OVM VM Details Test

This test monitors the amount of the physical server's resources that each virtual machine on an Oracle VM server is taking up. Using the metrics reported by this test, administrators can determine which virtual machine is taking up most CPU, which guest is taking up the maximum resources.

Target of the test : Oracle VM Server

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each VM on the Oracle VM Server being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters 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.

Oracle VM Manager, Oracle VM Manager User, Oracle VM Manager Password, and Confirm Password

This test remotely connects to the Oracle VM Manager that manages the monitored Oracle VM Server and uses the web services API of the Oracle VM Manager to pull out metrics of interest. To enable this test to communicate with the web services API, you first need to configure the test with the IP address or host name of the Oracle VM Manager. This can be done using the Oracle VM Manager text box. Then, you need to configure the test with the credentials of a user with Admin rights to the Oracle VM Manager. Use the Oracle VM Manager User and Oracle VM Manager Password parameters to configure these credentials. Finally, confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box.

SSL

By default, the Oracle VM Manager is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. This indicates that the eG agent will communicate with the Oracle VM Manager via HTTPS by default.

WebPort

By default,, the Oracle VM Manager listens on 7002. This implies that while monitoring an Oracle VM server via an SSL-enabled Oracle VM Manager, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 7002 of the Oracle VM Manager to pull out metrics. In some environments however, this default port may not apply. In such a case, against the WebPort parameter, you can specify the exact port at which the Oracle VM Manager in your environment listens so that the eG agent communicates with that port.

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 VMs Inside View

Administrators of some high security Oracle 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 an Oracle VM server 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.

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 (Windows) on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights. 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.

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.

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.

  • 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.

  • If the guests do not belong to any domain (as in the case of Linux/Solaris guests) :  In this case, specify "none" in the Domain field, and specify a local administrator account name in the Admin User below.

    Prior to this, you need to ensure that the same local administrator account is available or is explicitly created on each of the virtual machines to be monitored. Then, proceed to provide the password of the Admin User against Admin Password, and confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box.

    If key-based authentication is implemented between the eG agent and the SSH daemon of a Linux guest, then, in the Admin User text box, enter the name of the user whose <USER_HOME_DIR> (on that Linux guest) contains a .ssh directory with the public key file named authorized_keys. The admin password in this case will be the passphrase of the public key; the default public key file that is bundled with the eG agent takes the password eginnovations. Specify this as the admin password if you are using the default private/public key pair that is bundled with the eG agent to implement key-based authentication. On the other hand, if you are generating a new public/private key pair for this purpose, then use the passphrase that you provide while generating the pair. For the detailed procedure on Implementing Key-based Authentication refer to the Monitoring VMware Infrastructures document.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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 made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

VM state

Indicates the current operational state of this VM.

 

The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Stopped 0
Running 1
Starting 2
Stopping 3
Suspended 4
Template 5

Note:

By default, this measure reports one of the values listed under Measure Values to indicate the current status of VM. In the graph of this measure however, the same is represented using the numeric equivalents only.

vCpu count

Indicates the number of virtual CPUs allocated to this VM.

Number

 

Max vCpu limit

Indicates the number of processors that this VM is allowed to make use of.

Number

 

Virtual processor utilization

Indicates the percentage of the vCPUs allowed for use that is currently in use.

Percent

A high value for this measure indicates that the VM is consuming too many vCPUs. Compare this value across VMs to know which VM is consuming the maximum vCPUs.

Physical processor utilization

Indicates the percentage of the physical CPUs currently used by this VM.

Percent

A high value for this measure indicates that the VM is consuming too many vCPUs physical CPUs. A probable cause for high CPU utilization is the presence of one or more CPU-intensive processes on the VM.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to identify the CPU-intensive processes running on a VM.

vCpu priority

Indicates CPU priority value set for for this VM when scheduling.

Number

 

vCpu cap

Indicates the maximum number of CPUs used by this VM, as per the credit scheduler.

Number

Oracle VM’s default CPU scheduler is the credit scheduler. The credit scheduler uses a credit/debit system to fairly share CPU resources between virtual machines. Credits are assigned to each running virtual machine, along with the allocated fraction of CPU resources. The credit scheduler continually increments/decrements credits from running virtual machines, which is how the credit scheduler balances CPU resources.

Current memory

Indicates the amount of memory currently used by this VM.

MB

 

Allocated memory

Indicates the amount of memory allocated to this VM.

MB

 

Memory limit

Indicates the maximum amount of memory that this VM can consume.

MB

 

Physical memory utilization

Indicates the percentage of physical memory used by this VM.

Percent

Compare the value of this measure across VMs to know which VM is consuming the maximum memory.

A high value for this measure indicates that the VM is consuming memory resources excessively. One of the common causes for this is the execution of one/more memory-intensive operations on the VM.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to identify the memory-intensive processes running on a VM.

Disk capacity

Indicates the total disk capacity of this VM.

MB

 

Huge pages

Indicates whether/not Huge Pages are enabled for this VM.

 

Paging is a process whereby the CPU, for a system, allocates contiguous blocks of memory for use by a running process. These pages are tracked by the operating system, so that processes access the correct blocks of assigned memory. Typically, these blocks are sized at 4 KB. This means that when a process uses 1 GB of memory, 262144 page (1 GB/4 KB) entries are created and are referenced continually by the process.

Most current CPU architectures support bigger pages to reduce the number of page lookups required by the CPU or Operating System. On Linux systems, these are called Huge Pages, while on Windows systems they are called Large Pages. These terminologies are equivalent.

Oracle VM Manager provides an option to enable huge page support for a paravirtualized virtual machine when you create or edit a virtual machine. Huge pages are not supported on virtual machines running on SPARC architecture. Attempting to enable Huge Page support for a virtual machine running on a SPARC server, causes an exception to be returned.

The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Enabled 1
Disabled 0

Note:

By default, this measure reports one of the values listed under Measure Values to indicate whether/not Huge Pages are enabled for a VM. In the graph of this measure however, the same is represented using the numeric equivalents only.

High availability

Indicates whether/not high availability is enabled for this VM.

 

You can set up High Availability to help ensure the uninterrupted availability of a virtual machine. If HA is configured and a Oracle VM Server is restarted or shut down, the virtual machines running on it are either restarted on, or migrated to, another Oracle VM Server.

The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Enabled 1
Disabled 0

Note:

By default, this measure reports one of the values listed under Measure Values to indicate whether/not HA is enabled for a VM. In the graph of this measure however, the same is represented using the numeric equivalents only.