How to Monitor Oracle VirtualBox Using eG Enterprise?

eG Enterprise allows administrators the flexibility to choose between the agent-based and agentless approaches to monitoring the Oracle VirtualBox. The sections below explain in great detail about these two approaches.

The Agent-based Monitoring Approach

The agent-based approach requires that the eG agent be installed on the host operating system of the VirtualBox. Since Oracle VDI comes bundled with an Oracle VirtualBox that runs an Oracle Solaris operating system, you need to install a Solaris eG agent on the host. To know how to install an eG agent on Solaris, refer to the eG Installation Guide.

oracle_virtual_box2

Figure 1 : Agent-based monitoring of the Oracle VirtualBox

This agent should then be configured to communicate with the Oracle VirtualBox via SSH and run privileged Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) commands on the Oracle VirtualBox to determine the health of the host, to discover the IP address and operating system of each of the guests on the host, and to report how each guest has utilized the host's physical resources (i.e., outside view). For connecting to the target Oracle VirtualBox via SSH, the eG agent has to be configured with the credentials of a user with the required privileges. Also, to enable the eG agent to run VDA commands on the host, a sudo package has to be installed on the VirtualBox. To know how, refer to Pre-requisites for Monitoring the Oracle VirtualBox.

Once the guests are discovered, the eG agent remotely communicates with each guest using SSH/WMI (depending upon the operating system of the guest) to obtain the "inside view" of every guest. 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, which allows the eG agent on the service console to collect “inside view” metrics from the VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer to Configuring the eG Agent to Obtain the Inside View of Windows VMs, using the eG VM Agent for more details on the eG VM Agent.

The Agentless Monitoring Approach

The agentless approach to monitoring the Oracle VirtualBox involves the following:

  1. Deploying the eG agent on a remote system running Microsoft Windows or Linux or Solaris;

  2. Configuring the remote eG agent to communicate with the target VirtualBox via SSH;

  3. Configuring the remote eG agent to run Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) commands on the VirtualBox to perform guest discovery and to collect host-level and 'outside view' metrics; to run these commands, you need to install a sudo package on the VirtualBox - refer to Pre-requisites for Monitoring the Oracle VirtualBox to know how.

  4. Configuring the remote eG agent to collect performance metrics from each of the guest VMs configured on the VirtualBox using SSH/WMI; by default, the eG agent uses SSH/WMI (depending upon the virtual OS to be monitored) to communicate remotely with the virtual machines on the VirtualBox (see Figure 2) and collect metrics. 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, which allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer to Configuring the eG Agent to Obtain the Inside View of Windows VMs, using the eG VM Agent for more details on the eG VM Agent.

oracle_virtual_box

Figure 2 : The Agentless approach to monitoring the Oracle VirtualBox

Regardless of the monitoring approach chosen, certain pre-requisites need to be fulfilled before attempting to monitor the Oracle VirtualBox. Pre-requisites for Monitoring the Oracle VirtualBox page discusses these pre-requisites.