Windows Memory - VM Test
To understand the metrics reported by this test, it is essential to understand how memory is handled by the operating system. On any Windows system, memory is partitioned into a part that is available for user processes, and another that is available to the OS kernel. The kernel memory area is divided into several parts, with the two major parts (called "pools") being a nonpaged pool and a paged pool. The nonpaged pool is a section of memory that cannot, under any circumstances, be paged to disk. The paged pool is a section of memory that can be paged to disk. (Just being stored in the paged pool doesn't necessarily mean that something has been paged to disk. It just means that it has either been paged to disk or it could be paged to disk.) Sandwiched directly in between the nonpaged and paged pools (although technically part of the nonpaged pool) is a section of memory called the "System Page Table Entries," or "System PTEs." The Windows Memory - VM test tracks critical metrics corresponding to the System PTEs and the pool areas of kernel memory of a Windows virtual machine.
This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence : Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick RHEV Hypervisor as the desired Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose the test from the disabled tests list, and click on the < button to move the test to the ENABLED TESTS list. Finally, click the Update button.
Target of the Test: A RHEV Hypervisor
Agent running the test: A remote agent
Output of the test: One set of results for every Windows VM guest/user on the monitored RHEV hypervisor.
Parameter | Description |
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Test period |
How often should the test be executed. |
Host |
The host for which the test is to be configured. |
RHEL MGR Host, |
To auto-discover the VMs on a target RHEV hypervisor and obtain the outside view of the performance of each VM, the eG agent needs to connect to the RHEV Manager that manages the target RHEV hypervisor. To enable the eG agent to obtain the outside view, you need to configure the test with the following:
If the RHEV hypervisor being monitored was discovered via an RHEV manager, then the IP address, port number, domain name, and user credentials of the RHEV manager used for discovery will be automatically displayed against the respective parameters. If the RHEV hypervisor being monitored was not discovered via an RHEV manager, but you still want to use an RHEV manager for obtaining the outside view, then, you can select any IP address of your choice from the RHEL MGR host list. By default, this list will be populated with the IP addresses/host names of all the RHEV managers that were configured for the purpose of discovering the RHEV hypervisors. If you select an RHEL MGR host from this list, then the corresponding port number, domain name, and user credentials will be automatically displayed against the respective parameters. On the other hand, if the RHEV manager that you want to use for metrics collection is not available in the RHEL MGR Host list, then, you can configure an RHEV manager on-the-fly by picking the Other option from the RHEL MGR Host list. An ADD THE RHEV MANAGER DETAILS window will then pop up. Refer to Configuring an RHEV Manager to Use for Monitoring the RHEV Hypervisor to know how to add an RHEV manager using this window. Once the RHEV manager is added, its IP address, port number, domain name and user credentials will be displayed against the corresponding parameters. |
Confirm Password |
Confirm the RHEL MGR Password by retyping it here. |
SSL |
If the RHEV manager to which the eG agent should connect is SSL-enabled, then set this flag to Yes. If not, set it to No. |
Ignore VMs Inside View |
Administrators of some high security RHEV 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 RHEV 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 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 use the RESTful APIs on the RHEV Manager to Obtain the “Outside View” 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, |
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:
|
Report By User |
While monitoring a RHEV Hypervisor, the Report By User flag is set to No by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the hypervisor are identified using the Hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, while monitoring a RHEV Hypervisor - VDI, this flag is set to Yes by default; this implies that in case of the VDI model, by default, the desktops will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing them. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename. |
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. |
Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
---|---|---|---|
Free entries in system page table |
Indicates the number of page table entries not currently in use by the guest. |
Number |
The maximum number of System PTEs that a server can have is set when the server boots. In heavily-used servers, you can run out of system PTEs. You can use the registry to increase the number of system PTEs, but that encroaches into the paged pool area, and you could run out of paged pool memory. Running out of either one is bad, and the goal should be to tune your server so that you run out of both at the exact same time. Typically, the value of this metric should be above 3000. |
Page read rate in VM |
Indicates the average number of times per second the disk was read to resolve hard fault paging. |
Reads/Sec |
|
Page write rate in VM |
Indicates the average number of times per second the pages are written to disk to free up the physical memory. |
Writes/Sec |
|
Page input rate in VM |
Indicates the number of times per second that a process needed to access a piece of memory that was not in its working set, meaning that the guest had to retrieve it from the page file. |
Pages/Sec |
|
Page output rate in VM |
Indicates the number of times per second the guest decided to trim a process's working set by writing some memory to disk in order to free up physical memory for another process. |
Pages/Sec |
This value is a critical measure of the memory utilization on a guest. If this value never increases, then there is sufficient memory in the guest. Instantaneous spikes of this value are acceptable, but if the value itself starts to rise over time or with load, it implies that there is a memory shortage on the guest. |
Memory pool non-paged data in VM |
Indicates the total size of the kernel memory nonpaged pool. |
MB |
The kernel memory nonpage pool is an area of guest memory (that is, memory used by the guest operating system) for kernel objects that cannot be written to disk, but must remain in memory as long as the objects are allocated. Typically, there should be no more than 100 MB of non-paged pool memory being used. |
Memory pool paged data in VM |
Indicates the total size of the Paged Pool. |
MB |
If the Paged Pool starts to run out of space (when it's 80% full by default), the guest will automatically take some memory away from the System File Cache and give it to the Paged Pool. This makes the System File Cache smaller. However, the system file cache is critical, and so it will never reach zero. Hence, a significant increase in the paged pool size is a problem. This metric is a useful indicator of memory leaks in a guest. A memory leak occurs when the guest allocates more memory to a process than the process gives back to the pool. Any time of process can cause a memory leak. If the amount of paged pool data keeps increasing even though the workload on the guest remains constant, it is an indicator of a memory leak. |