Monitor Type: Virtual Machines

Monitor Parameters

<Prev Custom Monitors Index


Monitor Type: Virtual Machines

Note: monitors defined on this page are used in corresponding application templates. It is recommended to create instances of such templates to monitor VM hosts and guests. For example, there is a Hyper-V Hypervisor template that defines several Hyper-V Host monitors allowing to check all aspects of a Hyper-V hypervisor host.

There are also application templates allowing to monitor Xen Server host, virtual machines, and storage repositories. They are implemented as Python scripts invoked over SSH on Xen Server host rather than specific monitors. Therefore they are not documented here. Each Xen template wraps corresponding script by creating several monitors with different arguments.

Similarly, there are KVM Hypervisor and KVM Guest Machine templates implemented as shell scripts invoked over SSH. All such scripts may be found under the ‘scripts’ subdirectory of IPHost Monitor installation directory.

Monitor Type Properties
Virtual Machines
Hyper-V Host Monitor

Metric – allows to select what performance counter to measure:

  • Guest CPU Usage shows the percentage of time spent by CPU on guest virtual machines.
  • Hypervisor CPU Usage shows the percentage of time spent by CPU on hypervisor.
  • Total CPU Usage shows the percentage of time spent by CPU in total on guest machines and hypervisor.
  • VMs in critical states shows the number of guest machines which are in critical state.
  • Deposited pages shows the number of pages deposited into the root partition.

Authentication – has the same meaning as the similar WMI Monitor parameter.

Hyper-V Virtual Machine Monitor

Virtual Machine Name – specifies the name of a virtual machine to monitor. The name of a virtual machine is the same as the name specified in Hyper-V Manager. The name can be set either directly or via Select Virtual Machine dialog that opens if the Select button is pressed:

Virtual Machine Name

Note: If you change the name of a virtual machine in Hyper-V Manager you won’t have to change the value of this parameter. But in case you want to change it you’ll have to do this by clicking the Select button so that IPHost Network Monitor can reload information about virtual machines.

Metric – allows to select what performance counter to measure:

  • Uptime shows the number of hours the virtual machine has been running.
  • CPU Load shows the current processor usage of the virtual system.
  • Available Memory shows the percentage of the current memory available to the virtual machine as the ratio between the memory available to the virtual machine and the total physical memory assigned to the virtual machine. When a virtual machine has no available memory, this value will be negative, and it will contain the ratio of memory needed for the virtual machine to the total physical memory assigned to the virtual machine. If dynamic memory is not enabled for the virtual machine then this value is invalid.
  • Memory Demand shows actual amount of memory that is used by the virtual machine.
  • Assigned Memory shows the amount of memory that has been assigned to the virtual machine by the hypervisor.

Authentication – has the same meaning as the identical WMI Monitor parameter.

Hyper-V Virtual Storage Monitor

Virtual Storage Name – specifies the name of a virtual storage to monitor. Similar to Virtual Machine Name parameter of Hyper-V Virtual Machine Monitor you can set it directly or by using Select Virtual Storage dialog that opens if the Select button is pressed:

Virtual Storage Name

Measure – specifies the counter to monitor:

  • Error count shows the total number of errors that have occurred on the virtual storage device.
  • Read bytes/sec shows the average speed with which data is being read from the virtual storage device.
  • Total Bytes Read shows the amount of data that have been read from the virtual storage device.
  • Write bytes/sec shows the average speed with which data is being written to the virtual storage device.
  • Total Bytes Written shows the amount of data that have been written to the virtual storage device.

If you set Measure parameter to Total Bytes Read or Total Bytes Written a confirmation dialog will appear, since in this case performance history must be deleted:

Virtual Storage Metric Confirmation

When this parameter is set to Total Bytes Read or Total Bytes Written and you change the parameter a confirmation dialog will also appear

Virtual Storage Metric Confirmation

Note: The performance history will be deleted when you click Save button. So if you clicked Yes in confirmation dialog you still can prevent deleting of performance history either by manually restoring the value of the parameter or by clicking the Cancel button.

If Measure parameter is set to Total Read or Total Written then you can specify units of measurement and the time period to store the data about read and write operations. For measurement units you can choose from kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes. The time period can be specified the same way as for WMI Traffic Volume Monitor.

Authentication – has the same meaning as the identcal WMI Monitor parameter.

Hyper-V Network Traffic Monitor Interface Name – specifies the name of a virtual network interface to monitor. You can set it directly or via Select Network Interface dialog. To open the dialog click on the Select button:

Virtual Network Interface Name

Measure – specifies the direction of traffic to monitor and what value to monitor. For direction of traffic you can choose from Total Traffic (by default), Inbound Traffic, and Outbound Traffic. As a value to monitor you can set either Speed or Volume. If you change this parameter a confirmation dialog will appear, since changing the parameter will cause deleting of the performance history:

Deleting of performance history confirmation

Also if this parameter is set to show volume then changing the traffic direction will also cause a confirmation dialog to appear

WMI Interface Name

Note: The performance history will be deleted when you click Save button. So the same way as with Hyper-V Virtual Storage Monitor if you clicked Yes in confirmation dialog you still can prevent deleting of performance history either by manually restoring the value of the parameter or by clicking the Cancel button.

The and show it as parameter allows you to set the units of measurement. You can choose from Kbits/sec and Mbits/sec for Speed and from kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes for Volume.

If monitor parameters is set to show traffic volume then you can specify the time period to store traffic data. It can be done the same way as for WMI Traffic Volume Monitor.

Authentication – has the same meaning as the identcal WMI Monitor parameter.

VMware Host Monitor

Metric – allows to select what performance counter to measure:

  • CPU Total
  • CPU Usage
  • Memory Granted
  • Memory Consumed
  • Memory Active
  • Memory Balloon
  • Memory Shared
  • Memory Swap
  • Disk Usage
  • Disk Read
  • Disk Write
  • Network Usage
  • Network Receive
  • Network Transmit

Authentication – this monitor uses the Unix-like credentials selected in the Credentials section to access the VMware ESXi.

VMware Virtual Machine Monitor

Virtual Machine Name – specifies the name of a virtual machine to monitor. The name can be set either directly or via Select Virtual Machine dialog that opens if the Select button is pressed:

VMware Virtual Machine Name

Metric – allows to select what performance counter to measure:

  • CPU Usage
  • Memory Granted
  • Memory Consumed
  • Memory Active
  • Memory Balloon
  • Disk Usage
  • Disk Read
  • Disk Write
  • Network Usage
  • Network Receive
  • Network Transmit
  • Total Space
  • Free Space
  • Usage Space

Authentication – this monitor uses the Unix-like credentials selected in the Credentials section to access the VMware ESXi.

VMware Datastore Monitor

Datastore Name – specifies the name of a Datastore to monitor. The name can be set either directly or via Select Datastore dialog that opens if the Select button is pressed:

VMware Datastore Name

Metric – allows to select what performance counter to measure:

  • Total Capacity
  • Free Space
  • Uncommited Space
  • Read Latency
  • Write Latency

Authentication – this monitor uses the Unix-like credentials selected in the Credentials section to access the VMware ESXi.

<Prev Custom Monitors Index