DPA VM Option - what does it monitor?

Hi, I think this is what you are after:

If you go to one instance, then "resources" up on the right. There you have a page with a lot if different resources. In each there is a cogwheel to the right of each graph. Click there and you can see and adjust the thresholds for each metric.

The DPA VMWare metrics are polled from the VM connection to the VMWare MOB or Management Object Browser. 

https://vdc-repo.vmware.com/vmwb-repository/dcr-public/f1c3b41b-ead5-4d47-aca4-33298d5a4fcf/778a00f3-a9b6-42f4-8f22-7216733f5f03/doc/PG_Appx_Using_MOB.20.2.html

If you dig some into DPA's file paths you will find a link in the XML files that are defaulted to this path. It's deep in the structure. 

C:\Solarwinds\DPA\iwc\tomcat\webapps\iwc\WEB-INF\classes\resources\metrics\vsphere\vsphere-metrics-definitions.xml

If you look in that you will see what use to be a link to part of the VMWare documentation. Those pages have moved some over the years so the links are not as direct now. But, here is an example. 

Take this part that has <information page> and it use to be part of the page you need to read in VMWare API docs to know where and how that data is fetched. https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.monitoring.doc/GUID-F8EF57D2-0B27-4972-BE73-F985EE3B94A3.html

The pages have moved on VMWare documentation over the years but, in general if you look at the API page above you should find the related metrics and how they are gathered in the MOB. 

<!-- VM Disk Write Rate -->
-<metric>

<type>base</type>

<key>vmDiskWriteRate</key>

<category>Disk</category>

<categoryOrder>100</categoryOrder>

<layerName>VIRTUAL_MACHINE_OS</layerName>

<displayedInCategoryLayerChart>false</displayedInCategoryLayerChart>

<displayedInSummaryLayerChart>false</displayedInSummaryLayerChart>

<entityTypeName>Virtual Machine</entityTypeName>

<units>KB/s</units>

<displayName>VM Disk Write Rate</displayName>

<description>Average rate at which data is written to each virtual disk on the virtual machine.</description>

<informationPage>v_vm_disk_write_rate.htm</informationPage>


-<calcProps>

<delta>false</delta>

<deviceUsageKey>none</deviceUsageKey>

<performanceCounter>disk.write.average</performanceCounter>

</calcProps>

</metric>

<!-- VM Disk Usage Rate -->

Search in google for this part. <performanceCounter>disk.write.average</performanceCounter>