How does eG Enterprise Monitor the Microsoft Virtual Server?

eG Enterprise prescribes an agent-based approach to monitor the Microsoft Virtual Servers. A single eG agent deployed on the MS Virtual Server host extracts critical statistics pertaining to the health of the host using perfmon counters. The same agent automatically discovers the guests on the Virtual Server, reports the powered-on status of each guest so discovered, and also reports outside view metrics indicating how well each VM uses the physical resources of the host.

For obtaining the inside view, the eG agent, by default, remotely communicates with every VM on the server. To establish this remote connection, the eG agent needs to be configured with domain administrator privileges. However, administrators of highly secure environments might not be in favor of the idea of exposing the domain administrator credentials. For such environments, eG Enterprise provides a specialized eG VM Agent; this agent, when deployed on each VM on the server, allows the eG agent to connect to a VM without domain administrator privileges and extract the inside view. 

The below section discusses the pre-requisites that need to be fulfilled to enable the eG agent to obtain the inside view, with and  without the eG VM agent.

Pre-requisites for Obtaining the “Inside View” of VMs on an Microsoft Virtual Server

As already mentioned, the eG agent, by default, establishes a remote connection (using NetBIOS) with each VM on an MS Virtual Server to extract the inside view. If the inside view is to be obtained using this default mechanism, then the following pre-requisites need to be fulfilled:

1. The admin$ share should be enabled for all virtual guests being monitored and the administrative account must have permissions to this share drive. Refer to Enabling ADMIN$ Share Access on the Guest Operating Systems for a step-by-step procedure to achieve this.
2. To enable the eG agent to communicate with the guest operating systems, an administrative account login and password (either a local account or a domain account) must be provided when configuring the eG monitoring.

On the other hand, if the eG VM Agent is to be used for obtaining the inside view, then the only pre-requisite here is that the eG VM Agent be deployed on each VM to be monitored. The steps for installing and configuring the eG VM Agent are detailed in Installing and Configuring the eG VM Agent.

Once the above-mentioned pre-requisites are fulfilled, manage the Microsoft Virtual Server component for monitoring using eG administrative interface. The procedure for achieving this has been explained in Managing the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.