VM Connectivity Test

Sometimes, a VM could be in a powered-on state, but the failure of the VM operating system or any fatal error in VM operations could have rendered the VM inaccessible to users. In order to enable administrators to promptly detect such ‘hidden’ anomalies, the eG agent periodically runs a connectivity check on each VM using the VM Connectivity test, and reports whether the VM is accessible over the network or not.

Target of the test : An Oracle VirtualBox

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each desktop on the Oracle VirtualBox being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port number at which the specified Host listens to.
Oracle Hypervisor User	Specify the name of the user who has the right to access the VirtualBox via SSH.
Oracle Hypervisor Password	Provide the password of the oracle hypervisor user.
Confirm Password	Confirm the password by retyping it here.
Sudocmd	This test executes certain privileged VDA (Virtual Desktop Access) commands to pull out the desired metrics from the VirtualBox. To enable the test to run these commands, you first need to install a sudo package on the VirtualBox host. The procedure for installing this package is detailed in Pre-requisites for Auto-Discovering VMs and Obtaining their Outside View. Once the package is installed, you need to specify the full path to the install directory of the sudo package in the Sudocmd text box.
Ignore VMs Inside View	Administrators of some high security virtualized 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 VirtualBox 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.
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 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.
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. 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. 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 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 Troubleshooting the Failure of the eG Remote Agent to Connect to or Report Measures for Linux Guests. 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.
Packetsize	The size of packets used for the test (in bytes).
Packetcount	The number of packets to be transmitted during the test.
Timeout	How long after transmission should a packet be deemed lost (in seconds).
PacketInterval	Represents the interval (in milliseconds) between successive packet transmissions during the execution of the network test for a specific target.
ReportUnavailability	By default, this flag is set to No. This implies that, by default, the test will not report the unavailability of network connection to any VM. In other words, if the Network availability of VMmeasure of this test registers the value 0for any VM, then, by default, this test will not report any measure for that VM; under such circumstances, the corresponding VM name will not appear as a descriptor of this test. You can set this flag to Yes, if you want the test to report and alert you to the unavailability of the network connection to a VM.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Average delay	Indicates the average delay between transmission of packet to a VM and receipt of the response to the packet at the source.	Secs	An increase in network latency could result from misconfiguration of the router(s) along the path, network congestion, retransmissions at the network, etc.
Minimum delay	The minimum time between transmission of a packet and receipt of the response back.	Secs	A significant increase in the minimum round-trip time is often a sure sign of network congestion.
Packet loss	Indicates the percentage of packets lost during transmission from source to target and back.	Percent	Packet loss is often caused by network buffer overflows at a network router or by packet corruptions over the network. The detailed diagnosis for this measure provides a listing of routers that are on the path from the external agent to target server, and the delays on each hop. This information can be used to diagnose the hop(s) that could be causing excessive packet loss/delays.
Network availability	Indicates whether the network connection is available or not.	Percent	A value of 100 indicates that the VM is connected. The value 0 indicates that the VM is not connected. Typically, the value 100 corresponds to a Packet loss of 0.