Memory Usage - OS Test

How often should the test be executed

The host for which the test is to be configured

The port at which the specified HOST listens. By default, this is NULL.

In order to enable the test to extract the desired metrics from a target ESX server, you need to configure the test with an ESX USER and ESX PASSWORD. The user credentials to be passed here depend upon the mechanism used by the eG agent for auto-discovering the VMs on the target vSphere server and monitoring the server and its VMs. These discovery/monitoring methodologies and their corresponding configuration requirements have been discussed hereunder:

• Discovering and monitoring by directly connecting to the target vSphere server: Starting with ESX server 3.0, a VMware ESX server offers a web service interface using which the eG agent discovers the guest operating systems on a physical ESX host. The VMware VI SDK is used by the agent to implement the web services interface. To use this interface for discovering the VMs and for monitoring, the eG agent should directly connect to the monitored vSphere/ESX server as an ESX USER with root privileges. However, if, owing to security constraints, you cannot use root user permissions, you can alternatively configure the tests with the credentials of a user who has been assigned the following permissions:

  • Diagnostics

  • TerminateSession

  To see how you can create such a user on the ESX server, refer to theCreating a Special Role on an ESX Server and Assigning the Role to a New User topic

• Discovering and monitoring using vCenter: By default, the eG agent connects to each ESX server and discovers the VMs executing on it. While this approach scales well, it requires additional configuration for each server being monitored. For example, separate user accounts may need to be created on each server for accessing VM details. While monitoring large virtualized installations however, the agents can be optionally configured to perform guest discovery using the VM information already available in vCenter. The same vCenter can also be used to monitor the vSphere server and its VMs. In this case therefore, the ESX USER and ESX PASSWORD that you specify should be that of an Administrator or Virtual Machine Administrator in vCenter. However, if, owing to security constraints, you prefer not to use the credentials of such users, then, you can create a special role on vCenter with the following privileges:

  • Diagnostics

  • Change settings

  • View and stop sessions

  To know how to grant the above-mentioned permissions to a vCenter user, refer to Creating a Special Role on vCenter and Assigning the Role to a New User .

  If the ESX server for which this test is being configured had been discovered via vCenter, then the eG manager automatically populates the ESX USERand ESX PASSWORD text boxes with the vCenter user credentials using which the ESX discovery was performed.

Confirm the specified ESX PASSWORD by retyping it here.

By default, the ESX server is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. This indicates that the eG agent will communicate with the ESX server via HTTPS by default. On the other hand, if the eG agent has been configured to use the VMPerl API or CLI for monitoring (i.e., if the ESX USER parameter is set to none), then the status of the SSL flag is irrelevant.

Like the ESX sever, the vCenter is also SSL-enabled by default. If you have chosen to use the vCenter for monitoring all the ESX servers in your environment, then you have to set the SSL flag to Yes.

By default, in most virtualized environments, the ESX server and vCenter listen on port 80 (if not SSL-enabled) or on port 443 (if SSL-enabled). This implies that while monitoring an SSL-enabled ESX server directly, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 443 of the ESX server to pull out metrics, and while monitoring a non-SSL-enabled ESX server, the eG agent connects to port 80. Similarly, while monitoring an ESX server via an SSL-enabled vCenter, the eG agent connects to port 443 of vCenter to pull out the metrics, and while monitoring via a non-SSL-enabled vCenter, the eG agent connects to port 80 of vCenter. Accordingly, the WEBPORT parameter is set to 80 or 443 depending upon the status of the SSL flag.  In some environments however, the default ports 80 or 443 might not apply. In such a case, against the WEBPORT parameter, you can specify the exact port at which the ESX server or vCenter in your environment listens so that the eG agent communicates with that port.

If the eG manager had discovered the target ESX server by connecting to vCenter, then the IP address of the vCenter server used for discovering this ESX server would be automatically displayed against the VIRTUAL CENTER parameter; similarly, the ESX USER and ESX PASSWORD text boxes will be automatically populated with the vCenter user credentials, using which ESX discovery was performed.

If this ESX server has not been discovered using vCenter, but you still want to discover the guests on the ESX server via vCenter, then select the IP address of the vCenter host that you wish to use for guest discovery from the VIRTUAL CENTER list. By default, this list is populated with the IP address of all vCenter hosts that were added to the eG Enterprise system at the time of discovery. Upon selection, the ESX USERand ESX PASSWORD that were pre-configured for that vCenter server will be automatically displayed against the respective text boxes.

On the other hand, if the IP address of the vCenter server of interest to you is not available in the list, then, you can add the details of the vCenter server on-the-fly, by selecting the Other option from the VIRTUAL CENTER list. This will invoke the ADD VCENTER SERVER DETAILS page. Refer to Adding the Details of a vCenter Server for VM Discoverysection to know how to add a vCenter server using this page. Once the vCenter server is added, its IP address, ESX USER, and ESX PASSWORD will be displayed against the corresponding text boxes.

On the other hand, if you want the eG agent to behave in the default manner -i.e., communicate with each ESX server for monitoring and VM information - then set the VIRTUAL CENTER parameter to ‘none’.

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.

Administrators of some high security VMware 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 ESX 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.

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.

By default, this test obtains the “inside view” of VMs using the eG VM Agent. Accordingly, the inside view using flag to eG VM Agent by default. The eG VM Agent is a piece of software, which should be installed on every VM on a hypervisor. Every time the eG agent runs this test, it uses the eG VM Agent to pull relevant 'inside view' metrics from each VM. Once the metrics are collected, the eG agent then communicates with each VM agent and pulls these metrics, without requiring administrator privileges. Refer to Configuring the Remote Agent to Obtain the Inside View of VMs for more details on the eG VM Agent.

By default, these parameters are set to none. This is because, by default, the eG agent collects 'inside view' metrics using the eG VM agent on each VM. Domain administrator privileges need not be granted to the eG agent if it uses this default approach to obtain the 'inside view' of Windows VMs.

Typically, when performing VM discovery, the eG agent automatically discovers the operating system on which every VM runs, and all the IP addresses that each VM supports. If two are more VMs on a target vSphere server are in a VM cluster, then the eG agent will also auto-discover the cluster IP address. Since the cluster IP address is shared by all VMs in the cluster, this IP address will be in the discovery list of every VM in the cluster. In this case, if the eG agent attempts to obtain the 'inside view' of each VM in a cluster using their cluster IP address, incorrect metrics may be reported sometimes. To avoid this, you may want to instruct the eG agent to not use the cluster IP address when collecting 'inside view' metrics. For this, specify a comma-separated list of cluster IP addresses to be excluded in the EXCLUDE IP text box.

This flag is set to Yes by default. The value of this flag cannot be changed. This implies that the virtual machines in VDI environments will always be identified using the login name of the user. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.

This flag becomes relevant only if the REPORT BY USERflag 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.

By default, the detailed diagnosis of the Used physical memory measure of this test reports the number of instances of each process running on the VM, and the aggregated memory usage (in MB and %) of every process across all its instances. For example, if users to a VM are together having 15 instances of Chrome open on the machine at around the same time, then the detailed diagnosis of the Used physical memory measure will compute and display the collective memory usage of all 15 instances against the Application Name, Chrome. From this, you can quickly identify the exact process that is 'collectively' (i.e., across its instances) over-utilizing the memory. Sometimes, administrators might want to isolate not just the process, but also similar process arguments that are guilty of abnormal memory consumption. This granular insight will take administrators closer to the root-cause of the memory bottleneck on a desktop. For instance, in the Chrome example above, say 8 of the 15 instances are used to access the same YouTube video, and 7 instances are accessing a shopping site. In such a case, if memory usage is aggregated at the URL-level and not the process-level, then administrators can quickly identify which precise URL is draining memory - the YouTube video? or the shopping site? For this, detailed diagnostics should be grouped by process arguments (eg., URLs) and not just by process/application names. To enable grouping by arguments, set the Group Processes With Arguments flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

By default, this parameter is set to 75 percentage indicating that by default this test will display top-10 memory intensive processes on a VM in the detailed diagnosis of the Physical memory utilized measure only when the memory utilization reaches/exceeds 75 percentage. On the other hand, if the memory utilization is lower than the value specified against this parameter, then, this test displays only top-3 memory intensive processes in the detailed diagnosis of the Physical memory utilized measure so as to conserve storage space on the database. However, this setting can be overridden if required.

A memory shortage caused due to memory space hogged by modified and standby memory lists has become an increasingly frequent and critical problem. The memory shortage can make a server stutter or run more slowly than usual. Such operational interruptions can make you spend more time on waiting for pages and programs to load, disturbing your work flow and leading to work delays. Moreover, memory shortage can not only impair user productivity, but can also bring crucial business processes to a halt, and can severely degrade overall user experience with the server. To avoid such an outcome, administrators need to rapidly empty the memory space unnecessarily hogged by the modified and standby memory lists. This way, administrators can ensure that adequate memory is always available for executing business-critical processes.

To enable administrators to achieve this, eG Enterprise offers 'Automation Actions'. These actions are governed by the 'Automation Action Enabled' flag.

This flag, if enabled, automatically initiates user-configured actions, so that the memory hogged by modified and standby memory lists can be cleared when memory utilization crosses a configured limit.

Note:

The 'Automation Action Enabled' parameters, once configured, will apply only to the chosen component. These settings will not be applied to other components even if the Apply to other components button is clicked in the Specific Test Configuration page.

This flag appears only if the Automated Action Enabled flag is enabled.

In this text box, specify the upper limit for memory utilization in percentage beyond which this test should trigger user-configured automation actions. By default, 95 percentage is set against this parameter. When the memory utilization reaches/exceeds the value specified in this text box, the user-configured actions will be automatically triggered. However, you can override this settings if required.

This flag appears only if the Automated Action Enabled flag is enabled.

Modified memory contains cached data and code that is not actively in use by processes, the system and the system cache. This memory needs to be written out before it will be available for allocation to a process or for system use. You can easily clear this memory using the Empty Modified Memory flag.

By default, this flag is set to No. When this flag is set Yes, amount of memory assigned to the modified list will be automatically cleared if the memory utilization reaches/exceeds the value specified against the Automation Memory Limit parameter.

This flag appears only if the Automated Action Enabled flag is enabled.

Standby memory is a page of physical memory that is not actively used. When writing a series of frequently used information in the memory area, the programs and services running on the server will use part of memory as cache. The cache should be released and made available after executing programs and services. If the standby memory is not cleared on a regular basis, it can slow down the server operations. Therefore, it is necessary to clear the standby memory at regular intervals. This can easily done using the Empty Standby Memory flag.

By default, this flag is set to No. When this flag is set Yes, memory that is allocated to the standby page list will be automatically cleared if the memory utilization reaches/exceeds the value specified against the Automation Memory Limit parameter.