Crash Details - OS Test

Event logs on Windows VMs capture critical error conditions such as service crashes and application crashes on the VMs, application and service hangs, and service errors. Since the crash/slowness experienced by any mission-critical program/service on a Windows VM may affect the uptime of the dependent business services, administrators should be able to instantly capture these serious problem conditions, investigate the reasons for their occurrence, and promptly resolve them. This is exactly what the Crash Details -OS test helps administrators achieve! This test periodically scans the event logs on each Windows VM and reports the count of crashes, hangs, and errors that may have occurred recently on that VM. Detailed diagnostics provided by this test pinpoints the applications/services that crashed, hanged, or encountered errors, and thus enables quick and efficient troubleshooting.

Note:

This test will not report metrics on VMs running Windows 2000/2003/XP.

Target of the test : A Citrix Hypervisor

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every Windows VM on the Citrix hypervisor being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test period

How often should the test be executed.

Host

The host for which the test is to be configured.

Port

The port at which the specified host listens. By default, this is NULL.

Xen User, Xen Password and Confirm Password

To enable the eG agent to connect to the XenServer API for collecting statistics of interest, this test should login to the target hypervisor as a root user. Provide the name of the root user in the Xen User text box. Root user privileges are mandatory when monitoring a XenServer 5.5 (or below). However, if you are monitoring XenServer 5.6 (or above) and you prefer not to expose the credentials of the root user, then, you have the option of configuring a user with pool-admin privileges as the Xen User. If you do not want to expose the credentials of a root/pool-admin user, then you can configure the tests with the credentials of a Xen User with Read-only privileges to the XenServer. However, if this is done, then the Xen Uptime test will not run, and the Xen CPU and Xen Memory tests will not be able to report metrics for the control domain descriptor. To avoid such an outcome, do the following before attempting to configure the eG tests with a Xen User who has Read-only privileges to the Citrix Hypervisor:

  • Modify the target hypervisor's configuration in the eG Enterprise. For this, follow the Infrastructure -> Components -> Add/Modify menu sequence, pick Citrix Hypervisor as the Component type, and click the Modify button corresponding to the target hypervisor.
  • In the MODIFY COMPONENT DETAILS page that then appears, make sure that the os is set to Xen and the Mode is set to SSH.
  • Then, in the same page, proceed to provide the User and Password of a user who has the right to connect to the XenServer console via SSH.
  • Then, click the Update button to save the changes.

Once this is done, you can configure the eG tests with the credentials of a Xen User with Read-only privileges.

The password of the specified Xen User needs to be mentioned in the Xen Password text box.

Then, confirm the Xen Password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box.

SSL

By default, the Citrix Hypervisor is not SSL-enabled. This indicates that by default, the eG agent communicates with the target hypervisor using HTTP. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to No by default. If you configure the target hypervisor to use SSL, then make sure that the SSL flag is set to Yes, so that the eG agent communicates with the target hypervisor using HTTPS. Note that a default SSL certificate comes bundled with every Citrix Hypervisor installation. If you want the eG agent to use this default certificate for communicating with an SSL-enabled Citrix Hypervisor, then no additional configuration is required. However, if you do not want to use the default certificate, then you can generate a self-signed certificate for use by the target hypervisor. In such a case, you need to explicitly follow the broad steps given below to enable the eG agent to communicate with the target hypervisor via HTTPS:

  • Obtain the server-certificate for the Citrix Hypervisor
  • Import the server-certificate into the local certificate store of the eG agent

For a detailed discussion on each of these steps, refer to the Troubleshooting section of this document.

Inside View Using

By default, this test obtains the “inside view” of VMs using the eG VM Agent. Accordingly, the Inside view using flag is set to eG VM Agent by default. The eG VM Agent is a piece of software, which should be installed on every VM on a hypervisor. Every time the eG agent runs this test, it uses the eG VM Agent to pull relevant 'inside view' metrics from each VM. Once the metrics are collected, the eG agent then communicates with each VM agent and pulls these metrics, without requiring administrator privileges. Refer to Configuring the Remote Agent to Obtain the Inside View of VMs for more details on the eG VM Agent.

Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password, and Confirm Password

By default, these parameters are set to none. This is because, by default, the eG agent collects 'inside view' metrics using the eG VM agent on each VM. Domain administrator privileges need not be granted to the eG agent if it uses this default approach to obtain the 'inside view' of Windows VMs.

Ignore VMs Inside View

Administrators of some high security XenServer environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on a Citrix Hypervisor host by default.

Note:

While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW text box.

Exclude VMs

Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the Exclude VMs text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your Exclude VMs specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of VMs/VM name patterns in the Exclude VMs text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of VMs.

Ignore Winnt

By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the IGNORE WINNT flag is set to Yes by default.

Webport

By default, in most virtualized environments, the target hypervisor listens on port 80 (if not SSL-enabled) or on port 443 (if SSL-enabled). This implies that while monitoring an SSL-enabled Citrix hypervisor, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 443 of the server to pull out metrics, and while monitoring a non-SSL-enabled Citrix hypervisor, the eG agent connects to port 80. Accordingly, the webport parameter is set to 80 or 443 depending upon the status of the ssl flag.  In some environments however, the default ports 80 or 443 might not apply. In such a case, against the webport parameter, you can specify the exact port at which the target hypervisor in your environment listens so that the eG agent communicates with that port.

Report by User

While monitoring a Citrix hypervisor, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to No by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the target hypervisor are identified using the host name specified in the operating system. On the other hand, while monitoring a Citrix hypervisor-VDI, this flag is set to Yes by default; this implies that in case of the Citrix hypervisor-VDI model, by default, the desktops will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing them. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.

Report Powered OS

This flag becomes relevant only if the report by user flag is set to ‘Yes’.

If the report powered os flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtualmachine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the report powered os flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently.

Enable memory diagnosis

By default, the ENABLE MEMORY DIAGNOSIS flag is set to False, indicating that detailed diagnosis will not be available for the Free memory measure reported by this test by default. If you want to view the detailed diagnosis of the Free memory measure - i.e., to view the top 10 processes on the target host that are utilizing memory excessively - you can change this flag to True.

Use top for DD

This parameter is applicable only to Linux platforms. By default, this parameter is set to False. This indicates that, by default, this test will report the detailed diagnosis of the System CPU utilization measure for each processor being monitored by executing the usr/bin/ps command. In some environments however, this command may not return accurate diagnostics. In such cases, set the USE TOP FOR DD parameter to True. This will enable the eG agent to extract the detailed diagnosis of the System CPU utilization measure by executing the /usr/bin/top command instead.

DD Frequency

Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD FREQUENCY.

Detailed Diagnosis

To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG suite embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

  • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability
  • Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Recent application crashes

Indicates the number of application crash events that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.

Number

An event with the ID 1000 is logged in the event log every time a program terminates unexpectedly on a virtual desktop. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 1000.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which programs and modules stopped suddenly.

Recent service crashes

Indicates the number of service crash events that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.

Number

An event with the ID 7031 is logged in the Service Control Manager every time a service terminates ungracefully. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 7031.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of such events.

Recent application hangs

Indicates the number of application hang events that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.

Number

An event with the ID 1002 is logged in the Application Event Log every time an application hangs. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 1002.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of the recent application hang events.

Recent service hangs

Indicates the number of service hang events that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.

Number

An event with the ID 7022 is logged in the Service Control Manager every time a service hangs. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 7022.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of the recent service hang events.

Recent service errors

Indicates the number of service errors that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.

Number

Events with the ID 7023, 7024, and 7026 are logged in the Service Control Manager every time a service error occurs. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with the aforesaid event IDs.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of the recent service errors.