Default Parameters for DiskActivity - Guest Test

This test reports statistics pertaining to the input/output utilization of each physical disk on a guest.

This page depicts the default parameters that need to be configured for the DiskActivity - Guest Test.

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

• To enable the eG agent to connect to the XenServer API for collecting statistics of interest, this test should login to the XenServer as a valid user. Provide the name of such a user in the XEN POOL USER text box. By default, the root user is authorized to execute the test. If for some reason you prefer not to use the root user's credentials, you can create a new user on the XenServer host for this purpose.

  The steps for creating a new user on the XenServer host are detailed below:

  1. Login to the host on which the XenServer is installed, as the root user.
  2. From the /usr/sbin directory, execute the following commands to create a new user and assign a password to him/her:

  useradd {UserName}

  passwd {Password}

  3. The following messages then appear:

     Changing password for user

     New UNIX password:

     BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word

  4. You will then be prompted to retype the password:

     Retype new UNIX password::{password}

  5. Confirm the password by retyping it in the space provided.

• The password of the specified XEN POOL USER needs to be mentioned in the XEN POOL PASSWORD text box.

• Confirm the XEN POOL PASSWORD by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

• By default, the Xen Server is not SSL-enabled. This indicates that by default, the eG agent communicates with the XenServer using HTTP. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to No by default. If you configure the XenServer to use SSL, then make sure that the SSL flag is set to Yes, so that the eG agent communicates with the XenServer using HTTPS. Note that a default SSL certificate comes bundled with every XenServer installation. If you want the eG agent to use this default certificate for communicating with an SSL-enabled XenServer, then no additional configuration is required. However, if you do not want to use the default certificate, then you can generate a self-signed certificate for use by the XenServer. In such a case, you need to explicitly follow the broad steps given below to enable the eG agent to communicate with the XenServer via HTTPS:

1. Obtain the server-certificate for the XenServer
2. Import the server-certificate into the local certificate store of the eG agent

For an elaborate discussion on each of the above-mentioned steps, refer to the Troubleshooting section in the Monitoring XenServers document.

• 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 on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent on the service console to collect "inside view" metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights.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 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.In the page that appears next, specify the following:
  • First, provide the name of the Domain to which the VMs belong. If one/more VMs do not belong to any domain, then, specify 'none' here.
  • The eG agent must be configured with user privileges that will allow the agent to communicate with the VMs in a particular domain and extract statistics. If 'none' is specified against Domain, then a local administrator account can be provided against Admin User. On the other hand, if a valid Domain name has been specified, then a domain administrator account can be provided in the Admin User text box.
  • The password of the specified Admin User should be mentioned in the Admin Pwd text box.
  • Confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Pwd text box.
  • To add more users, click on the circled '+' button in the page. This will allow you to add one more user specification.
  • In some virtualized environments, the same Domain could be accessed using multiple Admin User names. For instance, to login to a Domain named 'egitlab', the eG agent can use the Admin User name labadmin or the Admin User name jadmn. You can configure the eG agent with the credentials of both these users by adding two separate specifications - one for the labadmin and another for jadmn in our example - for the same domain name using this page. When this is done, then, while attempting to connect to the domain, the eG agent will begin by using the first Admin User name of the specification. If, for some reason, the agent is unable to login using the first Admin User name, then it will try to login again, but this time using the second Admin User name of the specification - i.e., jadmn in our example. If the first login attempt itself is successful, then the agent will ignore the second Admin User name.
  • To clear all the user specifications, simply click the Clear button.
  • To remove the details of a particular user alone, just click the circled '-' button corresponding to the user specification.
  • To save the specification, just click on the Update button. This will lead you back to the test configuration page, where you will find the multiple domain names, user names, and passwords listed against the respective fields.
• 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.

• Administrators of some high security Xen virtualized environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to ignore such 'inaccessible' VMs using the IGNORE VMS 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 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 XenServer by default.

  Note:

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

• 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.

• While monitoring a Citrix XenServer, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to NO by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the XenServer are identified using the hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, while monitoring a Citrix XenDesktop, this flag is set to YES by default; this implies that in case of the XenDekstop model, by default, the guests will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing the guest OS'.

• In case of both the Citrix XenServer and XenDesktop models, the REPORT POWERED OS flag is set to Yes by default. This flag is closely related to the REPORT BY USER flag. As already mentioned, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to No by default for the Citrix XenServer model. As long as the REPORT BY USER flag is set to No, the eG Enterprise system will disregard the status of the REPORT POWERED OS flag (be it Yes or No), while monitoring the Citrix XenServer. In other words, for the Citrix XenServer model, this test will continue to report measures for every powered-on VM on the server.

  In case of the Citrix XenDesktop model however, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to Yes by default. In this case therefore, the default Yes status of the REPORT POWERED OS flag implies that this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in, as long as the VM is powered-on. Such guests will be identified by their virtual machine name and not the user name. If the status of this flag is changed to No instead, then this test will not report measures for those powered-on VMs to which no users are logged in currently.

• You can set the REPORT POWERED ON status to YES, so that the test reports an additional measure, Powered_on, revealing whether a guest OS that was available during the previous measurement period, is currently running or not. The default status of this flag is set to YES for a Citrix XenServer, and NO for a Citrix XenDesktop.

• The AGGREGATE USER SESSIONS flag will appear in this page only while configuring this test for a Citrix XenDesktop server. This flag is closely related to the REPORT BY USER flag. In case of the XenDesktop model, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to Yes by default. Therefore, the status of the AGGREGATE USER SESSIONS flag gains significance in the case of the XenDesktop server. By default, the AGGREGATE USER SESSIONS flag is set to No. This implies that if a single user is currently logged into multiple guests, then this test, by default, will report a set of measures for every username on guestname. On the other hand, if the status of this flag is changed to Yes, then, this test will report a set of (aggregated) measures for every distinct user to the virtual desktop environment. In other words, this test will report measures that are aggregated across all the currently active sessions for a user, spanning multiple VMs.

• This test uses the iotop command to collect detailed diagnostics on disk activity from Linux VMs. By default, the USE IOTOP flag is set to No, indicating that the test will not use the iotop command - this in turn implies that this test will not report detailed diagnostics for Linux VMs by default. If you want the test to report detailed metrics on disk activity on Linux VMs, set this flag to Yes.

• Once the above value is provided, click on the Update button to register the changes made.