VsgNetworkTraffic – Windows Test

This is an internal test that monitors the incoming and outgoing traffic through each guest of an MS Virtual server host.

Target of the test : A Microsoft Virtual Server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every guest on the monitored virtual server.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the host for which this test is to be configured.
Port	The port at which the specified host listens.
Inside View Using	By default, this test communicates with every VM remotely and extracts “inside view” metrics. Therefore, by default, the inside view using flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows). Typically, to establish this remote connection with Windows VMs in particular, eG Enterprise requires that the eG agent be configured with domain administrator privileges. In high-security environments, where the IT staff might have reservations about exposing the credentials of their domain administrators, this approach to extracting “inside view” metrics might not be preferred. In such environments therefore, eG Enterprise provides administrators the option to deploy a piece of software called the eG VM Agent on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer to Installing and Configuring the eG VM Agent for more details on the eG VM Agent. To ensure that the “inside view” of Windows VMs is obtained using the eG VM Agent, set the inside view using flag to eG VM Agent (Windows). Once this is done, you can set the Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password parameters to none.
Domain, Admin User, Admin Password, and Confirm Password	By default, this test connects to each virtual guest remotely and attempts to collect “inside view” metrics. In order to obtain a remote connection, the test must be configured with user privileges that allow remote communication with the virtual guests. The first step towards this is to specify the Domain within which the virtual guests reside. The Admin User and Admin Password will change according to the Domain specification. Discussed below are the different values that the Domain parameter can take, and how they impact the Admin User and Admin Password specifications: If the VMs belong to a single domain: If the guests belong to a specific domain, then specify the name of that domain against the Domain parameter. In this case, any administrative user in that domain will have remote access to all the virtual guests. Therefore, an administrator account in the given domain can be provided in the Admin User field and the corresponding password in the Admin Password field. Confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. If the guests belong to different domains : In this case, you might want to provide multiple domain names. If this is done, then, to access the guests in every configured domain, the test should be configured with the required user privileges; this implies that along with multiple Domain names, multiple Admin User names and Admin Passwords would also have to be provided. To help administrators provide these user details quickly and easily, the eG administrative interface embeds a special configuration page. To access this page, simply click on the Click here hyperlink that appears just above the parameters of this test in the test configuration page. To know how to use the special page, refer to Configuring Users for VM Monitoring. If the inside view using flag is set to ‘eG VM Agent (Windows)’ : In this case, the inside view can be obtained without domain administrator privileges. Therefore, set the Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password parameters to none.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Incoming traffic	Indicates the rate at which data (including framing characters) is received on a network interface.	Mbps	An abnormally high rate of incoming traffic may require additional analysis.
Outgoing traffic	Represents the rate at which data (including framing characters) is sent on a network interface.	Mbps	An abnormally high rate of outgoing traffic may require additional analysis.
Max bandwidth	An estimate of the capacity of a network interface.	Mbps
Bandwidth used	Indicates the percentage of bandwidth used by a network interface.	Percent	By comparing the bandwidth usage with the maximum bandwidth of an interface, an administrator can determine times when the network interface is overloaded or is being a performance bottleneck.
Output queue	Indicates the length of the output packet queue (in packets).	Number	If this is longer than 2, delays are being experienced and the bottleneck should be found and eliminated if possible.
Outbound packet errors	Indicates the number of outbound packets that could not be transmitted because of errors.	Number	Ideally, number of outbound errors should be 0.
Inbound packet errors	Indicates the number of inbound packets that contained errors preventing them from being deliverable to a higher-layer protocol.	Number	Ideally, number of inbound errors should be 0.
Outbound packet discards	Indicates the number of error-free outbound packets that were discarded by this network interface during the last measurement period.	Number	Ideally, the value of these measures should be zero. These measures may report a non-zero value when an interface runs short of resources – e.g., NIC buffers.
Inbound packet discards	Indicates the number of error-free inbound packets that were discarded by this network interface during the last measurement period.	Number