One of the things server virtualization lacks today is tools that provide end-end visibility and real time alerting and actionable results from the VM all the way to the storage.
VM Insight provides the required visibility into the configuration of the virtualized server and displays data that enables the administrator to analyze, investigate and resolve issues on virtual machines installed in a SAN by having access to real time performance data not only on the Physical Host but also on the Virtual.
The administrator also needs to be able to determine what capacity is being used by the virtual machines that have been created as well as been able to make decisions as to which physical host is able to host new virtual machine. While the idea is to drive high consolidation ratios and increase physical server utilization rates as much a possible, you can't do this blindfolded.
To accomplish this, VM Insight enables all changes in the virtual infrastructure to be recorded in SANscreen, showing:
• How resources are being used to increase utilization.
• What hosts are best suited for which virtual machines.
• The path of a virtual machine to the SAN storage device.
• The volumes/LUNs that belong to the datastore for every virtual machine
Having said that, I've installed SANscreen in my laptop with a demo database and will give you a preview of what SANscreen's VM Insight Module can do for VMware environments.
Figure 1. Physical and Virtual Host View
In the above screen-shot (top pane), what we're seeing is a list of all the physical hosts, the cluster they belong to and their Utilization levels in terms of CPU, Memory, I/O and IP utilization levels. The coloring scheme indicated the utilization thresholds that have been reached based on a set policy.
The bottom left pane is the VM Load Analyzer that provides the exact same information down at the VM level. In fact, you chart the Utilization levels based on a Real-Time sample, or based on a sample obtained the Last Hour, the last 24 Hours, Last week or a Customizable time interval you create. Pretty handy stuff if you ask me.
Figure 2. VM Discovery & Reporting
I had to create 2 separate screenshots on this one because I just couldn't fit everything in one window in my laptop. What this shows us is an inventory of all the Physical Hosts, Virtual Machines, the Datastores residing on each Physical host, the state of each Virtual Machine, the Virtual machine type, as well as Capacity Utilization levels on a per Datastore and VM level.
Figure 3. VM Hosting Recommendations
Server virtualization environments are very dynamic and admins constantly deploy new VMs. VM Insight, provides admins the ability to decide and make recommendations beforehand which physical server has the available I/O, CPU and Memory resources in order to host new VM. Again, the coloring scheme indicates in order of preference. In fact on the left hand side there's an "Order" column as well.
What' I'm really interesting in knowing is, how do most folks with server virtualization environments today have access to this type of actionable data and how do they make decisions?
Insight looks promising; I have been using a poor man's version of resource capacity planning. We setup one of our Production ESX hosts as a "swing server". Basically place newly P2V'd or new VM builds on the Swing Server and get an analysis on performance before determing which host would best accomodate that particular VM. Of course, you waste valuable host resources since you only keep 5-6 VM's on the swing server at one time to prevent skewed results.
Posted by: Jon B | March 12, 2008 at 02:13 PM