How to Monitor vSphere Performance

What is vSphere performance monitoring?

vSphere Performance Monitoring is a technology that monitors the performance status of virtual machines and hosts in real-time. It helps to understand how the vSphere virtual machine environment is performing and can help users identify and resolve problems that may occur.

For example, it helps users monitor various VM components such as the vSphere network, CPU, memory, and storage. In this article, you will learn the best practices of using vSphere monitoring and performance tools, which ensure optimal performance and availability of your virtualized environment.

The benefits of vSphere performance monitoring

vSphere is a powerful virtualization platform that provides many essential features for the data center. The following are the benefits of vSphere performance monitoring:

• Real-time monitoring: vSphere can monitor virtual machine and host performance metrics such as CPU utilization, memory utilization and network traffic in real time so administrators can identify and resolve issues in a timely manner.
• Visual analysis: vSphere monitoring tools display performance metrics graphically, which helps administrators better understand the data and can pinpoint problems more quickly.
• Early warning features: vSphere monitoring tools can also set thresholds and alert rules that automatically send email or SMS notifications to administrators when preset thresholds are reached so that action can be taken.
• Statistical analysis: vSphere can perform statistical analysis of historical performance data, including long-term performance trends, peak times, etc. so that administrators can make more informed decisions about future resource planning and budgeting.

In a nutshell, vSphere performance monitoring is a very powerful and important tool that helps administrators better manage and maintain virtualized environments and ensure their proper operation.

vSphere performance monitoring tools

Monitoring programs usually monitor computers through the various services they come with. There are several VMware performance monitoring tools available, including:

1. vRealize Operations Manager: This tool provides a comprehensive view of the performance and health of your vSphere environment and helps you optimize its efficiency.

2. vRealize Log Insight: This tool collects logs from all the components in your vSphere environment and analyzes them to identify performance issues.

3. esxtop: This command-line tool provides real-time performance data for individual VMs, hosts, and clusters in your vSphere environment.

4. vCenter Server Performance Charts: This tool provides a graphical representation of the performance data for your vSphere environment, which can help you identify trends and troubleshoot issues.

5. PowerCLI: This command-line interface allows you to automate tasks and gather performance data across multiple hosts and VMs in your vSphere environment.

6. VMware vSphere Health Check Report: This tool analyzes your vSphere environment to identify potential misconfigurations and performance bottlenecks.

7. PRTG Network Monitor: This network monitoring tool can be used to monitor the performance of your vSphere environment, including virtual machines, hosts, and datastores.

Best practices for vSphere performance monitoring

We all know the role of monitoring program, which is to monitor the system and computer operation. If it finds abnormalities it allows you to deal with them in a timely manner. Here are the specific steps on how to view vSphere 7 monitoring and performance for an example, different versions may operate differently:

vSphere 7 client performance charts

In the vSphere 7 UI, administrators can use the Performance Charts feature to monitor the performance of individual virtual machines or hosts over a specified period. They can also compare the performance of different virtual machines or hosts to identify any bottlenecks or issues that may be impacting the overall performance of their virtual infrastructure.

There are several different types of charts available in vSphere that allow administrators to monitor and analyze the performance of their virtualized infrastructure. Here are some of the most commonly used chart types:

• Line chart - Metrics for a single inventory item are displayed in a line chart. Each metric's data is displayed as a separate line.
• Bar chart - Each bar represents metrics for different things.
• Pie chart - Shows metrics for a single object, with each slice denoting a category or subordinate object. A pie chart displays the amount of storage space taken up by each virtual machine or by each type of file.
• Stacked chart –Shows data about child objects.

vSphere 7 client performance charts are easy to access, open the vSphere client and choose an object in the inventory pane. Then navigate to Monitor >> Performance >> Overview, and select a time range.

How to use advanced performance charts for vSphere performance monitoring

In addition to the basic performance charts that are available in vSphere, we are going to try advanced performance charts in the vSphere Client which provides a deeper level of insight into the performance of virtualized infrastructure.

Steps to use ESXi performance charts:

Step 1. Navigate to an inventory object in the vSphere Client, and click Monitor >> Performance >> Advanced.

Step 2. (Optional) Choose an option from the View list to see a different chart.

* The collection interval and statistics level configured for vCenter Server determine how much historical data is shown in a chart.

Step 3. (Optional) Select a timespan. If you select the Custom Interval, you must select one of the following options:

• Last - Choose the duration in hours, days, weeks, or months.
• From – Choose the beginning and ending times.

The link for Chart Options will open an overlay window. Choose the counters and the chart metrics that you wish to track. Then select Save Option As.

Step 4. (Optional) Click the Popup Chart icon to view the chosen performance chart in a pop-up window.

Note: You can explore the vSphere Client while keeping the performance chart open in a separate window because the chart opens in a new browser tab.

Tip: Backup and protect vSphere virtualized environment

Monitoring can help companies and individuals analyze the operation of systems so that they can identify problems and solve them. These problems may lead to the loss of your data.

Therefore, I would like to advise you to pay more attention to your data security to avoid similar situations. The best thing you can do to protect your data is to back up your vSphere virtual machines. This way you can easily recover your important data even if something goes wrong.

Here I want to introduce a VMware backup software – AOMEI Cyber Backup, which offers an intuitive and user-friendly interface to monitor VMware ESXi and Hyper-V backup and restore. It also provides the following benefits:

Centralized Backup: Create a backup task for multiple VMs without installing agent on each of them.
Support Free ESXi: Support both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi.
Various Backup Methods: Besides full backup, you can perform incremental or differential VM backup to capture only changed data and save storage space.
Restore from Any Point: Restore a whole VM to a usable state from any history backup version.
Automated Hot Backup: Auto backup running VMs and notify via email.

Please click the button below to try AOMEI Cyber Backup for a 30-day free trial:

Steps to backup VMware ESXi virtual machines

Step 1. Access to AOMEI Cyber Backup web client, select Source Device, click VMware >> Add VMware Device >> +Add vCenter or Standalone ESXi to add a host. And then click Confirm.

Step 2. Navigate to Backup Task and Create New Task. Then select VMware ESXi Backup for Backup Type. After that, set the Task Name, Device, Target, Schedule and Cleanup, Archive according to your need.

✤ Device: Select a large number of VMs managed by vCenter or standalone host to backup.

✤ Target: Select the backup path, like a local path or a network path.

✤ Schedule: Select the Backup Method and Schedule Type here.

✤ Cleanup: Click on the Backup Cleanup button, it will automatically delete the old copies that exceed the retention period.

✤ Archive: If you have an Amazon S3 storage, AOMEI Cyber Backup support archiving backups to your Amazon S3.

✤ Email notification: Monitor the backup process in a timely manner and send you alerts immediately to enhance the protection of data security.

Step 3. Click Start Backup and choose Add the schedule and start backup now or Add the schedule only.

Step 4. The last step is so easy to finish, navigate to Start Restore >> Restore to, you can choose to Restore to a new location so that you can create a new VM directly from the backup and save the trouble of re-configuring a new VM.

Conclusion

vSphere performance monitoring technology is a crucial aspect of monitoring and managing the VMware vSphere virtualized environment. In this post, we demonstrate basic tools to ensure the functioning of the program and guide you on how to use it.

In addition, to better protect your VM environment, it is necessary to regularly back up your vSphere VMs with AOMEI Cyber Backup. Besides backing VMware vSphere VMs, it also support backing up Hyper-V VMs, MS SQL databases, Windows computers, and so on.