovery and read-only access privilege is enough for the user configured for monitoring. But the user must have necessary privileges to perform administrative operations such as start / stopping VMs from Applications Manager. These permissions are important for proper functioning of action profiles created under the 'Virtual Machine Action' category.

Monitored Parameters

Go to the Monitors Category View by clicking the Monitors tab. Click on VMware ESX/ESXi under the Virtualization Table. Displayed is the VMware ESX/ESXi bulk configuration view distributed into three tabs:

• Availability tab gives the Availability history of the ESX server in the past 24 hours or 30 days.
• Performance tab gives the Health Status and events for the past 24 hours or 30 days,some key performance indicators of the ESX server such as CPU Utilization, Memory Utilization, Disk Usage and Network Usage along with heat charts for these attributes.
• List view enables you to perform bulk admin configurations and displays all the VMware ESX/ESXi servers along with an overall idea of their availability and health status.
• Top ESX/ESXi tab shows graphs for the top CPU consumers, top memory consumers, top disk I/O consumers and top network consumers of the ESX/ESXi server.
• Infrastructure View tab displays all the virtual machines discovered under each ESX/ESXi server. This view provides an overall idea of the availability, health, CPU (%), Memory (%), Disk I/O and Network traffic of all the virtual machines. Click on the individual virtual machines listed to view detailed VM metrics.

VMware ESX servers are monitored based on the parameters or the attributes listed below. These attributes provide information about the functioning of the monitors of VMware ESX server. You can also configure thresholds to the numerical attributes monitored by the server based on these details.

Click on the monitor listed in the Availability tab to view detailed performance metrics of the ESX/ESXi server. These metrics are categorized into 9 different tabs for easy understanding. Below is an explanation of the metrics shown in these tabs:

• Overview
• CPU
• Memory
• Datastore
• Network
• Disk I/O
• Hardware
• Storage
• Replication
• Event Log
• Configuration

Overview

This tab provides a high-level overview of the ESX/ESXi server as well as its resource utilization.

CPU

This tab provides metrics about CPU Utilization details of the cores.

Memory

This tab provides metrics about memory utilization of the ESX server.

Datastore

This tab displays metrics pertaining to the data stores of the server.

Note: The capacity, used and free metrics are not supported for NFS datastores.

Network

This tab provides metrics about network utilization

Disk I/O

This tab shows detailed disk I/O (Input/Output) stats of the ESX/ESXi server

Hardware

The folloiwng are metrics pertaining to the hardware of the server.

• If a component is functioning normally, the status indicator is green.
• The status indicator changes to orange or red if a system component violates a performance threshold or is not functioning properly. Generally, an orange indicator signifies degraded performance.
• A red indicator signifies that a component stopped operating or exceeded the highest threshold.
• If the status is blank, then the health monitoring service cannot determine the status of the component.
• The Reading column displays the current values for the sensors. For instance, the column displays watts consumed for System Board and degrees Celsius for temperature.

Storage

Applications Manager automatically maps VMware vSphere servers and their VMs to their underlying physical storage arrays. You can track the vSphere servers and their VMs to the datastores, to the host bus adapters and the actual physical storage. The Storage Mapping table displays a hierarchial map view containing the list of Virtual Machines, Datastores, Storage Arrays and corresponding LUN statistics associated with the ESXi host.

Replication

Event Log

This tab shows a detailed Event List for monitoring of ESX Events.

Note: To configure new events, Click the Monitor Actions button in the right-hand corner of the page and in the drop-down menu, click Configure Events.

Configuration

This tab provides info on the ESX/ESXi server's configuration details.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

1. How can I check if the Managed Object Browser (MOB) service is enabled in the ESX host?

• Connect to the host using the ESXi Shell.
• Determine if the managed object browser (MOB) is enabled, by running the following command:

vim-cmd proxysvc/service_list

If the service is running, the following text appears in the list of services:

...

serverNamespace = '/mob',

accessMode = "httpsWithRedirect",

pipeName = "/var/run/vmware/proxy-mod",

...

• If the service is not running, enable MOB service using the following command:vim-cmd proxysvc/add_np_service "/mob" httpsWithRedirect /var/run/vmware/proxy-mob
• To disable the MOB service, use the following command:

vim-cmd proxysvc/remove_service "/mob" "httpsWithRedirect"

The MOB service is disabled by default. So when you try to access the MOB url of ESX host, the output should look like this:

• Connect to the ESX host via VSphere client version 6.
• In the Configuration tab, go to Software and then Advanced Settings.
• Enable the Config.HostAgent.plugins.solo.enableMob check box and click ok.

• Connect to the host using the ESXi Shell.
• Check the ESXi Advanced Setting using vim-cmd as follows:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/view Config.HostAgent.plugins.solo.enableMob

The Output should look like this:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update Config.HostAgent.plugins.solo.enableMob bool true

2. What is the MOB URL used to obtain the datastore details in the ESXi host?

The MOB URL we use for obtaining the ESXi host datastore details is as follows:

https://<ESXiHOST_IP>:<ESXiHOST_PORT>/mob/?moid=ha-folder-datastore

where

          ESXiHOST_IP          --->   IP address of the ESXi host server

          ESXiHOST_PORT   --->   Port number of the ESXi host server

After accessing this link, you'll find a list of all the available datastores within the ESXi host under the 'value' field of 'datastore' name field.

Select and click over the required datastore from the list in order to get the complete details of that particular datastore.