Hyper-V VM Checkpoints Test

A checkpoint saves the state of each virtual hard disk that is attached to a virtual machine and all of the hard disk's contents, including application data files. For virtual machines on Hyper-V, a checkpoint also saves the hardware configuration information. By creating checkpoints for a virtual machine, you can restore the virtual machine to a previous state.

A typical use of checkpoints is to create a temporary backup before you update the operating system or an application, or make a configuration change on the virtual machine. A checkpoint allows you to restore the virtual machine to its previous state if the operation fails or adversely affects the virtual machine. For virtual machines on Hyper-V, checkpoints are also useful in a test environment where you want to use multiple hardware configurations on a virtual machine.

You can create multiple checkpoints for a virtual machine. However, checkpoints use hard disk space and, when allowed to proliferate, they can affect the performance of a virtual machine when it is running and during such virtual machine operations as migrating a virtual machine or storing it to the library.

To make sure that checkpoints do not affect VM performance, administrators need to continuously track checkpoint growth per VM, identify ‘heavy-weight’ and obsolete checkpoints that may not be of use any longer, and purge them. The Hyper-V VM Checkpoints test helps administrators achieve the same. This test reports the count of large and aged checkpoints per VM, and reveals the names of these checkpoints, so that administrators can decide whether/not these checkpoints can be removed to make more storage space available for the VM.

Note:

This test will report metrics for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 only.

Target of the test : A Hyper-V / Hyper-V VDI server

Agent executing the test : An internal agent

Output of the test : One set of results for each VM on a Hyper-V host monitored

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test period	This indicates how often should the test be executed.
Host	Specify the HOST for which this test is to be configured.
Port	Specify the port at which the target host is listening. By default, this is NULL
Age Limit in Days	By default, the value of this parameter is set to 15 days. This implies that the test will report all those snapshots that are more than 15 days old as Aged snapshots. If required, you can change the age limit.
Size Limit in MB	By default, the value of this parameter is set to 10000 MB. This implies that the test will report all those snapshots that have a size more than 10000 MB as Large snapshots. If required, you can change this limit.
Domain, Admin User, Admin Password, and Confirm Password	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. In this case therefore, set the value of all these parameters to none.
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 Enterprise 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 reported by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Number of checkpoints	Indicates the number of checkpoints for this VM.	Number
Aged checkpoints count	Indicates the number of checkpoints of this VM, the age of which is more than the age limit configured for this test.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to identify the aged checkpoints.
Large checkpoints count	Indicates the number of checkpoints of this VM that are of a size greater than the size limit configured for this test.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to identify the large-sized checkpoints.