Monitoring a VMware enviroment with vWire
vWire is a a new virtualization management tool that is designed to integrate both monitoring and automation to prevent and resolve problems before they cause downtime.
vWire is built around three key principles: Monitor, Correlate, Act:
* vWire will monitor the health of the virtual infrastructure, including the same level of visibility available in the physical environment.
* vWire will correlate change and configuration data with event data and, in a later release, performance data.
* Finally, vWire gives administrators the ability to act upon events and objects with automation tools like PowerShell.
vWire integrates into the Virtual Infrastructure Client (and the vSphere Client) for ease of use.
With vWire you can monitor the following types of data:
- Configuration data While VirtualCenter is great for setting individual properties, vWire adds the capability to analyze the myriad of configuration properties to determine if they are correct and consistent, and if the configuration can support important capabilities like Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS), which leverages VMotion, and High Availability (HA).
- Critical event data. vWire alerts you to critical event issues that are not visible in VirtualCenter, such as:
- LUN path failures
- Inaccessible LUNs
- HA failover events
- Network link failures
- SCSI or HBA resets
- VMs failing to power on
- Change data.When problems occur, the first question virtualization professionals ask is, “What changed?” vWire records a history of changes and displays them in a scrolling timeline, so you can immediately see if a recent change might have caused the problem. VirtualCenter does not capture change history data.
- Actions When issues arise, vWire can take multiple actions including running PowerShell scripts either manually or automatically to respond. You can use the scripts shipped with vWire, can write your own, or can download them for free from the vWire community. VirtualCenter does not provide this functionality.
