Configuration of VmgPageFileTest

This test tracks the usage of each of the page files on a Windows VM. This test will be available for VMs on Windows servers only.

The default parameters associated with this test are as follows:

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• In the HOST text box, specify the host for which the test is to be configured.

• Specify the port at which the specified host listens in the PORT text box.

• To auto-discover the VMs on a target RHEV hypervisor and obtain the outside view of the performance of each VM, the eG agent needs to connect to the RHEV Manager that manages the target RHEV hypervisor. To enable the eG agent to obtain the outside view, you need to configure the test with the following:

  • Specify the IP address/host name of the RHEV manager that the eG agent should connect to in the RHEL MGR HOST text box.

  • Specify the port number at which the said RHEV manager listens in the RHEL MGR PORT text box.

  • Specify the domain to which the RHEL manager belongs in the RHEL MGR DOMAIN text box.

  • Specify the credentials of a user to the RHEV manager who has been assigned the RHEVMUser role in the RHEL MGR USER and RHEL MGR PASSWORD text boxes.

  If the RHEV hypervisor being monitored was discovered via an RHEV manager, then the IP address, port number, domain name, and user credentials of the RHEV manager used for discovery will be automatically displayed against the respective parameters.

  If the RHEV hypervisor being monitored was not discovered via an RHEV manager, but you still want to use an RHEV manager for obtaining the outside view, then, you can select any IP address of your choice from the RHEL MGR HOST list. By default, this list will be populated with the IP addresses/host names of all the RHEV managers that were configured for the purpose of discovering the RHEV hypervisors. If you select an RHEL MGR HOST from this list, then the corresponding port number, domain name, and user credentials will be automatically displayed against the respective parameters.

  On the other hand, if the RHEV manager that you want to use for metrics collection is not available in the RHEL MGR HOST list, then, you can configure an RHEV manager on-the-fly by picking the Other option from the RHEL MGR HOST list. An ADD THE RHEV MANAGER DETAILS window will then pop up. In the pop up window specify the following:

  • Specify the IP address/host name of the RHEV MAnager that you wish to add in the RHEV Manager identity text box.

  • If you wish the eG agent to communicate with the RHEV Manager via HTTPS, select Yes from the Use SSL to connect to RHEV Manager drop down list. Select No option if you do not wish the RHEV Manager to be SSL-enabled.

  • If the RHEV Manager is SSL-enabled, then 8443 will be displayed in the Manager Port text box by default. On the other hand, if the manager is not SSL-enabled, the default Manager Port will be 8080. If the RHEV manager in your environment listens on a different SSL or non-SSL port, then make corresponding changes to the default setting.

  • If you also want to discover additional RHEV servers in your environment using this RHEV manager, set the Discover RHEV Hypervisors using this RHEV manager flag to Yes. If you only want to use this RHEV manager to obtain the outside view of VMs, set this flag to No.

  • In the Username to connect to RHEV manager and Password for user text boxes, specify the user credentials using which the eG agent will be able to access the RHEV Manager; since the eG agent uses the RESTful API to obtain the outside view, you need to provide the name and password of a valid domain user with the right to execute the API commands.

  • Confirm the password by retying it in the Confirm password for user text box.

  • Specify the domain to which the RHEV Manager belongs to in the Domain name for the RHEV Manager text box.
    
    Once the RHEV manager is added, its IP address, port number, domain name and user credentials will be displayed against the corresponding parameters.

• Confirm the RHEL MGR PASSWORD by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

• If the RHEV manager to which the eG agent should connect is SSL-enabled, then set the SSL flag to Yes. If not, set it to No.

• Administrators of some high security virtualized environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the ‘inside view’ of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on an RHEV host host by default.

  Note:

  While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW text box.

• Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from ‘outside’ and from ‘inside’. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the EXCLUDE VMS text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your EXCLUDE VMS specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separted list of VMs/VM name patterns in the EXCLUDE VMS text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ view metrics for a configured set of VMs.

• By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the IGNORE WINNT flag is set to Yes by default.

• By default, this test communicates with every VM remotely and extracts “inside view” metrics. Therefore, by default, the INSIDE VIEW USING flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows).

  Typically, to establish this remote connection with Windows VMs in particular, eG Enterprise requires that the eG agent be configured with domain administrator privileges. In high-security environments, where the IT staff might have reservations about exposing the credentials of their domain administrators, this approach to extracting “inside view” metrics might not be preferred. In such environments therefore, eG Enterprise provides administrators the option to deploy a piece of software called the eG VM Agent (Windows) on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer to the Monitoring the RHEV Hypervisor document for more details on the eG VM Agent. To ensure that the “inside view” of Windows VMs is obtained using the eG VM Agent, set the INSIDE VIEW USING flag to eG VM Agent (Windows). Once this is done, you can set the DOMAIN, ADMIN USER, and ADMIN PASSWORD parameters to none.

• By default, this test connects to each virtual guest remotely and attempts to collect “inside view” metrics. In order to obtain a remote connection, the test must be configured with user privileges that allow remote communication with the virtual guests. The first step towards this is to specify the DOMAIN within which the virtual guests reside. The ADMIN USER and ADMIN PASSWORD will change according to the DOMAIN specification. Discussed below are the different values that the DOMAIN parameter can take, and how they impact the ADMIN USER and ADMIN PASSWORD specifications:

  • If the VMs belong to a single domain : If the guests belong to a specific domain, then specify the name of that domain against the DOMAIN parameter. In this case, any administrative user in that domain will have remote access to all the virtual guests. Therefore, an administrator account in the given domain can be provided in the ADMIN USER field and the corresponding password in the ADMIN PASSWORD field. Confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

  • If the guests do not belong to any domain (as in the case of Linux/Solaris guests) : In this case, specify “none” in the DOMAIN field, and specify a local administrator account name in the ADMIN USER below.

    Prior to this, you need to ensure that the same local administrator account is available or is explicitly created on each of the virtual machines to be monitored. Then, proceed to provide the password of the ADMIN USER against ADMIN PASSWORD, and confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

    If key-based authentication is implemented between the eG agent and the SSH daemon of a Linux guest, then, in the ADMIN USER text box, enter the name of the user whose <USER_HOME_DIR> (on that Linux guest) contains a .ssh directory with the public key file named authorized_keys. The ADMIN PASSWORD in this case will be the passphrase of the public key; the default public key file that is bundled with the eG agent takes the password eginnovations. Specify this as the ADMIN PASSWORD if you are using the default private/public key pair that is bundled with the eG agent to implement key-based authentication. On the other hand, if you are generating a new public/private key pair for this purpose, then use the passphrase that you provide while generating the pair. For the detailed procedure on Implementing Key-based Authentication refer to the Monitoring the RHEV Hypervisor document.

  • If the guests belong to different domains: In this case, you might want to provide multiple domain names. If this is done, then, to access the guests in every configured domain, the test should be configured with the required user privileges; this implies that along with multiple DOMAIN names, multiple ADMIN USER names and ADMIN PASSWORDS would also have to be provided. To help administrators provide these user details quickly and easily, the eG administrative interface embeds a special configuration page. To access this page, simply click on the Click here hyperlink that appears just above the parameters of this test in the test configuration page. To know how to use the special page, refer to the Monitoring the RHEV Hypervisor document.

  • If the INSIDE VIEW USING flag is set to ‘eG VM Agent (Windows)’: In this case, the inside view can be obtained without domain administrator privileges. Therefore, set the DOMAIN, ADMIN USER, and ADMIN PASSWORD parameters to none.

• While monitoring a Redhat_linux_hpv, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to NO by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the hypervisor are identified using the hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, while monitoring a Redhat_linux_vdi, this flag is set to YES by default; this implies that in case of the VDI model, by default, the desktops will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing them. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.

• The REPORT POWERED OS flag becomes relevant only if the REPORT BY USER flag is set to ‘Yes’. If the REPORT POWERED OS flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtual machine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the REPORT POWERED OS flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently.

• Set the REPORTTOTAL flag to Yes if you want the test to report total page file usage - i.e., the aggregate usage across multiple page files. In this case therefore, a Total descriptor will newly appear for this test in the eG monitoring console.

• If both the REPORTTOTAL and REPORTTOTALONLY flags are set to Yes, then the test will report only the aggregate usage across multiple page files - in other words, the test will report values for the Total descriptor only. Likewise, if the REPORTTOTAL flag is set to No, and the REPORTTOTALONLY flag is set to Yes, then again, the test will report current usage for the Total descriptor only. However, if both the REPORTTOTAL and REPORTTOTALONLY flags are set to No, then the test will report individual usages only. Also, if the REPORTTOTAL flag is set to Yes and the REPORTTOTALONLY flag is set to No, then both the individual and Total usages will be reported.

• If multiple components of the same component type are awaiting configuration, then an APPLY TO OTHER COMPONENTS check box will appear in this page. Clicking on this check box will allow you to apply the configuration to all/selected components of that type.

• Once the necessary values have been provided, clicking on the Update button will register the changes made.

When changing the configuration for specific servers, a “*” beside the text box corresponding to the parameter signifies that these values have to be manually configured by the user. The parameter values that require to be configured will typically be prefixed with a “$” or contain a series of “*”. A value of "none" in the parameter value indicates that the corresponding parameter value can be changed if required.