Monitoring Linux virtual machines

We are using Xen on our Linux servers to virtualize them. Does anyone have any experience setting that up in Solarwinds? It would be very cool if I could get the same monitoring capabilities with Xen (or Shares for Solaris) that we have for the VMware systems.

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Accepted answers

Yann

A linux script monitor could query the Argo API:

http://xen-tools.org/software/argo/protocol.html

This look like easier to use than the lib-vir API mentionned in the above post.

All comments

Yann

I never had to monitor XEN virtual machines but here is what I found after googling a little bit:

1. there does not seem to have a dedicated SNMP MIB so exit the UnDP (Universal Device Poller)

2. the VMware support is built-in the polling engine and the web console, I guess some other customers already requested to extend it to other platforms such as the ms hypervisor as well but that won't be before a future release if the feature request is accepted.

3. Some API have been developed especially in Python and Perl to fetch information from XEN hosts, this lead us to the Linux Script Monitor components in Application Performance Monitors.

This should be possible to setup a template to monitor specific XEN domains and the Hypervisor itself.

The API: http://www.libvir.org/index.html

The Perl Module: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Sys-Virt/

An APM Linux Script Monitor can return a status, a message and a statistic value.

hope that give ideas.

Yann

A linux script monitor could query the Argo API:

http://xen-tools.org/software/argo/protocol.html

This look like easier to use than the lib-vir API mentionned in the above post.

TGhosh

we've previously impemented the standard Linux SNMP mib. but have gotten rid of it since it was reporting bizzare CPU values (ie 100+% Cpu utilization).

jgmelott

I see some valuable information regarding how Solarwinds can monitor XEN vm's, however, does anyone know if Solarwinds can BE virtualized to run in an ESX environment?

I am working with a client who is looking to virtualize as many 'infrastructure apps' as possible.

Thanks,

John Melott, PMP

mavturner

John,

We have several customers running the NPM server in a VM.

The qualification we add to this configuration is, be careful with running SQL in a VM. We highly recommend SQL not be installed in a VM because of the high IO required.

I hope this helps!

Mav

mcbridea

This is true. The Orion SQL database on a vm is unsupported. NPM on a vm is supported. Allow the same virtual hardware settings as listed in the NPM Admin Guide for a physical server.