Crash Details - VM 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 -VM 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 Hyper-V server

Agent executing the test: An internal agent

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

Configurable parameters for the test
  1. Test period - How often should the test be executed
  2. Host - The host for which the test is to be configured.
  3. port - The port at which the host listens. By default, this is NULL.

  4. 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, 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 Section Configuring Windows Virtual Machines to Support theInside View Using 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.

  5. 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. Accordingly, the inside view using flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows) by default. To obtain a remote connection, the test must be configured with the privileges of an administrative user to the domain within which the guests reside. 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 VMs 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 of this document.
    • If the INSIDE VIEW USING flag is set to ‘eG VM Agent (Windows)’: On the other hand, if the inside view using flag is set to eG VM Agent (Windows), then it implies that the inside view can be obtained without domain administrator privileges. Therefore, set the domain, admin user, and admin password parameters to none.
  6. REPORT BY USER – For the Microsoft Hyper-V monitoring model, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to NO by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the Hyper-V server are identified using the hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, for the Microsoft Hyper-V VDI model, this flag is set to YES by default; this implies that in case of VDI servers, by default, the guests will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing the guest OS. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.

  7. 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.   

  1. REPORT POWERED ON - You can set the REPORT POWERED ON status to Yes, so that the test reports an additional measure, Is VM powered on?, revealing whether a guest OS is currently running or not. The default status of this flag is set to Yes for a Hyper-V server. For a Hyper-V VDI server on the other hand, the default status of this flag is No. This is because, in such environments, the virtual desktops will be in the powered-off state most of the time.

  2. ignore vms inside view - Administrators of some high security Hyper-V 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 Hyper-V 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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

  3. DD FREQUENCY - Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. For a Microsoft Hyper-V server, this is set to 1:1 by default. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. It is recommended that you do not change the default setting of this parameter. This is because, eG Enterprise can discover the IP addresses of the guest operating systems on a Hyper-V host, only while generating the detailed measures for this test. The automatic discovery of the guest IPs, in turn, enables eG Enterprise to perform AutoVirtualMapping.

  4.  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 reported 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 thisVM 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.