VMware VI3 Monitoring Options for Operations Manager 2007

We had an interesting thread regarding your experience with monitoring your VMware server infrastructure. In the interest of education, I wanted to share a bit more about the options you have available and where to find more information.

Current and future architecture

Some have asked questions as to whether loading an X-plat agent on ESX is possible, supported, or event a good idea. The short answer here is “no” (IMHO). Even though the ESX Service Console is based on the Linux kernel (2.4 I believe) which is used to boot the ESX Server virtualization layer. This kernel is used to load additional code, referred to the vmkernel. So there are really two kernels here. VMware is progressively reducing their reliance on this in each release. The changes are substantial between releases, and anything we do on the 3.5 platform will almost certainly not work with release 4 (vSphere) as VMware moves to eliminate their reliance on the Linux kernel. In short, no sense reinventing the wheel for a solution with a limited life span.

APIs and interfaces for extracting monitoring data

By proxy (remotely), you can extract monitoring information from a number of sources in a VMware environment, including:

SDK Web Service (requires Virtual Center) - Mark this as the richest source of VMware performance data, and at the lowest cost to host and guest performance.
SYSLOG - These tend to be pretty cryptic.
SSH (screen scrape) - I believe eXc at minimum makes some us of SSH.
vmcontrol-based APIs (including vmPerl / vmCOM) - These were deprecated a couple of years ago I believe, so definitely not a preferred solution.

For ESX monitoring on the cheap, Jonathan Hambrook documented how to monitor several aspects of your ESX environment in this document.

http://www.systemcentercentral.com/Downloads/DownloadsDetails/tabid/144/IndexID/7445/Default.aspx

But in short, I believe proxy-based solutions leveraging the SDK web service are the best route.

Partner offerings for VMware VI3 monitoring in OpsMgr

In additional to the free route, there are numerous credible third party add-ons for Operations Manager and Essentials 2007 for monitoring your ESX 3.x / VI3 environment (in no particular order). While I will mention the licensing model in some cases, I will generally refrain from calling out prices out of respect for the partners. To be fair, most of my ESX monitoring experience today has been with Quest and Veaam.

NOTE: You will find many partner offerings REQUIRE Virtual Center (where the SDK web service lives) to monitor ESX. I don’t believe in ESX without Virtual Center, so I don’t have an issue with this.

	Veaam (www.veaam.com) has what I believe is a robust and widely deployed offering, but has historically also carried the highest price tag…but worth the money in mission critical virtualization scenarios. It’s helped me uncover configuration and performance issues on a couple of occasions. VMware monitoring and management is their primary focus, and they seem know it well. This offering heavily leverages the SDK web service. *Licensing Model* – Veaam recently returned to a per-socket licensing model, so I am not sure where they fall in terms of price.
	Quest (www.quest.com formerly eXc) has a broad range of “virtual agents”, a term used for their agentless solutions. Less full-featured than Veaam, but also less expensive. Because Quest has invested so heavily in the agentless model, they have it down to a science I think, and as such offer the broadest product support with more than 350 virtual agents last I checked. If you’re looking for a provider with a broad range of product support for many non-Windows platforms and network devices (Oracle, Apache, more network appliances than I can mention), this is definitely a partner you want to talk to. *Licensing Model* – Quest charges per DNS name, which tends to be somewhat to much less expensive than their competitors. I’ve deployed this solution for some price conscious customers that needed a solid partner. However, you want to evaluate the product to ensure it covers the key points you require for ESX.
	BridgeWays (www.bridgeways.ca) Makers of the much-anticipated Bridgeways MP for X-plat in OpsMgr 2007 R2, I have yet to test their beta offering for VMware ESX monitoring. Xandros has a major focus on X-Plat, so I am expecting for big things from these folks in that arena as well. I’ll let you know more after I’ve had time to properly evaluate their VMware offering *Licensing Model* – BridgeWays employs a per-socket licensing model. Check with them for latest pricing.
	Jalasoft (www.jalasoft.com) focuses on *NIX and network monitoring today, and they do have an ESX offering that requires Virtual Center. The Jalasoft architecture involves a separate console and also a separate database, with some synchronization happening via the SDK.I have yet to use Jalasoft for ESX monitoring.

Good partners and good people…I encourage you to talk to all when weighing your VMware monitoring options. Again, when investing in a framework, look at everything a partner has to offer to see if you can leverage your initial investment down the road.

Additional Resources

Conclusion

In short, I think an enterprise monitoring solution for VMware should be supported and comprehensive given the complexity of the VMware platform. Hopefully this provides a clearer picture of the possible routes to a successful VMware monitoring solution with Operations Manager 2007.