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Table Of Contents
- VMware vCenter Operations Manager Advanced Getting Started Guide
- Contents
- VMware vCenter Operations Manager Advanced Getting Started Guide
- vCenter Operations Manager Features
- Preparing to Monitor a vCenter Operations Manager Virtual Environment
- Object Type Icons in the Inventory Pane
- Badge Concepts for vCenter Operations Manager Planning
- Major Badges in vCenter Operations Manager
- Working with Metrics and Charts on the All Metrics Tab
- Planning the vCenter Operations Manager Workflow
- Monitoring Day-to-Day Activity in vCenter Operations Manager
- Identify an Overall Health Issue
- Determine the Timeframe and Nature of a Health Issue
- Determine Whether the Environment Operates as Expected
- Identify the Source of Performance Degradation
- Identify Events that Occurred when an Object Experienced Performance Degradation
- Identify the Top Resource Consumers
- Determine the Extent of a Performance Degradation
- Determine When an Object Might Run Out of Resources
- Determine the Cause of a Problem with a Specific Object
- Address a Problem with a Specific Virtual Machine
- Address a Problem with a Specific Datastore
- Identify Objects with Stressed Capacity
- Identify Stressed Objects with vCenter Operations Manager
- Identify the Underlying Memory Resource Problem for Clusters and Hosts
- Identify the Underlying Memory Resource Problem for a Virtual Machine
- Determine the Percentage of Used and Remaining Capacity to Assess Current Needs
- Preparing Proactive Workflows in vCenter Operations Manager
- Planning and Analyzing Data for Capacity Risk
- Identify Clusters with the Space for Virtual Machines
- Identify the Source of Performance Degradation Through Heat Maps
- Identify Datastores with Space for Virtual Machines
- Identify Datastores with Wasted Space
- Identify the Virtual Machines with Resource Waste Across Datastores
- Identify the Host and Datastore with the Highest Latency
- Optimizing Data for Capacity
- Determine How Efficiently You Use the Virtual Infrastructure
- Identify the Consolidation Ratio Trend for a Datacenter or Cluster
- Determine Reclaimable Resources from Underused Objects
- Assess Virtual Machine Capacity Use
- Assess Virtual Machine Optimization Data
- Identify Powered-Off Virtual Machines to Optimize Data
- Identify Idle Virtual Machines to Optimize Capacity
- Identify Oversized Virtual Machines to Optimize Data
- Determine the Trend of Waste for a Virtual Machine
- Forecasting Data for Capacity Risk
- Create Capacity Scenarios for Virtual Machines With New Profiles
- Create Capacity Scenarios for Virtual Machines With Existing Profiles
- Create a Hardware Change Scenario
- Create a What-If Scenario to Remove Virtual Machines
- Combine the Results of What-If Scenarios
- Compare the Results of What-If Scenarios
- Delete a Scenario from the What-If Scenarios List
- Planning and Analyzing Data for Capacity Risk
- Planning vCenter Operations Manager Workflow with Alerts
- Customizing vCenter Operations Manager Configuration Settings
- Index
vCenter Operations Manager Features 1
vCenter Operations Manager collects performance data from each object at every level of your virtual
environment, from individual virtual machines and disk drives to entire clusters and datacenters. It stores and
analyzes the data, and uses that analysis to provide real-time information about problems, or potential
problems, anywhere in your virtual environment.
vCenter Operations Manager works with existing VMware products to add the following functions.
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Combines key metrics into single scores for environmental health and efficiency and capacity risk.
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Calculates the range of normal behavior for every metric and highlights abnormalities. Adjusts the
dynamic thresholds as incoming data allows it to better define the normal values for a metric.
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Presents graphical representations of current and historical states of your entire virtual environment or
selected parts of it.
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Displays information about changes in the hierarchy of your virtual environment. For example, when a
virtual machine is moved to a different ESX host, you can see how these changes affect the performance
of the objects involved.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Main Concepts of vCenter Operations Manager,” on page 7
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“Metric Concepts for vCenter Operations Manager Planning,” on page 8
Main Concepts of vCenter Operations Manager
vCenter Operations Manager uses certain concepts that can help you understand the product, its interface,
and how to use it.
Attributes and Metrics
vCenter Operations Manager collects several kinds of data for each inventory object. For example, for a virtual
machine, vCenter Operations Manager might receive data about free disk space, CPU load, and available
memory. Each type of data that vCenter Operations Manager collects is called an attribute. An instance of an
attribute for a specific inventory object is called a metric. For example, free memory for a specific virtual
machine is a metric.
For each metric, vCenter Operations Manager collects and stores multiple readings over time. For example,
the vCenter Operations Manager server polls for information about the CPU load for each virtual machine
once every five minutes. Each piece of data that vCenter Operations Manager collects is called a metric value.
VMware, Inc.
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