Why reports show CPU usage

[shija03]

If I click on left hand panel: "Virtual Infrastructure" and then click on the right hand tab (context driven by left hand panel) "Top Load", a report is generated with the following listings:

"Top CPU Users"
"Top Network Users"
"Top Memory Users"
"Top Swap Users"
"Top Disk Users"

But where is the actual "Top Load"? CPU usage is not a very useful piece of information - most of my servers are Linux, and the ESXi server in itself is Linux - Under Linux, among the most important metrics of performance measurement is the "load" of the server (the CPU Queue Length) indicating whether the server is capable of serving in a timely fashion, or it is being pegged out.

Couldn't we get that metric somehow?

Also, "Top Load" .vs. "Lowest Load" - why is the "Top Load" showing the actual Session systems, while the "Lowest Load" is showing the ESX servers and not their sessions. - Preferibly it would be nice to have both - sessions listed, and also ESX servers listed, in two different tabs.

Thank you,

James.

[Gostev]

James, unfortunately Vmware API does not provide Linux-specific load counters at the moment... what we currently provide is drill-down into Linux guests where you can view and manage processes, we could potentially show Linux system load there - would it be helpful?

"Lowest Load" is essentially designed to let you decide what host to place or move VMs to when needed. We figured there is little sense to show least loaded VMs in VMware Monitor because there is little you could do with this information... on the other hand, "Top Load" shows VMs which may be misbehaving and/or affecting shared resources. Does it make sense?

[shija03]

Hi Gostev,

Thank you for your reply. I was actually looking into esxtop from VMWare and I thought VEEAM Monitor would be able to use this in order to display the actual Load that each ESX server would be - Though after your explanation of CPU Ready - I believe this is may be an equivalent for Load.

Again - I think that Top Load and Lowest Load views should show the same information (One tab for ESX servers, and one tab VM Sessions) - I'm just giving you my input as a new user to your application.

Thanks again,

James.

[Gostev]

James, can you please clarify this use case a little. Let's say, you are running 100 VMs in a cluster. How exactly are you planning to leverage the information about bottom 5 VMs which were putting least load on your cluster for the past 5 minutes?

[shija03]

Gostev,

All I am saying is that I would like to see top Load ESX servers, and Top Load VM Sessions, and also Lowest Load ESX servers, and Lowest Load VM Sessions.

I have about 30 ESX Servers and about 100 VM Sessions. I don't have cluster solution - so to me the way to determine which ESX Server is being over loaded or under utilized is by finding ESX Servers Top Load list or Lowest Load list. Once I find which ESX Server is suffering - I decide which VM Sessions could be moved out to the lowest loaded ESX Servers.

VM Sessions I don't really care much for, since I am monitoring them via Nagios agents - which poll their System Load metric every 2 minutes.

My only comment about the GUI is that on the Top Load you show VM Sessions, and the Lowest Load you show ESX Servers. Just because a VM Session is doing poorly (high load) it is not an indicator that the ESX Server is doing poorly too. This is why I think both Top Load ESX Servers and Top Load VM Sessions should be offered. I don't know if this clarifies things, but in either case, I don't think your new release will take into account this comment - though I appreciate the effort to try to understand my question.

Regards,

James.

[Gostev]

James, so if I understand correctly, you want to get "Top load ESX server" view. I definitely agree with this suggestion, and I see how this information will be useful. Let me discuss this with development.

[Gostev]

James, we will be adding this functionality in the upcoming release. Thanks for your feedback.

[shija03]

Gostev,

Thank you - I'll be looking forward to see your latest release. BTW - your newest releases are all upgrade driven right? No need to reconfigure all my the entries again.

[Gostev]

That is correct, we always provide automated in-place upgrade that preserves all existing settings as well as historical performance data.