Installation guide

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VMware ESX Server Administration Guide
Using SNMP to Monitor the Computer
Running ESX Server
ESX Server ships with an SNMP agent that allows you to monitor the health of the
physical machine where ESX Server is running and of virtual machines running on it.
This agent is based on Net-SNMP with enhancements to support data specific to ESX
Server. Background information on Net-SNMP is available at net-snmp.sourceforge.net.
The ESX Server SNMP agent can be used with any management software that can
load and compile a management information base (MIB) in SMIv1 format and can
understand SNMPv1 trap messages.
The location of the VMware subtree in the SNMP hierarchy is
.iso.org.dod.internet.private.enterprises.vmware
(.1.3.6.1.4.1.6876).
You can choose to use SNMP with or without any specific ESX Server MIB items.
Information about the Physical Computer
SNMP get variables allow you to monitor a wide variety of items about the physical
computer and how virtual machines are using its resources. Some of the key types of
information available are:
• The number of CPUs on the physical computer
• CPU resources on the physical computer being used by particular virtual
machines
• The amount of RAM installed on the physical computer
• Physical memory used by the service console
• Physical memory used by particular virtual machines
• Physical memory that is not being used
• Usage data for disks on the physical computer, including number of reads and
writes and amount of data read and written
• Usage data on the physical computer’s network adapters, including packets sent
and received and kilobytes sent and received
• State of the VMkernel (loaded or not loaded)
Note: If the variable showing whether the VMkernel is loaded says no, any
values reported for any other variable should be regarded as invalid.