vFoglight™ 5.2.4.
© 2009 Quest Software, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This guide contains proprietary information protected by copyright. The software described in this guide is furnished under a software license or nondisclosure agreement. This software may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of the applicable agreement.
Table of Contents Introduction to this Guide ...................................................................................................................................7 About vFoglight ................................................................................................................................................................ 8 About this Guide...........................................................................................................................................
vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation ................................................................... 25 Installing and Configuring WinRM .................................................................................................................................. 26 Downloading WinRM ..............................................................................................................................
Table of Contents 5 Processor Utilization (%) ...............................................................................................................................55 Total Processor Time ....................................................................................................................................55 Memory Utilization .........................................................................................................................................
vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Why did I get a message saying "Error: Invalid Agent" after clicking the Save button in the Configuration Settings dialog box? ........................................................................................................................................... 60 Why did I get a message saying "Error: No Agent Provided" after clicking the Save button in the configuration settings dialog box? .............................................
1 Introduction to the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation This section contains the following topics: Overview of the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation.........................................................16 Understanding the Concept of Guest Process ............................................................................16 Monitoring Virtual Machines with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation ........................
16 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Overview of the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Virtual machines are quickly becoming the industry norm in IT infrastructures. Companies use virtual machines to reduce server growth, reduce costs, and conserve energy. The monitoring of internal resource contention problems of virtual machine environments presents a unique set of challenges.
Introduction to the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Monitoring Virtual Machines with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation 17 To monitor virtual machines, the user currently has to bring up a separate monitor from the one used to monitor the virtual machine, then view Perfmon to get details on what is happening on the host. This is a time-consuming and inefficient process because users have to sit and repeatedly watch real-time displays to spot the recurrence events.
18 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide
2 Cartridge Navigation Basics This chapter describes the basic vFoglight navigation techniques necessary for using the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation. This section contains the following topics: vFoglight GUI Panels...................................................................................................................20 Navigation Panel .........................................................................................................................20 Display Panel..............
20 Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide vFoglight GUI Panels Depending on where you log to vFoglight, you may see either the contents of the first bookmark (the Welcome page is the default) listed under Bookmarks, or a home page. For further details, refer to the vFoglight User Guide. Typically, the GUI is divided into the following three panels: • The navigation panel on the left. • The larger display panel in the middle. • The actions panel on the right.
Cartridge Navigation Basics Time Range 21 Display Panel The display panel is used to view current dashboards and reports, as well as to create new dashboards and reports. You can increase the size of this area by resizing the navigation panel, or, if the actions panel is open, by closing the actions panel. Actions Panel The actions panel operates like a drawer. Its default state is closed. To open the actions panel, click the arrow at the far right of the vFoglight GUI.
22 Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide When you modify the time range for a dashboard or view, it adjusts the range for all of the contained views contained within and drilldowns accessed from that dashboard or view. It does not adjust the time range for any parent views. Sortable Lists In certain vFoglight dashboards, some levels of views contain sortable lists. An example of this is the Monitored Processes, Process Name column in the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation.
Cartridge Navigation Basics Alarms and their Status Indicators 23 Alarms and their Status Indicators The Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation uses status indicators to show specific alarms raised within the virtual infrastructure. Four status indicators, similar to those displayed in the following figure, are used throughout the vFoglight Cartridge dashboards.
24 Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide
3 Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation This chapter takes you through the various dashboards and associated views in the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Cartridge. This section contains the following topics: Installing and Configuring WinRM ...............................................................................................26 Deploying a Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Agent to FglAM .....................................
26 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Installing and Configuring WinRM To collect process information from remote Windows installations, the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation relies on Windows Remote Management (WinRM) to expose the process information data. While some Windows installations include WinRM, others require download and installation.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Installing and Configuring WinRM 27 Listening for Remote Connections WinRM on the monitored Windows machine must be configured to listen for incoming connections from remote parties. There are several methods and options available for creating a listener.
28 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Deploying a Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Agent to FglAM Note Before you can deploy the Guest Process Investigation Agent to another machine, the vFoglight Agent Manager must be installed on that machine. The Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation allows you to monitor process information on multiple host machines.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Deploying a Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Agent to FglAM 6 Click Deploy. The agent installs on the selected host. 7 Click OK. 8 Click Create. The Create Agent dialog displays. 9 From the Host drop-down, select the desired host. 10 From the Agent Type drop-down, select the Guest Process Agent.
30 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide 11 Enter the desired name in Instance Name. 12 Click Create. The agent creates. 13 Click Activate. Manual Configuration of Guest Process Agents Using the Administration Dashboards Note The Guest Process agent can be configured from the Agent Administration dashboards in vFoglight. This is not recommended. Use the Administration Agents dashboard for manual agent configuration.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Manual Configuration of Guest Process Agents Using the Administration Dashboards To manually configuration a Guest Process Investigation agents using the Administration Dashboards: 1 Navigate to Agent Status in the navigation panel (Dashboards >Administraion>Agents>Agent Status). 2 Select the required agent.
32 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide 3 Click Edit Properties. The Agent Status dashboard displays. Note It is important to note that Agent Name must match the Monitored Hosts list name. For example, if the Agent Name is “GP_Agent”, the Monitored Hosts list name must be “GP_Agent”. If the Agent Name and Monitored Hosts list name does not match, the vFoglight dashboards will not display the agents data correctly.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Manual Configuration of Guest Process Agents Using the Administration Dashboards 33 The configuration dialog displays. 7 The configuration dialog allows you to complete the required fields to connect to a host machine. • Monitored: Allows you to collect process info from the host machine. • Sample Interval (seconds): Allows you to set the collection rate between vFolight and the host in seconds.
34 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide • WinRM URL Path: wsman • Linux or Solaris Host: The following default values are used: • SSH Port: 22 • Use SSL: Using SSL ensures an encrypted connection between the agent and the monitored host. This requires the vFoglight Agent Manager (FglAM) to be configured to trust the monitored host's certificate. For procedures on installing the vFoglight Agent Manager, refer to the vFoglight Getting Started Guide.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Guest Process Agents Dashboard 35 Guest Process Agents Dashboard The Guest Process Agents dashboard allows you to view the Guest Process Agents configured and the hosts being monitored. To view the Guest Process Agents dashboard: 1 From the navigation panel select (Dashboards >Hosts>Processes>Guest Process Agents). The Guest Process Agents dashboard displays. 2 To drill-down and view Guest Process agent information, click the agent name.
36 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide The Agent Messages view displays providing any errors that make have occurred between the Guest Process Investigation agent and the host. Processes Dashboard The Processes dashboard displays information on the host that is collecting and sending details to vFoglight. This dashboard can be used to view the process information of the host being monitored and troubleshoot issues with that machine.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard 37
38 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Navigating to the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Dashboard You access the Process dashboard from the vmExplorer. To view the Process dashboard: 1 From the navigation panel select (Dashboards >Virtual> VMware> vmExplorer). The vmExplorer view displays. 2 Click the Processes tab. The Processes view displays. The first time you view the Processes dashboard, the graphs and charts contain no process info.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard 39 WinRM Remote Access Account Restrictions For more information, click here. This link takes you to a MSDN site that discusses this requirement. Review Step three of the instructions for connecting to a remote computer using a different account. Process Dashboard Collection Options Note The data displayed can be for either a physical or virtual machine.
40 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Enable Process Collection Checking the Enable check box enables the agent selected. Processes are then sent from the agent to the Processes view.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard 41 • Collection Sample Interval (seconds): Allows you to set the collection rate between vFolight and the host in seconds. • Operating System: Allows you to select the operating system, i.e.,Windows, Solaris, Linux. Note For Windows: In order to access that information through WinRM, the provided account information must be an account that is a member of the local computer’s administrators group on the remote machine.
42 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Advanced Options contains the following settings: • Enable Process Collection: Enables the collection for the machine. • Use SSL: Using SSL ensures an encrypted connection between the agent and the monitored host. This requires the vFoglight Agent Manager (FglAM) to be configured to trust the monitored host's certificate. For procedures on installing the vFoglight Agent Manager, refer to the vFoglight Getting Started Guide.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard 43 Time Range Menu From the upper right-hand corner of the Process dashboard, you can select the Time Range Menu to set collection time ranges for the host machine sending process info to vFoglight. To set the time range menu: 1 Click the Time Range Menu in the upper right-hand corner of vFoglight. The Time Range Menu displays. 2 Select the desired time range.
44 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Using the Cartridge for Guest Process Graphs and Charts When using the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation graphs and charts, you can do the following to change the views of monitored process: • Change the monitored process viewed • Change the chart time • Perform zoom functions Changing the Monitored Processes Viewed The Monitored Processes view allows you to view all or selected processes on the host being monitored.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard 3 Click Update. 4 The CPU Usage by Process and Memory Usage by Process graphs update. Changing the Chart Type The vFoglight views allow you to select different chart types. To change chart types: 1 Click the chart drop-down in the upper right-hand corner of the chart. 2 Select the desired chart. The current chart change its view to the selected chart.
46 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Zoom Using the x and y Axis of the Graph The Guest Process Investigation charts allow you to zoom in for a specific time range for the x and y axis. To zoom to a specific time range: 1 Place the cursor over the x or y axis. 2 Click and drag over the desired time range.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard The graph zooms to the select time range. 3 To reset the zoom, click in the upper left-hand corner.
48 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Process Info Dashboard View The Process Info Dashboard contains the following embedded views: • CPU Usage by Process • CPU At a Glance • Memory At a Glance • Memory At a Glance • Monitored Processes Understanding %CPU Values in vFoglight Unlike other data whose values represent a single point in time (when the data is collected), each %cpu data value gathered by the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation is the average CPU utilization o
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard 49 Memory Usage By Process This view displays the memory usage by processes over time. It shows the load on memory for processes on a given virtual machine. Mousing over the processes displays a popup of the services. CPU At a Glance This displays how the memory is being used based on the following: • The top five processes using the most CPU. These five processes are the “top consumers” for that memory.
50 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Memory At a Glance Note It is possible for multi-instance processes to display %Memory values that are over 100%. This occurs because the PS Command used to query the system returns %Memory values that include the memory used by shared libraries. Since the %Memory values for all individual processes are summed to generate the value, the memory used by shared libraries may be included multiple times.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard • Search for individual processes. Choosing Which Processes to View During the monitoring of processes, you may want to view certain processes. To choose individual processes: 1 Click the Show/Hide colums menu. The Show Columns menu displays. 2 Select the processes you wish to view. 3 Click Apply.
52 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Exporting Reports as a PDF or CSV The Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation allows you to export process information to a PDF or CSV format. To export process info to PDF or CSV: 1 Click the Show/Hide colums menu. The show columns menu displays. 2 Click the desired output format (CSV or PDF). a Clicking Export as CSV displays a dialog allowing you to choose the save options. Select the desired options and click OK.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Processes Dashboard 53 b Clicking Export as PDF exports the process info data into PDF format and opens in the PDF software loaded on your machine. Searching for Individual Processes Using the search allows you to find process information on individual processes. • Find: This field allows you enter the individual process you want to search for. You can select the “Use Regular Expressions” option.
54 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Process Information Data Sources The Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation retrieves process information machine data from the following operating systems: • Windows • Linux • Solaris The following provides detailed information regarding process information collected by the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation. Windows For process information on a Windows machine, data from Common Information Model (CIM) classes is used.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Process Information Data Sources 55 • CIM Field: IDProcess Parent Process ID • CIM Class: Win32_Process • CIM Field: ParentProcessId Processor Utilization (%) Processor Utilization requires a calculation involving data from several CIM Classes and Fields. In addition, this calculation requires two samples of data and therefore is not available until after a second data collection is performed.
56 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Swap Size • CIM Class: Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process • CIM Field: PageFileBytes Page Faults • CIM Class: Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process • CIM Field: PageFaultsPersec Data Read • CIM Class: Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process • CIM Field: IOReadBytesPersec Data Written • CIM Class: Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process • CIM Field: IOWriteBytesPersec Data Other • CIM Class: Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process • CIM Field: IOOtherByte
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Process Information Data Sources 57 Linux For process information on a Linux machine, data exposed by remotely executing the PS Command is used. The following explains what data is used to provide process information. Process Name The PS Command Output from requesting the "comm" field is used as the process name. This contains the executable name only. No command line modifications are included.
58 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Working Set Size The PS Command Output from requesting the field "rss" is used as the amount of physical memory currently being consumed by the process. This is referred to as the working set size of the process. Virtual Memory Size The PS Command Output from requesting the field "vsize" is used as the virtual memory size of the process.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Troubleshooting the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation 59 involves taking two samples of data. The process CPU utilization will only be available after a second sample is taken. Total Processor Time The PS Command Output from requesting the field "cputime" is used as the amount of time the process has consumed the CPU.
60 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide • Password • Operating System Why did I get a message saying "Error: Invalid Agent" after clicking the Save button in the Configuration Settings dialog box? This message is a result of the server not finding the Agent selected under Advanced Options. Try selecting a different Agent.
Interacting with the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Troubleshooting the Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation 61 I have saved my configuration settings, but the Enable Process Collection checkbox is disabled and I do not see any data. What is wrong? The configuration could not be saved. You should see a popup after clicking the Save button with a message.
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Index Index A N about vFoglight 8 Authentication Encrypted Basic Authentication via HTTPS 27 Unencrypted Basic Authentication 27 Navigating in vFoglight Alarms and their Status Indicators 23 Mouse-over Actions 23 Sortable List 22 Time Range 21 Navigation in vFoglight vFoglight GUI Panels 20 C cartridge 10 Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation Monitoring Virtual Machines 17 contacting Quest 12 core 9 O Overview Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation 16 D P documentation 8, 9, 10 Process Info
64 vFoglight Cartridge for Guest Process Investigation User Guide Data Other 56 Data Read 56 Data Written 56 Memory Utilization 55 Other Operations 56 Page Faults 56 Parent Process ID 55 Process ID 54 Process Name 54 Processor Utilization (%) 55 Read Operations 56 Swap Size 56 Total Processor Time 55 Virtual Memory Size 55 Working Set Size 55 Write Operations 56 S suite 8 support 12 T technical support 12 text conventions 11 Troubleshooting Invalid Agent 60 Missing Input 59 No Agent Provided 60 Not seein
