Shows disable on additional web servers but enabled on main poller.
If you try to enable it on additional web servers, you get an error that it cannot communicate with the main poller.
If you point your browser to the main poller, it shows enabled.
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Recommendation Engine
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How to Bulk Add ESX Hosts as Orion Nodes in new Orion VMAN 8.2?
Either SolarWInds completely overlooked this when changing how Virtualization Objects are added to Orion, or I am completely missing the setting to do this for us.
Previously you could just run a one hop Network Discovery with the vCenter server as the only IP address. You just had to put in valid VMware credentials and Everything would get brought in as Orion nodes and with the VMAN appliance integrated it would automatically marry the data up. You could even put in WMI and SNMP credentials on the appropriate pages of the Discovery wizard and it would even scan and bring in all of the VM's as well. It worked great for bulk adding all of our ESX hosts and VM's into Orion in one big swoop.
Now however, the page in the Discovery wizard where you used to put in the VMware credentials has been replaced by the "Add VMWare VCenter or Hyper-V Devices" button. Clicking this button exits you from the Discovery Settings wizard and takes you to the new Add Virtualization Objects page. I thought to myself, "OK, cool, so we just add the vCenter server and it will now automatically add the ESX Hosts in for us. I hope it also adds in the VM's like the old Discovery Wizard does too, but as long as it at least gets the Hosts I'll be happy.". I figured surely they wouldn't overlook that, right?
Well, they did... Adding the vCenter server this way only brings the vCenter server in as an Orion node. The ESX hosts are only brought into Orion as "Orion VMAN" nodes. This means the hosts are not pinged by Orion every 2 minutes, they are not polled for additional metrics like CPU, SNMP, HARDWARE HEATLH, or any of the other data that Orion gathers. It also means you can't assign custom property values to them or anything. This is a HUGE miss by SolarWinds. We have nearly 300 ESX hosts between our two vCenters. Clicking on each one individually and choosing "Manage This Node" is just not feasible.
The only other thing I can think to do would be to do a SWQL\SQL query to get a list of all the ESX Host IP's from the VIM.Hosts table, then run a "Ping Only" discovery against that list of IP's. It should marry them up once brought in (I hope). This is a pain though and is a big step backwards compared to how it used to work.
Luckily I had two Discovery Profiles saved that are setup the way I described above. Running them worked just like it used to and brought in all the VMware Hosts and VM's as both Orion and Orion VMAN nodes. But what if these profiles ever get deleted? What if we get a new vCenter server that I need to Discover?
Please SolarWinds, tell me you have a function built somewhere that replaces the features I listed above? We are a large environment, so when you remove functionality that allowed us to bulk manage things in Orion that really hampers us and makes our job harder. What is SolarWinds vision for Orion VMAN with regards to monitoring hosts? Do you intend for your users to just have to click on each host individually to manage them as Orion Nodes? Do you intend for us to only manage them as VMAN Nodes and thus no longer get hardware health or other important data that is collected by Orion core? I just don't understand how such a major thing was overlooked? I scoured the admin guides and documentation last night and could not find a single word about adding hosts in (other than adding standalone esx hosts). Our use case is not unique by any stretch of the imagination, so how are other users handling this? I really don't get it at all. It is baffling to me how this oversight exists... Or, like I said, maybe I'm just missing something. I sincerely hope that is the case.
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Hardware Monitoring using SAM
Hi All,
In our environment we had been polling hardware data from Vcenter into SAM(6.4) using CIM protocol. But as we've upgraded SAM to 6.6, we couldn't find the option in the Virtualization setting to poll via vcenter or via ESX Directly. Instead now we are getting poling method options as VMAN Orion and VMAN Appliance. Why is that so?
These changes have effected the monitoring of ESXis.
What's the solution for this?
Many Thanks!
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Old Snapshots Alerting
Hello,
I'm currently building an alert that would inform us about old snapshots on our virtual machines. The alert itself works fine but I would like to put as much information about the snapshot as possible.
So far I have managed to set up an alert notification in the following way (I have cut out non relevant text):
"There is a snapshot older than X days on ${N=SwisEntity;M=Name}.
Oldest snapshot creation date: ${N=SwisEntity;M=OldestSnapshotDate}
Snapshot storage size: ${N=SwisEntity;M=SnapshotStorageSize}
Snapshot summary count: ${N=SwisEntity;M=SnapshotSummaryCount}"
This is nothing special as it only includes variables available from "creator".
What I would like to add is information about snapshot creator and snapshot description.
As far as I know SolarWinds does not pull information from "Monitor" tab in VCenter so it may not be possible to do this currently (please correct me if I'm wrong).
However I found in database that there is table named "[dbo].[VIM_Snapshots]" and column "Name" is basically snapshot description, so I'm looking for help how could I add this information into above alert.
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Creation date & boot time for VM through VMAN
Hi,
We have VMAN and we are looking for some information concerning the VM.
- The DateCreated is not accurate and seems to be moore a date related to VMAN than a true VM creation date.
- the Boot time is not always filled
We like to have both infromation to be able to determine
- the oldest VM
- the longest running time
Can you advise on this on where to find this accurate information or what is required for the info to be available ?
Cheers
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Monitoring VMware View
Are there any plans to add VMware VIew (VDI) specific monitoring to this platform.Being able to monitor things like:
- connection servers
- pools
- desktops
- connection statistics
Also be able to drill down to underlying storage/network issues under the View environment.
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Performance Metric Definitions
I'm working on definitions for the metrics being monitored with VMAN. I have a few questions about them too. This is the list I have so far:
CPU Used: Percentage utilization of CPU resources.
source:
CPU Usage: Measured in MHz for the amount of CPU Usage.
source:
CPU Swap Wait: Swap wait time is time spent waiting for memory to be swapped in. When the VM is waiting for memory, it is not doing work.
CPU Ready: CPU Ready Time is a vSphere metric that records the amount of time a virtual machine is ready to use CPU but was unable to schedule time because all CPU resources (on a ESX host) are busy.
source: http://houseofbrick.com/cpu-ready-time-blog-part-i/
CPU Max Limited: Sys|Resource CPU Max Limited (%) (1 min. average) Percent of resource CPU that is limited to the maximum
amount. Average value during a one-minute period.
CPU Load (On Host): Percentage of CPU utilization on the host.
source:
CPU Load: Percentage of CPU utilization by the guest os.
source:
CPU Latency: Percentage of time the VM is unable to run because it is contending for access to the physical CPUs.
CPU Demand: This metric is an indicator of the overall demand for CPU resources by the workloads in the cluster. It shows the percentage of CPU resources that all the virtual machines might use if there were no CPU contention or CPU limits set. It represents the average active CPU load in the past five minutes.
Memory Usage (On Host): Percentage utilization of Memory resources on the host.
source:
Memory Usage: Percentage utilization of Memory resources on the guest os.
source:
Memory Granted: Amount of memory available for use.
Memory Demand: Guest operating system demand in kilobytes
source:
Consumed Percent Memory Load:
source:
Consumed Memory Load:
source:
Balloon Memory Load: This metric shows the amount of memory currently used by the
virtual machine memory control. It is only defined at the VM level
Do these definitions make sense to anyone and are there any that should be updated for what VMAN is actually reporting? I am also seeing a weird thing. My Memory Usage, Memory Granted, Memory Demand, Consumed Percent Memory Load, and Consumed Memory Load are all reporting 0 or --. Which doesn't make sense because I know the VM is using memory. Anyone have ideas as to why that may be? Thanks for your time and hope someone gets a little use out of having these definitions.
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Can someone explain what this mean on the node details for a VM?
VMAN Orion virtualization polling is not supported on agent. If you want to poll the node via agent, you need to manually switch the polling type for the node to 'Basic' on the Virtualization Polling Settings page in order to poll also virtualization data.
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Email Notifications
I am trying to set up email notifications for certain things such as High CPU usage, memory usage, etc. I can't seem to get the email to send when this happens, where do I set this up to make this work?
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Virtualization Manager Versus IVIM
Can someone explain the difference between Virtualization Manager and IVIM? What do I get from Virtualization Manager that I don't get from IVIM? Does it require a separate machine and cannot be installed on the same machine as NPM and all the other modules?
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VMWare ESXi v5.5/6.5 Port Requirements
Hello,
Curious about the port requirements on the standalone ESXi to utilize the VMWare API for the SolarWinds "VMware vCenter or Hyper-V devices:" polling method:
For v6.x is it 443?
For v5.x, would it be port 80?
References:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1012382
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VMs With More Allocated Space Than Used
Hey folks,
In VMan, in the "All Alerts" dashboard widget, there are always 5ish alerts flagged on topics more related to optimization than actual issues. While this awareness is all fine and dandy, the perfectionist in me really doesn't like having near-permanent alerts active. To me, if an alerted state is constant/acceptable/normal, it isn't an alert. That said, I do want to be able to see the information contained in the alert, so I'm averse to disabling it (it just would be nice if it was in an "Optimization" section/dashboard, but I digress...).
Anyways, the alert in question is "VMs With More Allocated Space Than Used". My question to the community is: How do you address this alert in your environment?
I'm primarily a Windows shop, running vSphere 5 (Enterprise Plus) w/ 3PAR storage and enough wiggle room to svMotion stuff around, if it is worth the effort. I've already adjusted the alert to assess on 10GB difference, rather than 1GB, because virtually ever guest of mine has that much excess due to Windows patching, etc.
In your realm, do you use sdelete.exe to zero the space and then Storage vMotion to re-thin? Or do you use a 3rd party utility? Or...
Let me know! It'd be great to have actionable steps associated with these alerts so we can all get to states where the "All Alerts" widget is green.
~Chris
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IPAM Integration with VMware
Hi,
If you deploy virtual machines frequently, what is the desired workflow for assigning IP addresses?
We are looking at enhancing IPAM API (a.k.a. SWIS or Orion SDK) as described here: Add SWIS features to IPAM. The ultimate goal is using this API to integrate with VMware vCenter Orchestrator in order to improve/automate VM deployment by assigning IP addresses via IPAM.
I would like to discuss details of the workflow in detail -- if you are interested in such discussion, please reply to this post, or send me a direct message.
Thanks,
Jiri
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Noob Question - Removing an host from VMAN
Hi guys and girls,
Sorry if this is a silly question but I'm new to VMAN and I'm struggling to find out how you remove a host?!
Under virtualisation assets I've clicked on Virtualisation settings but I can only see the option to Enable or Disable Hyper-V polling.
Am I missing something really obvious?
Many thanks in advance.
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VMAN - Host Hardware Components
I'm trying to dive into the hardware monitors in our virtual environment and notice there are some hardware components that are alerting a status of "yellow" or "red"; however, in vcenter and/or our UCS Manager this isn't being reported.
Where is this information gathered from and why would it report differently than vcenter and ucs manager?
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Current KPIs and long-term capacity are equally important metrics
When people hear the term “key performance indicators”, they often think of management metrics. But, if you’re here, you also know – or at least suspect – that there are a variety of key performance indicators that are vital to the health of your virtual environment. Moreover, you are likely aware that keeping all KPI’s within acceptable ranges is an important part of every administrator’s job. Failure to do so means poor or unexpected performance levels which can lead to user or customer frustration.
There are a lot of tools out there that you can use to monitor your virtual environment, but many are limited to one to two areas of my simple virtual management spectrum, which consists of the following three areas:
- Historical performance. How has the environment performed over time? Have critical KPI’s remained within tolerance levels? Historical performance data gathering is an important tool for use in planning future capacity needs.
- Current performance. A snapshot of how the environment is operating this very minute. A current performance snapshot is an ideal tool to use in troubleshooting present issues. This is the focus of many management tools.
- Future capacity planning. Just how much can the environment scale before one or more resources is exhausted? Future capacity is determined by analyzing and extrapolating historical data and comparing that against existing resources to determine a point at which resources will run out. This planning is critically important in understanding capital budgeting needs and in project planning, but it’s often overlooked and problems can creep in undetected.
It’s important to select a monitoring and management tool that supports the unique nature of virtual environments. Whereas traditional server environments may not have constant CPU contention or may never push the envelope of the storage transport mechanism, a growing virtual environment will certainly introduce new variables.
Virtual environments are incredibly complex entities requiring ongoing vigilance in order to ensure that the architecture continues to meet business needs. A comprehensive virtualization management and monitoring tool is an essential tool in the proactive administrator’s management arsenal.
Now, for some questions:
- What tool do you use to monitor your virtual environment?
- What top five metrics do you look at every single day to determine environment health?
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Hardware Monitoring using SAM
Hi All,
In our environment we had been polling hardware data from Vcenter into SAM(6.4) using CIM protocol. But as we've upgraded SAM to 6.6, we couldn't find the option in the Virtualization setting to poll via vcenter or via ESX Directly. Instead now we are getting poling method options as VMAN Orion and VMAN Appliance. Why is that so?
These changes have effected the monitoring of ESXis.
What's the solution for this?
Many Thanks!
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Vcenter Status Unknown after vcenter update
I have looked over similar threads but could not find an answer in any of them for my issue. We currently have VMAN v8.2 monitoring two vcenter nodes. We updated one of the vcenter nodes to Vcenter 6.5.0.22000 Build 9451637 and now solar winds is reporting the operational state as "unknown". If I check the node itself, it is reporting correctly. The individual esxi hosts are also still reporting in correctly. The vcenter box that we did not update is still reporting in correctly and is showing Vcenter status as "Up". Polling method is vman orion. Does anyone have any insight into this?
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Licensing clarification of Log Manager
I want to do the latest upgrades but I'm confused about the licensing. We have VMAN 320 sockets, but we haven't bought Log Manager.
When we upgrade we want to use the feature in VMAN 8.4 to alert on VMware events - we really want that feature - and I'm assuming this is included in the VMAN we paid for.
Does this use some type of free Log Manager? What are the limitations. Normally Log Manager takes over Syslog/Traps, but since we haven't paid for Log Manager will they keep working using the legacy features?
I can't upgrade now because this seems very confused.
It's worth noting that I'm trying out Log Manager now (eval) and I can see it appears to be able to pick up Windows Event logs - this is something we have wanted for a while and have been looking at non-SolarWinds products. When I looked at a quote for Log Analyzer I saw that it only went up to 1,000 nodes - we're well past that. How would you monitor 2000 VMs? We had no plans to monitor Windows event logs with Solarwinds modules (I'm not a fan of LEM) but perhaps this will do what we need. But we don't want to do that today, perhaps in a couple of months.
Can I upgrade, get the VMware events, keep Syslog/traps as they are?
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Uninstalling Virtualization Manager
My company has decided on not renewing the Virtualization Manager due to the new VMWare monitoring capabilities.
We are wanting to know if anyone knows if it is OK to just delete the .ovf form VMWare, or is there a special procedure?
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