VI3Monitoring and Troubleshooting Best Practices

The following best practices will help you troubleshoot a problematic VI3 deployment.

◆ Monitor virtual machine performance with a combination of tools inside the virtual machine and tools in VI3. For example, use Task Manager inside of a virtual machine and the performance reports from VirtualCenter to monitor CPU utilization and to identify bottlenecks.

◆ Regularly review the levels of CPUReady and Ballooning in the performance charts provided
by VirtualCenter. Abnormally high values of either counter would indicate an issue
with CPU or memory, respectively.

◆ Create virtual machine benchmarks as a standard of comparison when changes are made.

◆ Create e-mail-based performance alarms for key virtual machines. Allow administrators to
be notified of system problems for virtual machines that provide core network services
such as mail, databases, and authentication.

◆ Identify the root of any problem, then attempt fixes based on monitoring results, feature
dependencies, and the company’s documented change management process. For example,
if VMware HA is not failing over properly, review the DNS configuration for the affected
hosts since HA relies on name resolution across ESX Server hosts.

◆ Engage in a systematic approach to identifying and fixing problems with ESX Server hosts
and virtual machines.