Vman Administrator Guide

ADMINISTRATOR GUIDE
Virtualization Manager
Version 2020.2
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 3, 2020

ADMINISTRATOR GUIDE: VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER
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Table of Contents
Monitoring virtual environments with VMAN 5
VMAN in the Orion Platform 5
New to the Orion Platform? 6
Get started with VMAN 6
Adding virtual systems in VMAN 6
Alerts and events in VMAN 20
VMware Events in VMAN 24
Reports in VMAN 32
Optimizing virtual resources with VMAN 38
Evaluate VMs using the Sprawl dashboard 39
Manage virtual environments with recommendations 43
Run scenarios with Capacity Planning 66
Monitoring virtual disk statistics in VMAN 73
Manage and troubleshoot VMs using AppStack 78
Investigate VM performance with Performance Analysis 82
Customize and configure VMAN 86
The VMAN Appliance 101
New users 101
Existing users already using the appliance 101
VMAN appliance integration and synchronization with VMAN in the Orion Platform 102
Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard 102
Virtualization Manager Licensing Model 106
VMAN includes two licenses: 106
VMAN is available in the following license sizes: 106
Get your license key 107
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Add primary license to VMAN in the Orion Platform 107
Add a secondary license key for the VMAN appliance online 107
Add a secondary license key for the VMAN appliance offline 108
Exclude hosts from monitoring 108
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Monitoring virtual environments with VMAN
Virtualization Manager provides intensive metrics gathering and data breakdowns into dashboards
and details pages so you can easily evaluate environments and react to issues. Use VMAN to
manage your sprawling VM virtual and cloud environment through a single console with account
management and direct VM tool capabilities.
Features include:
l Monitoring virtual environments: review and study collected metrics for virtual objects, cloud
instances, and other systems and applications depending on your VMAN and Orion Platform
products. Learn more about monitoring data, setting alerts, and managing events and reports.
l Optimize virtual resources: provide troubleshooting and resource management with tools
including PerfStack, Sprawl dashboard, and tracking of snapshots and orphan VMDKs.
l Recommendations: optimize resource allocation based on performance metrics, historical data,
available resources, and storage capacity. Recommendations calculate trends and risks based
on enabled strategies, providing plans of action to consider and apply to resolve immediate
issues or preemptively prevent issues from occurring.
l Capacity planning: create simulations and generate reports using historical data for trending
usage and resource consumption over an extended period of simulated time. Set simulations
against production, lab, and other virtual environments.
l Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: provides visibility into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) or
Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure including cloud EC2 instances and attached EBS volumes.
This feature completes the Orion tools you need to monitor and administer hybrid
environments.
VMAN in the Orion Platform

Virtualization Manager is part of the Orion Platform suite of SolarWinds products. As of VMAN 8.0,
VMAN is fully installed with the Orion Installer and is part of the Orion Platform. VMAN extends Orion
Platform monitoring to poll extensive metrics, data, and events in VMware and vCenter systems,
Microsoft Hyper-V systems, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud instances and volumes. This
monitored data is far more extensive than the standard high level virtualization metrics collected by
other Orion Platform products like NPM and SAM.
Access all features and monitored nodes through the Orion Web Console, including any additional
Orion Platform products. This web interface acts a single pane of glass for monitoring your virtual
and cloud environments and supports all Orion Platform products. You never need to flip between
multiple consoles or systems; it's all in one place.
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New to the Orion Platform?

If this is your first time using an Orion Platform product, start by learning about the Orion Platform,
which will teach you how to create and manage users, create views, customize resources, create
reports, and more.
Get started with VMAN

New to VMAN? Start with the VMAN Installation Guide to completely install VMAN and the Orion
Platform.
To fully experience VMAN, start with the following topics:
l Configure VMAN and the Orion Platform: set up Orion user accounts, modify configurations and
features including recommendations and Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring.
l Add and manage virtual systems to monitor: add systems to monitor and manage as nodes for
virtual environments and cloud instances.
l Monitor virtual environments: review polled metrics and performance for virtual and cloud
systems, including alerts, events, and reports.
l Optimize virtual resources: use VMAN features including Recommendations, the Sprawl
dashboard, snapshot management, orphan VMDK management, PerfStack, and AppStack to
optimize allocations and more.
l Capacity planning and simulations: create scenarios using historical and trending data to
determine resource usage in virtual environments. Based on reports generated from the
scenarios, you can better determine and plan your virtual resource allocation, clusters, hosts,
and more.
Adding virtual systems in VMAN

With VMAN, you can monitor and manage VMware vCenter servers and ESX hosts, Hyper-V hosts, and
Nutanix clusters.
Supported versions of VMware, Hyper-V, Windows Server, and Nutanix

for monitoring
These are the supported versions of VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix for the latest version of
VMAN (2020.2). To see supported versions of VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix for previous
versions of VMAN, see previous version administrator guides. Please reach out to our support
team for any questions about past versions and compatibility.
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Supported versions of VMware server:
l vCenter Server 5.5 Update 3e

l vCenter Server 6.0 Update 3b
l vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1
l vCenter Server 6.7
l vCenter Server 7.0 (VMAN 2020.2 and later)
Supported versions of Hyper-V and Windows Server:
l Hyper-V 2008 R2
l Windows Server 2012
l Windows Server 2012 R2
Supported versions of Nutanix:
l Nutanix AOS 5.10

l Nutanix AOS 5.11
Adding and updating VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix credentials in

VMAN
Virtualization Manager uses VMware or Hyper-V credentials that you've added to the Orion Web
Console to issue commands to your virtual machines and monitor data from them. You can add
these credentials when you add a virtual device for monitoring, or at any time in the Orion Web
Console.
Adding credentials to the Orion Web Console

To begin monitoring in VMAN, you must provide the Orion Web Console with the correct VMware,
Windows (Hyper-V), or Nutanix credential needed for the device you want to monitor.
VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix (API) credentials
You can add new credentials to the Orion Web Console in more than one way:
l When adding a virtual device, select "New Credential" in the Select Credential field and fill out
the required fields (For VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix (API) credentials).
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The only way to add Nutanix API credentials is to select "New Credential" in the Select
Credential field when adding a Nutanix cluster for monitoring.
l At any other time, in the Orion Web Console, navigate to Settings -> All Settings -> Manage
Virtual Devices -> VMware credentials library -> Add new VMware credential (For VMware
credentials).
l At any other time, in the Orion Web Console, navigate to Settings -> All Settings -> Under
Credentials, Manage Windows Credentials -> Add Windows Credential. (For Windows/Hyper-V
credentials).
Nutanix CVM credentials
To add Nutanix CVM credentials, needed for Nutanix hardware health monitoring:
1. in the Orion Web Console, navigate to Settings -> All Settings -> Manage Virtual Devices -
> Nutanix -> Assign CVM Credentials.
2. Check the box next to the Nutanix cluster for which you'd like to assign CVM credentials.
3. Click Assign CVM Credentials.
4. Choose a CVM credential that has already been added in the Orion Web Console, or select New
credential.
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Update credentials in the Orion Web Console
If a credential for a VMware, Hyper-V, or Nutanix device has changed, you can update credentials.
Updating VMware credentials
1. In the Orion Web Console, Navigate to Settings -> All Settings -> Manage Virtual Devices -
> VMware credentials library.
2. Check the box to select the credential that needs to be updated.
3. Click Edit Credential.
Updating Hyper-V credentials
1. In the Orion Web Console, Navigate to Settings -> All Settings -> Under Credentials, Manage
Windows Credentials.
2. Check the box to select the credential that needs to be updated.
3. Click Edit Credential.
Updating Nutanix credentials
Nutanix API credentials
You currently cannot update a Nutanix API credential. If you need to update a credential, you can
instead create a new one and use it instead.
To change the API credential used for a Nutanix cluster, you must remove the cluster from monitoring
and add it again. When re-adding the Nutanix cluster, enter and select the new API credential.
You currently cannot update a Nutanix CVM credential, but you can change the CVM credential
assigned to a Nutanix cluster.
1. In the Orion Web Console, Navigate to Settings -> All Settings -> Manage Virtual Devices ->
Nutanix.
2. Check the box next to the cluster you for which want to assign a different CVM credential.
3. Click Assign CVM Credentials.
4. Choose the already existing credential, or click New credential.
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Required permissions for VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix credentials

in VMAN
To monitor virtual objects in VMAN, your credentials must have the correct permissions for any object
or metric you wish to monitor. In general, VMAN will be able to monitor objects and metrics that
match the permission level of your credential.
This table highlights the minimum required permissions for VMware and Hyper-V monitoring:
VMware The VMware user account needs the following permissions:
l For data collection, at least Read-Only permissions for the host and VMs you
want to monitor
l For datastore collection, the Browse Datastore permission
Hyper-V The Hyper-V account used for data collection must have the Enable Account and
Remote Enable permissions.
For more information about enabling account privileges in WMI, see Configuring
Distributed Component Object Model and User Account Control.
Nutanix There are two types of Nutanix credentials required for monitoring in VMAN.
Nutanix API credentials
For monitoring up/down status and metrics (CPU usage, memory usage, etc.)
polling for Nutanix clusters and AHV hosts, you need Nutanix API credentials. No
special permissions for API credentials are needed.
You can create API credentials when you add a Nutanix cluster for monitoring.
For monitoring hardware health of Nutanix clusters and AHV hosts, you need to
create and assign Nutanix CVM credentials with the following permission to a
Nutanix cluster:
l The credential must have permission to run the command "ncc hardware_info
help_opts" without an additional password prompt. This can be a root user or
a user or group that has been configured with the correct permissions.
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Add a vCenter, Hyper-V host, standalone ESX host, or Nutanix cluster
for monitoring in VMAN
To add a new vCenter, Hyper-V host, standalone ESX host, or Nutanix cluster for monitoring, in the
Orion Web Console, navigate to Settings > All Settings > Add VMware, Hyper-V or Nutanix entities.
You can also reach the same wizard in other ways:
l Choose the option for VMware vCenter or Hyper-V devices in the Add Node wizard.
l On the Virtualization page of the Network Sonar Wizard, click Add VMware, Hyper-V or Nutanix
Entities.
l On the Getting Started with Virtualization Manager resource, click Add VMware, Hyper-V or
Nutanix entities.
l In Discovery Central, under Virtualization Discovery, click VMware, Hyper-V or Nutanix entities.
Follow the steps in the wizard to add a new device:
1. Select the type of virtual object you'd like to add: vCenter, Hyper-V Host, Standalone ESX host,
or Nutanix Cluster. Click Next.
ICMP must be enabled on any target VMware vCenter, ESX host, Nutanix Cluster, or
AHV host that you wish to monitor.
2. Enter the IP or hostname for the virtual object you're adding (this can be auto-populated in
some cases if you've entered the IP or hostname in a previous step).
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3. Enter the credentials used for the virtual object. You can select a credential that you've already
saved, or select <New Credential> to save a new one in the Orion Web Console. Click Next.
VMAN will be able to monitor objects and metrics that match the permission level of your
credential. Make sure to enter credentials that have the correct permissions for the object
you wish to monitor.
4. The Metrics screen shows you what VMAN will monitor.

5. Click Finish to finalize, or click Finish and Add Another to add another virtual device after
adding the current one.
As soon as you've finished adding the vCenter, Hyper-V host, standalone ESX host, or Nutanix cluster,
VMAN begins monitoring it.
l Adding a vCenter for monitoring will also automatically add all of the vCenter's child ESX
hosts for monitoring in VMAN as nodes.
l Adding a Nutanix cluster with AHV hosts for monitoring will also automatically add all of
the AHV hosts for monitoring in VMAN as nodes.
Manage virtual servers in VMAN

VMAN includes native VM management tools directly through the Orion Web Console to
troubleshoot, manage VM status, manage snapshots, and more. Credentials entered at deployment
connect the management tools to vCenter and Hyper-V native tools.
You need an Orion account that is allowed to perform Virtualization Manager management
actions to complete these tasks. Learn more about controlling user access to virtualization
objects and data.
To access the tools, select a cluster, host, datastore, network, or VM in the Virtualization Assets
environment tree. The details page opens with a Virtualization Manager Tools resource, providing
different options based on the VM server type.
For Nutanix cluster troubleshooting, you must use Nutanix's native tools separately from the
Orion Web Console.
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If an option is not accessible, make sure that your account has the necessary permission levels. The
availability of the options also depends on the current state of a virtual machine. For example, if the
virtual machine is offline, the Power off VM option is not displayed.
The options includes general management options including:
l Power off/on VM: use to power down and up a VM.

l Suspend/Resume VM: use to pause the VM when you want to save the current state of the
VM in a snapshot. Toggle to Resume to continue services. Depending on VMware and Hyper-V,
the suspend action creates a file containing the state of the VM.
l Reboot VM: use to reboot the VM as a restart action.
Manage snapshots
A snapshot captures all data, applications, configurations, and more for an entire virtual machine.
Snapshots provide a great method for backing up data and a server at a point in time. For each VM,
you can create and delete snapshots. directly through the Details page. The Sprawl dashboard also
provides an option for reviewing and removing snapshots based on age and size.
Create a snapshot
1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Virtualization > Summary.
2. In the Virtualization Assets, locate a VM you need to move and select a VM that needs a new
host.
3. In the Management resource, click Take Snapshot of VM. A screen displays to accept the name
or select Custom name and enter a specific name.
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A snapshot generates and saves for the current VM.
Delete a snapshot
host.
3. In the Management resource, click Delete Snapshots. A screen displays with a list of snapshots
to delete.
4. Select a snapshot to delete. If you select a parent, you can select the Also delete all children of
the deleted snapshot option to remove all children.
5. Click Delete.
Change CPU or Memory Resources

For each system, you can change the virtual CPU or memory allocated to the virtual system. For
example, you may have a VM running high performance applications and services on a host. Adjust
the allocated virtual resources to add additional processors or memory.
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host.
3. In the Management resource, click Change CPU/Memory Resources. A screen displays with the
current allocations and options to increase or decrease amounts.
4. To add or remove virtual CPUs, modify the number of processors.

5. To add or remove virtual memory, modify the memory value. You can select from a drop-down
list of preset amounts in GB (1, 2, 4, 8, 16) or select Custom Amount.
6. Optionally, select the option to complete a set of steps when making these changes: power off
the VM, change the configuration, and power on the VM.
7. Click Save. Changes take place, taking additional steps if selected.
Move to a different host

You may need to move a virtual machine to a new host due to resource consumption, noisy
neighbors, or performance. This movement shifts a VM from one host to another. For example, a
report VM may consume high amounts of resources during peak hours when running consecutive
reports across an organization. Moving the VM to a sizable host with lower resource consumption
during peak hours.
host.
3. In the Management resource, click the Move to a Different Host.
A list of available hosts displays including the current host.
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4. Select a new host for the VM.

5. Click Migrate.
The virtual machine moves to the new host, freeing resources and space on the original host.
Move to a different storage

When a VM experiences storage space issues, you can move it to a new storage server with more
space.
2. In the Virtualization Assets, locate and click a VM that requires a new storage server.
3. In the Management resource, click the Move to a Different Storage.
A list of available storage servers displays including the currently used storage. Usage bars
show the available free space and used space currently for the drive.
4. Select a new storage server and click Relocate.

The virtual system is moved, using the storage and freeing space on the original server.
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Control user access to virtualization objects and data
Use account limitations to restrict user access to virtual machines, hosts, clusters, or data stores, or
to withhold information from users. The following information details how to configure and add
limitations to Orion accounts.
Configure Orion Web Console account permissions

With the account connections between VMs and the Orion Platform completed, create and manage
account permissions for administrators and users as needed for your environment. For example, you
may want to limit feature access for network administrators and general IT staff.
Each user or group account can have different privileges applied to it, such as the ability to modify
alert definitions or delete snapshots.
1. Click Settings > All Settings.

2. Click Manage Accounts in the User Accounts section.
3. Select an existing user account, and click Edit.
4. Modify account information, login options, and tasks as needed.
5. To restrict users access to VMAN's features, expand the Virtualization Manager Settings.
6. Select the views to display for VM data in the Orion Web Console. Typically, you do not need to
hide VM views from users. These options only affect seeing VM data in the Orion Web Console.
The available options include view names, default, and none. If you select none, the view is
hidden from the user.
7. Select an option to allow or disallow users from VM management tools and functions. These
permissions provide native tool features through the Orion Web Console.
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8. Click Submit.
Set up user account limitations

1. Log in to the Orion Web Console as an administrator.
2. Click Settings > All Settings > Manage Accounts.
3. To limit an individual user account:
a. On the Individual Accounts tab, select the account, and click Edit.
b. In the Account Limitations section, click Add Limitation.
c. Select the limitation type, and click Continue.
d. On the Configure Limitation page, define the limitation, and click Submit.
4. To limit a group account:
a. On the Groups tab, select the group account, and click Edit.
b. In the Account Limitations section, click Add Limitation.
c. Select the limitation type, and click Continue.
d. On the Configure Limitation page, define the limitation, and click Submit.
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Group account limitations only apply to the group account, and not, by extension, to the
accounts of group members.
Learn More about VMAN polling and pollers

Virtualization Manager supports multiple polling options for monitoring your virtual environment.
Depending of the type of polling method used, the polled device consumes a license either as a node
or socket.
For best results, SolarWinds recommends always using the VMAN Orion polling method, which
collects extensive data and metrics for virtual systems including clusters, hosts, datastores, and
virtual machines.
If you are an existing customer with a VMAN appliance, you need to migrate polling over from
the appliance to VMAN Orion.
Here are the different types of pollers VMAN can use:
l Basic: polls using Orion polling methods (Orion agents, WMI, SNMP) for general metrics per
managed node. This method is not recommended for virtual systems in VMAN. The poller
consumes a node license and only collect basic data for the virtual item for only the specified
system. For example, if you monitor a virtual host with Basic polling, you do not receive metrics
for children VMs.
l VMAN Orion (Recommended): polls using the VMAN Orion polling method for extensive metrics
for the host and child VMs. This poller consumes a VMAN licensed socket and polls directly
through the Orion server. This option is available for new VMAN users, without the VMAN
appliance and users who have retired the VMAN appliance integration.
l VMAN Appliance: polls using the VMAN appliance for extensive metrics for the host and child
VMs. This poller consumes a VMAN licensed socket. This option is only available for users who
have integrated the VMAN Appliance with the Orion Platform. The VMAN Appliance is typically
used by existing VMAN users with a VMAN appliance deployed in the Orion environment. See
The VMAN Appliance for more information.
VMAN pollers access metrics and data through VMware and Hyper-V virtual systems, capturing alerts
and events, virtual resource usage, and additional information available through resources and
dashboards. Numerous troubleshooting options also access this data:
l Recommendations for generating active and predictive solutions for issues in your virtual
environment.
l Sprawl Dashboard for quickly viewing specific data including orphaned VMDKs, snapshots, and
more.
l PerfStack for troubleshooting any issue or performance trend encountered in your environment.
Drag and drop any metric monitored by the Orion Web Console including VMAN and other Orion
Platform products installed or integrated in your environment.
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If you are an existing user on an appliance, you can synchronize your VMAN entities using the
recommended option to migrate all entities and use VMAN Orion poller. See Synchronize VMAN
entities with the Synchronization wizard.
Change the polling method for Hyper-V clusters, VMware vCenters, or ESX hosts.
You can change the polling used for a monitored virtual device at any time depending on your needs.
Here's how:
1. Navigate to Settings > All Settings > Manage Virtual Devices (under Node & Group
Management).
2. Select the tab for the type of virtual entity that you want to change the poller for: VMware or
Hyper-V.
3. Select the virtual device that you want to change the polling method for.
4. Select Polling Method.
5. Choose the type of polling that you want for the selected device.
Setting the polling method on a Hyper-V cluster means that all hosts and VMs in the cluster
will use the same polling method. You cannot change the polling method per virtual entity.
Alerts and events in VMAN

Alerts notify you when an issue or error occurs in the virtual environment. The Orion Platform provides
alerts for all monitored nodes and applications. VMAN provides over 40 virtualization alerts to
identify common issues in virtual environments.
New to alerts? See Create and manage alerts in the Orion Web Console.
When you install VMAN, virtualization alerts are available by default through the Orion Web Console.
You can create alerts for object types including:
l Virtual clusters
l Virtual datastores
l Virtual hosts
l Virtual machines
These alerts include:
l Threshold-based alerts: monitor network utilization, CPU load, memory usage, IOPS, latency,
and capacity.
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l Activity-based alerts: monitor specific actions in an environment including authentication
failures, syslog, changes in network configurations, and events.
l Network-based alerts: monitor connections between networked servers and devices including
latency, connection state, and IOPS.
l VMware events-based alerts: If you've enabled VMware Events monitoring by installing the
separate VMware Events Add-on (in VMAN 8.4 and 8.5) or installing Orion Log Viewer (VMAN
2019.4 or newer), you can now also create alerts to trigger from VMware events.
Monitor alerts after deployment to troubleshoot and maintain your environment. Virtualization alerts
trigger for real-time monitored data and events using virtualization thresholds (global and specific to
VM)
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Recommendations Lists all triggered active and predictive recommendations.

If available, active recommendations include a link to a related alert:
All Active Lists all triggered alerts for active issues in your virtual environment.
Virtualization Alerts display in order: critical, serious, and warning.
Alerts
Potential Lists triggered informational virtualization alerts.

Virtualization
Informational alerts indicate trends in status, usage, and capacity. For
Issues
example, an informational alert triggers when VM management tool
access times out between the Orion Platform and a VM.
Alert categories without triggered issues display as green.
Best practices for alerts

All alerts for virtualization and the Orion Platform are enabled by default in the Orion Web Console.
To reduce noise, you can refine or disable unused alerts. To modify existing trigger conditions and
actions, SolarWinds recommends you create a copy of an alert and customize the copy.
To better monitor issues with alerts:
l Adjust thresholds. (recommended) Alerts trigger when monitored usage exceeds global or
specific VM thresholds. Critical active alerts indicate spikes in usage and capacity. Potential
alerts indicate trends that can lead to an issue.
l Disable alerts. If an alert is not helpful for your monitoring needs, you can disable it. SolarWinds
recommends you create a copy, modify the settings, and disable the original.
l Create and customize alerts. The out-of-the-box alerts cover a range of issues you may want to
customize. You can create a copy of an existing alert, disable the original and customize the
copy. If you edit an out-of-the-box alert, a message warns what data can be modified or added.
l Set notification actions for specific alerts, not all alerts. For large environments, email
notification actions on every alert can overwhelm your staff. Set email notifications for specific
alerts.
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l Monitor the Virtualization Summary. Use the Virtualization Summary to continuously monitor
all alerts. The alerting resources update with every polling. Triggered alerts display in order of
severity.
Create an alert copy

To quickly create new alerts, duplicate an existing alert and customize the copy. You cannot edit
existing conditions and actions for out-of-the-box alerts. For these alerts, you can enable, disable, and
add triggers and actions. Use out-of-the-box alerts as an example for defining triggers and actions.
Use the Alert Manager to create and edit the alert copy. Review the best practices to ensure good
performance.
1. Click Alerts & Activity > Alerts, click Manage Alerts.

2. Select Object Type from the Group By drop-down menu.
All virtualization alerts are under Virtual Cluster, Virtual Datastore, Virtual Host, and Virtual
Machine.
3. To edit, locate and select an alert you want to modify, and click Edit Alert. To create, click Add
New Alert.
For detailed information on creating and editing conditions and actions, see Create new alerts to
monitor your environment.
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l Conditions: set the triggers for alerts. Create as many conditions as needed for multiple
scenarios where one or all conditions are met.
Example: Trigger alert when CPU usage and capacity spikes above 90%.
l Reset conditions: configure the event that resets the alert.
Example: If an alert triggers when the power state is off, set it to reset when the VM is power
state is on.
l Actions: set the actions and escalation steps completed by the Orion Web Console when an
alert triggers. Create as many actions and escalations as needed.
Example: Send an email notification every 10 minutes until the alert is acknowledged. If the
alert is not acknowledged within 10 minutes, send an escalation email to management.
l Reset Actions: configure the actions completed when the alert is reset.
Example: Write an event and data to the log when the alert actions complete.
VMware Events in VMAN

Virtualization Manager 8.4 introduces VMware Events monitoring. This feature gives you greater
visibility into VMware events; without having to log into vCenter, you can see VMware events that
happen on your monitored vCenters and ESXi hosts straight from the Orion Web Console.
With VMware Events monitoring, you can see VMware Events from the Virtualization Summary, use
the log viewer to view and filter logged VMware Events, see detailed VMware event information, see
related events, set up alerts to trigger from VMware Events and more.
Install Orion Log Viewer to enable VMware Events monitoring

Use the SolarWinds Orion Installer to install Orion Log Viewer, which enables VMware Events
functionality in VMAN. You can install Orion Log Viewer during a fresh installation of VMAN, or you
can install it during an upgrade to the latest version of VMAN.
If you've previously installed the older VMware Events Add-on, Orion Log Analyzer, or Orion Log
Viewer with another Orion Platform product, then Orion Log Viewer is already installed on your
Orion server and VMware Events monitoring is active.
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After installation, VMware Events monitoring functionality, including new dashboards and widgets,
and the ability to trigger Orion-based alerts from VMware Events, become available in the Orion Web
Console. For more detailed VMAN installation and upgrade information, see the VMAN Installation
Guide, VMAN Upgrade Guide, and VMAN System Requirements.
Installing Orion Log Viewer uses modified syslog and trap services. If you later wish to
uninstall the Orion Log Viewer add-on (and disable VMware Events monitoring functionality),
there are some extra steps you need to take to restore the original Orion syslog and trap
services.
View events from the VMware Events widget

A new widget has been added to the Virtualization Summary dashboard for viewing VMware
Events. By default, events from the last hour are shown. You can select the timeframe for which you
would like to see events.
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Events shown fit into three categories: Error, Warning, and Informational.
l Click the icon of a category to hide or show events from that category.
l If no categories are selected, Error and Warning events are shown automatically while
Informational events are hidden.
l If no categories are selected and no Error or Warnings events have happened in the selected
time frame, Informational events are shown automatically.
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View and filter events in the Log Viewer
In the Orion Web Console, navigate to My Dashboards > VMware Events.
Use the Log Viewer Filters on the left-hand side of the screen to filter events by level, node name,
IP Address, Machine Type, and more. Use the search to show only events that match a specific
search string.
The color of the event (red, yellow, light blue) denotes the level of logged events
(Error, Warning, Informational).
Event Details
Select an event to reveal the entry details pane on the right-hand side of the screen. See details such
as the Event's Source, User, and EventType.
Select Open Event Detail Page to open a separate Event Details dashboard in the Orion Web Console
that gives you more specific information regarding Event Information and Related Events.
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VMware Events Details - Event Information widget

The VMware Events Information widget gives you specific information for the selected VMware
event.
The Secondary Source Label - If applicable, this link will take you to the source entity (Virtual Machine
that caused the event).
VMware Events Details - Related VMware Events widget

When viewing a VMware Event's Details page, the Related VMware Events widget shows a list of
VMware events related to the currently viewed VMware event (events that happened on the same
data source). Related events that occurred in the selected time frame (the default time frame is
within 1 hour prior to when the selected event occurred) are shown in the timeline.
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The Related VMware Events widget can show related events in three categories: Error, Warning, and
Informational.
l Click the icon of a category to hide or show events from that category.
l If no categories are selected, related Error and Warning events that happened in the selected
time frame are shown automatically while Informational events are hidden.
l If no categories are selected and no related Error or Warning events happened in the selected
time frame, related Informational events are shown automatically.
Set up a rule to trigger an Orion alert from a VMware event

To set up VMAN alerts that trigger from VMware events that meet specified conditions, create a new
rule in the Log Viewer.
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There are multiple ways to set up a rule to trigger an alert when VMware events occur. An easy to set
up alert is to use the EventType, found in the Entry Details of an event in the Log Viewer. Navigate to
My Dashboards -> VMware Events -> Select an event listed in the log viewer. The event's Entry Details
are shown on the right-hand side of the Log Viewer.
You can set up a rule to trigger based on EventType.
Here's an example for setting up a trigger based on a VMware Event's EventType. In this example,
we'll create an alert to trigger for VMware Events of EventType "UserLogoutSessionEvent".
1. Navigate to My Dashboards -> VMware Events -> Configure Rules (top-right corner).
2. Click VMware Events on the left-hand side of the screen.
3. Click My Custom Rules.
4. Click Create New Rule.
The Create New Rule wizard opens.
5. Follow the instructions in the wizard to give the rule a name and whether it should be enabled
after creation.
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6. Specify the triggering conditions.
a. Set the source computers.
b. Under Log Entries, select the option Look for specific entries.
c. Set IF to EventType (you can also select other attributes such as User, Level, Message,
SourceType, and more)
d. Set Is Equal To the type of event that you'd like to trigger an alert. In this example, we'll
set it to UserLogoutSessionEvent:
7. On the Actions tab, check the box for Send a Log Rule Fired event to Orion Alerting
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8. Check the box for Create a new alert that fires whenever this rule triggers:
9. Configure the alert by following the onscreen instructions.

10. Review the rule and alert integration on the summary tab. Click Save when done.
Reports in VMAN
Create and modify custom reports to through the Orion Web Console for virtual environment
historical use, alerts, and recommendations. Orion reporting includes over 40 predefined virtualization
reports accessible through My Dashboards > Virtualization > Reporting. Click Manage Reports to
review the full list of available reports or create a new report.
You can create reports in the following methods:
l Modify an existing report, add content, or add a custom chart or table to customize options and
metrics.
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l Create a new report layout for reports not currently provided in the out-of-the-box options.
l Customize a report for an existing or new report.
With your reports created and modified, you can restrict each report to be viewed and accessed by
specific Orion users.
Run reports on-demand or schedule for specific systems and times. As you create reports, assign
them to an existing schedule or create a new schedule. Every schedule can have different
configurations for frequency to run and actions after completion:
l Frequency: run the report on a specific date or daily, weekly, or monthly.

Example: Run the report daily at 6 a.m., after overnight maintenance hours.
l Action: steps to complete when the report runs including sending a report in email (CSV, HTML,
PDF, or XLS format), print, or save to disk. Add multiple actions as needed.
Example: Email a PDF to a network admin mailing list and save a copy in all file types to a
snapshot VM.
We recommend scheduling reports during off-peak times if intensive queries are used.
To better create and run reports:
l Test reports before scheduling. To test performance and format, run your report for a limited
date/time range after you customize it. Verify data, table columns, chart content, and
performance of the report during peak times.
l Limit data by time and filter. To refine and speed up report results, modify the data displayed in
the report content to filter and limit data. Every report section can be formatted as a chart,
graph, table, gauge, and resource available in views and dashboards displaying only selected
data available to objects and resources.
l Schedule reports after maintenance. If you have a nightly maintenance, schedule reports to run
after the maintenance window ends. Snapshots and recommendations run during the
maintenance that can greatly change the virtual environment. Generating reports after
maintenance ends provides immediate updates based on completed VM moves and resource
allocation.
l Schedule heavy load reports after business hours. If a report pulls a large amount of data, or
you have multiple larger reports, schedule them to run during off-peak hours.
l Create copies of reports. Use copies of existing reports to quickly customize reports to gather
data per configured objects, resources, and conditions. Report copies give you the flexibility to
create multiple versions for specific data gathering and schedules.
l Create reports for specific virtual objects and date ranges. Create multiple reports for specific
virtual systems or data sets for better performance when you generate reports and refine
content. Configure a report for specific VM objects (cluster, host, datastore, or VM), the
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Dynamic Query Builder per object properties (example all VMware or all Hyper-V), or database
queries to further restrict virtual objects.
For an example, see information for customizing and reviewing the Recommendations report.
Example report in VMAN

The Recommendations report provides historical data for completed recommendations and actions
in the last 30 days. The report provides detailed tables of results:
l Recommendations current, scheduled, and finished: list all active and predictive
recommendations completed with a status of FinishedWithSuccess or FinishedWithError.
l Actions current, scheduled, and finished: list actions completed in active and scheduled
recommendations. If available, you can select a recommendation to power down, move, and
power up a VM.
Using reporting best practices, create a copy of the Recommendations report. Modify the report to
collect data in the last 24 hours, for a specific cluster, with added charts of Effective CPU Load and
Effective Memory Load. This report details VM movements and resource allocations with resource
status. Schedule the report daily after maintenance.
In this scenario, create a copy of a report and customize the recommendations report for a specific
host.
1. Select the Recommendations report, and click Duplicate & Edit.

2. Modify the name of the report.
3. For each recommendation content section, select Last 24 Hours for the time period.
4. Click Add Content.

5. Select Feature in the Group By drop-down menu, and click Virtualization.
All virtualization resources display.
6. Select Effective CPU Load, and click Select and Continue.
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7. Select the cluster for the report, and click Add to Layout.
For this scenario, select vim-hyperv-cluster-01.
To modify the chart format, click Edit Chart.

8. Click Add Content.
9. Select Feature in the Group By drop-down menu, and click Virtualization.
All virtualization resources display.
10. Select Effective Memory Load, and click Select and Continue.
11. Select use previously specified objects, and click Add to Layout.
The cluster vim-hyperv-cluster-01 should be selected by default.
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To modify the chart format, click Edit Chart.

12. Click Next to preview the report.
To make additional changes, and click Back.
13. Click Next to enter specific properties for the report including description, report category, and
comments.
14. Click Next to set a schedule.
For this example, select No schedule needed.
15. Click Next to review the Summary, and click Submit.
In this scenario, a customized Recommendations report with added memory and CPU charts for vim-
hyperv-cluster-01 runs on a daily schedule after maintenance at 6 a.m. Any recommendations
requiring VM movements are scheduled during this maintenance window, including actions to move
VMs between hosts.
Review the report to verify the recommendation is completed. In this report, an error occurred with the
recommendation.
1. Open the report emailed to you after the report runs for the night.
A failed recommendation and action have a status of FinishedWithError.
2. To troubleshoot the reported recommendation, click My Dashboards > Virtualization >

Recommendations.
3. On the Recommendations page, click the History tab.
A list of completed recommendations displays, including the failure. The failed
recommendation displays with a critical error, time, and message.
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4. Select the recommendation to open the issue and identify which step failed.
In this example, the kmiele-vman VM could not be moved due to the management tools for
responding. Troubleshoot the possible timeout or account access issues with the native tools
to resolve the issue for future recommendation actions.
Take additional actions as necessary.
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Optimizing virtual resources with VMAN

Your virtual machine environment can quickly grow in size and number of resources, becoming
unmanageable or difficult to monitor over time. To help manage your environment, Virtualization
Manager provides tools to easily evaluate current usage, locate possible allocation issues, and
manage resources.
VMAN provides additional historical data and metric reporting through dashboards to locate and
manage stale, zombie, and rogue VMs. With this continuously polled and collected data, you can
better understand and troubleshoot:
l Active usage of your VMs

l Allocated resources to over and under utilized systems, requiring balancing
l Stale, zombie, and rogue VMs costing your company in unused or overused resource
The VM Sprawl dashboard - Virtualization Manager provides a consolidated view through the Sprawl
dashboard to help monitor and manage VMs through resources using specific queries and events.
The Sprawl dashboard tracks the vital issues that occur in a sprawling environment: resource
allocations, snapshots, alerts, and VM resource status. Using the dashboard, you can reclaim wasted
VM resources including idle and stale VMs, optimize performance by right-sizing under- and over-
allocated VMs, remove orphaned VMDK files, and manage snapshots.
Recommendations - After you have deployed and configured VMAN, the first things you may want to
monitor are active or potential bottlenecks, allocation needs, or performance issues. Depending on
the size of your virtual environment, the amount of data to review can be staggering. To help pinpoint
problems and optimization opportunities, VMAN lists Recommendations for VM balancing,
troubleshooting, and issue resolution.
Capacity Planning - Use Capacity Planning to create scenarios using historical and trending data to
determine resource usage in virtual environments. Based on reports generated from the scenarios,
you can better determine and plan your virtual resource allocation, clusters, hosts, and more.
AppStack - The AppStack displays a visual representation of the entire environment to quickly scan
for warning and critical status issues. As you hover over each item, you can review additional status
data for at-a-glance insight into issues. Click a monitored node to drill down into additional details
pages to further investigate and resolve problems.
Performance Analysis - The Performance Analysis dashboard (PerfStack™) allows you to create
troubleshooting projects that visually correlate historical time series data from multiple SolarWinds
products and entity types in a single view.
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Evaluate VMs using the Sprawl dashboard
While the AppStack provides troubleshooting of VMs through visual review, the Sprawl dashboard
breaks down top issues into resource views with captured metrics. With the ease and scalability of
VMs, these environments tend to sprawl over time causing overallocation of resources, systems
overwhelmed with snapshots, stale or zombie VMs misusing resources, and orphaned VMDK files.
The Sprawl dashboard helps solve these issues by:
l Pinpointing key areas of VM resource usage and metrics

l Providing options to directly manage VMs
This example resolves issues with over and under allocated systems:
1. To open the Sprawl dashboard, click My Dashboard > Virtualization > Sprawl.
The Sprawl dashboard populates with VM data giving a historical view into the environment.
2. Examine the Top 10 VMs by Over-allocated vCPUs resource to determine which VMs have over-
allocated CPU amounts.
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This resource displays powered on VMs with two or more CPUs with a peak sum of CPU load
that has not exceeded 30% in the last 7 days. You can directly balance CPU allocation, freeing
resources for under-allocated systems.
3. To free up CPUs, click Change CPU/Memory Resources for a virtual system. A recommended
amount of CPUs is listed based on usage.
The VM AF_Storage has 3 CPUs over-allocated based on the historical CPU load data.
4. Enter 1 for the Number of processors. Select the option to power off and make changes to the
VM.
5. Click Save.
6. Examine the Top 10 VMs by Over-allocated Memory resource to determine which VMs have
over-allocated memory amounts.
This resource displays powered on VMs with 2 or more MBs of memory and the average
memory usage has not exceeded 30% in the last 7 days. You can directly balance the Memory
allocation, freeing resources for under-allocated systems.
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7. To free up memory, click Change CPU/Memory Resources for a virtual system. A recommended
amount of CPUs is listed based on usage.
The VM lab-vmtools-win10-32bit has 3 GB over-allocated that could be used by under-allocated
systems.
8. Select 1024 MB (1 GB) from the drop-down menu.

The drop-down menu provides multiple options based on the allocated amount or Custom
Value.
9. Click Save.
After the next polling, the sprawl dashboard updates with under and over-allocated systems. The
released resources on the host can be allocated to other VMs on those hosts.
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Manage orphan VMDK files

VMAN continues tracking VMDK files, listing all located orphan VMDK files with detailed information.
You can select the datastore to review more information and determine if the VMDK should be
deleted.
If you do not monitor all virtual systems as nodes in the Orion Web Console, the listed
datastore files could be used by unmonitored hosts. Prior to deleting these datastores, verify if
the VMDK file can be cleanly deleted.
In this example, you may review all orphaned VMDKs once a month to reclaim misused resources and
remove obsolete data. With VMs removed, you no longer require these VMDK files. In this example,
you review these VMDK files and remove those determined obsolete.
1. Click My Dashboard > Virtualization > Sprawl.

2. Locate the Orphaned VMDKs resource.
This resource lists the orphaned VMDKs per VM, including all associated VM datastore info, the
size, and an option to delete the datastore. Reviewing this information, the rio-vcenter and
riovcenter VMDKs should be removed. The VMs were deleted at the beginning of the month,
leaving these files taking up a large amount of space with an associated VM.
3. To delete the orphans, click Delete datastore file for rio-vcenter.

A message displays verifying if you want to delete the VMDK.
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4. Click Delete.
Repeat the process for the Riovcenter VMDK. VMAN deletes the orphaned VMDK files from the
environment.
Manage virtual environments with recommendations

Virtualization Manager recommendations focus on the optimization of resource allocation based on
performance metrics, historical data, available resources, and storage capacity. Recommendations
calculate trends and risks based on enabled strategies, providing plans of action to consider and
apply to resolve immediate issues or preemptively prevent issues from occurring.
The Recommendation Engine ensures VM stability and performance through provided actions:
l Balance the virtual environment for optimal performance. You can spread load over hosts,
which optimizes the performance for all virtual machines.
l Optimize capacity. Virtualization Manager predicts when you will run out of resources on
virtualization entities, so you can plan in advance when you have to assign new resources.
l Predict possible future performance and capacity issues based on past trends.
Recommendations and alerts in VMAN do not require additional configurations to monitor and
trigger. When you finish installing and configuring VMAN with your VMware or Hyper-V credentials,
data autopopulates into the system providing immediate results for generated events, alerts, and
recommendations. You can simply investigate occurring or potential issues, review recommended
resolutions, and verify the solutions against reported data within a drill-able page without hunting for
stray data across multiple screens and 3rd party managers.
As you take any action on a recommendation or virtual system through the Orion Web Console or 3rd
party management (like vCenter), the recommendations entirely recalculate. The Recommendations
page and resources always display the latest recalculated list. You can also select to recalculate all
recommendations with the option.
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Strategies for recommendations

The Recommendations Engine uses a series of strategies to provide specific resolutions for current
and potential issues in your VM environment. By using strategies simultaneously, you can achieve
optimal balance between performance and efficiency.
VM sizing optimizations
These strategies help you find VMs under and over allocated VM resources. Overallocated VMs have
too many resource, best utilized by underallocated VMs. Underallocated VMs do not have enough
resources allocated to them to support processes, potentially causing alerts.
Host Performance and Capacity Assurance
These strategies help you find hosts that will run out of CPU or memory resources within a defined
time period, and hosts with CPU or memory usage currently over a critical threshold.
Storage Performance and Capacity Assurance
This strategy helps you determine datastores that may reach a storage space or other limit within a
defined time period.
Balancing VMs on hosts
This strategy helps you distribute VMs on hosts to achieve balanced usage and utilization
percentage.
Migrating VMs is only possible between hosts that are in the same cluster and have shared
storage.
Recommendation constraints and policies

Policies define constraints for the Recommendation Engine per selected virtual objects in your virtual
environment. These constraint policies include exclusion policies for excluding objects and disallow
action policies.
Exclusion policies specify virtual objects to exclude from generated recommendations. You can set
up an exclusion policy for specific virtual objects including virtual machines, hosts, clusters, and
datastores. When creating an exclusion policy, you select monitored virtual objects in you
environment from generating recommendations.
Disallow action policies specify virtual objects to not run additional actions for a recommendation.
Recommendations may require actions selected to complete environment and virtual object changes.
These changes include moving the VM to a different host or storage and changing resource
configurations such as CPU and memory amounts. Options differ between virtual object types.
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Active and predictive recommendations
Virtualization Manager provides both active and predictive recommendations
Active recommendations
Receiving an alert informs you the VM has an issue, causing problems in your environment and for
users. The alert provides specific information for the issue with a details page to research what
happened and what to do, such as CPU Contention. You need to take action fast. You could access
the alert and review the data and recommended actions to begin determining what to do, or check
your Recommendations for a better, faster solution.
Active recommendations trigger for alerts and issues that have already occurred in your environment.
These recommendations display with an ACTIVE flag and provide immediate resolutions for alerts
based on captured and calculated VM usage data and status. Active recommendations are linked to
alerts, providing an intelligent resolution with actionable steps to complete when applied.
Active recommendations provide recommended actions to solve problems that are currently
occurring. These recommendations require a minimum of 1 hour of VM monitored data.
Predictive recommendations
Depending on the size of your VM environment, you could receive extremely large amounts of
historical and real-time data on performance, status, and allocation usage. You could use
complicated formulas to determine what may or will happen based on usage trends, attempting to
predict the future of resource allocation vs usage.
As your VM resources are used and managed, Virtualization Manager collects data on VM component
usage and status. When reviewed and calculated, the Recommendations Engine uses this data to
forecast trends of usage and identify potential problems, including historic information for over and
under resource allocation. Recommendations provide intelligent, preemptive actions to prevent
issues with VM resources and performance.
Predictive recommendations predict the future state of the virtual environment based on historical
trends and data. These recommendations require a minimum of 7 days of VM monitored data.
Predictive recommendations may be dependent between other recommendations, as changes
completed by one predictive recommendation may affect trends triggering another recommendation.
For example:
l Removing load from a host or datastore and adding another load to the same resource
l Changing resources on a VM and then moving the VM to another location
The key to predictive recommendations is compiled data over time. The more VM monitored
data accumulated, the engine predicts usage and potential issues.
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Reviewing recommendations
As you view VMs with alerts and recommendations, drill down further to locate the specific issue and
potential solutions. The selected VM encountered an issue, displaying an alert with an associated
recommendation. Click to view additional information for the triggered alert and recommendation.
The ACTIVE tag indicates this issue has occurred. The recommendation has an immediate resolution
you can apply.
Select the recommendation to further review information and make your selections to take action.
The Statistics tab allows you to review what actions will take place when applied and a before and
after comparison of consumption and usage. All recommendation solutions base entirely on the
intelligent decisions of the Recommendations Engine and collected data for the VM.
Recommendation severity
Recommendations trigger and display with a severity level like alerts: critical and warnings. The
severity is assigned based on global and VM specific threshold settings. For example, a percentage of
memory, CPU, or capacity reached by 80% triggers a warning severity alert or recommendation.
Other recommendations trigger for predictive actions without using thresholds to set the severity.
The importance or amount of environment changes in recommendation steps can affect the severity
as warning or critical. For example, a right-sizing recommendation informing you to reduce CPUs on a
VM may display as "critical" if it heavily affects the environment or requires a number of changes.
Recommendation actions
You can take one of the following actions for recommendations:
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l Perform Now: immediately performs the recommendation steps to resolve the issue.
Example: A VM triggers alerts for disk space utilization for a critical VM for database and
running heavy load queries. To respond to the alert and resolve issues, you would perform the
recommendation immediately.
l Schedule Recommendation: sets a date and time to complete the steps. The Recommendation
moves from the Current tab to the Scheduled tab. At the selected time, the steps complete. You
may want to schedule the changes if it requires steps that could cause issues during specific
times in your environment.
Example: Reports may run at the end of the week, requiring large amounts of VM resources.
Moving VMs to new hosts during this time could cause CPU contention or other issues.
l Ignore this Recommendation: creates an exclusion policy to not provide recommendations for
the affected virtual system according to a set time range. To ignore, click More Actions and
select Ignore Recommendation on a single recommendation. You can only ignore one
recommendation at a time, not for multi-selected recommendations.
Example:
l Create Policies for Recommendations: creates a policy affecting on a single recommendation,
such as blocking configuration or move actions.
Learn More:
l Configure Recommendations settings in VMAN

l View recommendations in VMAN
l Manage recommendation policies and constraints
l Apply a recommendation
l Cancel recommendations in VMAN
l How thresholds affect recommendations in VMAN
l Recommendations in Orion Maps
View recommendations in VMAN

For a quick overview of the currently available active and predictive recommendations, check the
Recommendations resource on the Virtualization Summary page.
l Click My Dashboards > Virtualization > Recommendations to open the page.

l Click All Recommendations on this resource.
l To access the recommendations filtered by cluster, click the link in the Recommendations
column.
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You can also see all recommendations by clicking My Dashboards > Recommendations.
The All Recommendations page displays both active and predicted recommendations, with the most
critical active recommendations listed first. The severity of a recommendation implies how much the
recommendation can help.
On the All Recommendations page, you can:
l View all recommendations that currently apply to your virtual environment.
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l Filter recommendations based on the virtual entities to which they apply, on the severity, and
on the recommendation type.
l View the details of a recommendation and apply the recommended actions on your virtual
entities. You can either apply the recommendation now or schedule it for later.
l Cancel and rollback running recommendations through the Running tab.
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When canceled, the recommendation is tracked in the history tab with a status message.
Manage recommendation policies and constraints

Policies define constraints for the Recommendation Engine per selected virtual objects in your virtual
environment. These constraint policies include exclusion policies for excluding objects and disallow
action policies.
Exclusion policies specify virtual objects to exclude from generated recommendations. You can set
up an exclusion policy for specific virtual objects including virtual machines, hosts, clusters, and
datastores. When creating an exclusion policy, you select monitored virtual objects in you
environment from generating recommendations. For example, add a constraint to block
recommendation generation for a specific VM used for new software testing.
Disallow action policies specify virtual objects to not run additional actions for a recommendation.
Recommendations may require actions selected to complete environment and virtual object changes.
These changes include moving the VM to a different host or storage and changing resource
configurations such as CPU and memory amounts. Options differ between virtual object types. For
example, add a constraint to block all move actions for a specific VM used for database backups.
Remove the virtual object from a policy to resume recommendation generation and allow actions.
Important: A policy can affect other recommendations. After creating a policy, all active and
scheduled recommendations are recalculated.
You can create policies through the Policies page or through actions More Options per
recommendations.
For example, you may not want to have recommendations run against a VM strictly used for testing
software installations in your environment. These VMs may be kept under-allocated with limited
capacity to specifically test the effects of installed software on servers of that type. You may also
want to keep the VM on a specific host and cluster, adding a disallow action for moving the VM. This
refines the Recommendations Engine to focus monitoring on important servers in your environment
and keeps the recommendations from filling with actions for this VM.
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Create an exclusion policy
The following example excludes a VM from recommendations monitoring:
1. Click My Dashboards > Virtualization > Recommendations. Click Recommendation Settings.
2. Click Policies.
The policies page displays with all current exclusion and disallow action policies listed.
3. Click Add Policy and select Exclude Objects from Recommendations.
A page displays to select virtual objects and complete the policy. A list of all available virtual
objects displays in the page with a count of currently assigned policies.
4. Select the scope of the policy: Virtual Machine, Host, Cluster, or Datastore. This applies the
policy to that specific virtual object for the policy.
5. Select the virtual objects in the filtered list to disallow actions for recommendations.
Check the boxes for all virtual objects you want to disallow actions. To select specific virtual
objects to apply the policy, you can filter the list using the virtual groups Cluster, Host, and
Datastore. The available filters depend on the selected scope. You can also use the search field
to locate by name.
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You must filter and select only one virtual object type to exclude per policy. For example,
you cannot select datastores and clusters or virtual machines and hosts.
For example, you may want to exclude recommendations from generating for a set of VMs used
for testing in your environment. Filter or search and select just those VMs.
6. Select the virtual objects in the filtered list to exclude from recommendations.
Check the boxes for all virtual objects of a specific type you want to exclude.
For this example, you would select the testing VM. If a VM has an exclusion policy, it displays in
the list.
7. Set the duration for the policy: 3 days, 1 week, Custom (for a selected date), and Always (never
expires).
If you set a specific date, 3 days, or 1 week, the policy ends allowing recommendations to
generate for the affected virtual objects.
8. Optionally, you can expand the Policy Description and add notes for the exclusion.
These notes can be useful for network administrators managing exclusions. For this VM, you
could add the note "Testing VM for software installation testing. Excluded by Network Admins
from recommendations."
9. Click Create Policy.
The selected VM no longer will generate recommendations. As you test your installs,
recommendations no longer generate warning of resource underallocation or capacity issues.
To remove a virtual object from the policy, see Remove a virtual object from a policy.
Create disallow action policy

The following example excludes a VM from recommendations monitoring:
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2. Click Policies.
The policies page displays with all current exclusion and disallow action policies listed.
3. Click Add Policy and select Disallow Actions for Recommendations.
A page displays to select virtual objects and complete the policy. A list of all available virtual
objects displays in the page with a count of currently assigned policies.
4. Select the scope of the policy: Virtual Machine, Host, Cluster, or Datastore. This applies the
policy to that specific virtual object for the policy.
5. Select the virtual objects in the filtered list to disallow actions for recommendations.
Check the boxes for all virtual objects you want to disallow actions. To select specific virtual
objects to apply the policy, you can filter the list using the virtual groups Cluster, Host, and
Datastore. The available filters depend on the selected scope. You can also use the search field
to locate by name.
You must filter and select only one virtual object type to exclude per policy. For example,
you cannot select datastores and clusters or virtual machines and hosts.
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For example, you may want to exclude move actions for a few VMs hosting applications in your
environment. Filter or search and select just those VMs.
6. Select the disallowed actions for the selected scope. Depending on the selected scope, you can
select from the following actions (one or more):
l Virtual Machine: VM options to move VM to a different host or different storage,

Configuration options to change CPU or memory resources
l Host: VM options to move VM to a different host or different storage, Configuration
options to change CPU or memory resources
Selected actions are also disabled for all child virtual machines.
l Cluster: VM options to move VM to a different host or different storage, Configuration

options to change CPU or memory resources
l Datastore: VM options to move VM to a different host or different storage
7. Select the duration for the policy: 3 days, 1 week, Custom (for a selected date), and Always
(never expires).
If you set a specific date, 3 days, or 1 week, the policy ends allowing actions for the affected
virtual objects.
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8. Optionally, you can expand the Policy Description and add notes for the exclusion.
These notes can be useful for network administrators managing exclusions. For this VM, you
could add the note "Applications on this VM Do not allow movements to other hosts."
9. Click Create Policy.
For example, the selected VMs no longer allow actions to move the VM to other hosts or
storage.
To remove a virtual object from the policy, see Remove a virtual object from a policy.
Remove a virtual object from a policy

As long as a virtual object is added to an exclusion or disallow action policy, the recommendation
engine follows the constrictions. To begin generating recommendations again or allow actions for
recommendations, remove the virtual object from the policy.
2. Click Policies.
The policies page displays with all current exclusion policies listed.
3. Locate and select a policy from the list.

The policy opens with a list of included virtual objects (VMs, hosts, clusters, or datastores).
4. Deselect check boxes for any virtual objects you want removed from the policy.
5. Click Save Policy.
Depending on the policy, recommendations begin tracking and triggering or actions can be
completed for the virtual machine again.
Apply a recommendation
Recommendations provide actionable steps to resolve currently occurring or potential issues in your
environment. You can select one or multiple recommendations to apply for resolving space
utilization, resource consumption, and other issues. Each recommendation includes an overview of
issues and actions to remediate an active or potential conflict or issue.
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l Steps to Perform tab: lists every action and options to select depending on the
recommendation.
l Statistic tab: displays the potential affects for each step and option using historical data to
predict metric and performance changes.
When you apply one or more recommendations, VMAN completes one or more steps to resolve the
issue:
l Selectable actions provide direct control over specific actions. You may want to make these
actions manually. Select the actions in steps to allow VMAN to complete the changes.
Example: Move a VM to a new host or reboot a VM.
l In some cases, recommendations include multiple steps and involve multiple prerequisite
recommendations. This is by design. Virtualization Manager considers the long-term
performance and resource utilization of the environment, and provides recommendations that
can solve issues for the long term.
Example: To achieve optimal resource utilization, it might be recommended to migrate multiple
VMs and reallocate vCPUs and memory.
l You can receive both an active and a predicted recommendation for the same issue. This is by
design, and it indicates that the issue exists now, and is predicted to still exist in the future.
l After applying recommendations, VMAN recalculates recommendations as the changes may
resolve other active or potential issues.
Any scheduled recommendations may remain scheduled. You can review these
recommendations to determine if they should continue as planned.
Example: A noisy neighbor could cause active and predictive resource utilization
recommendations due to memory and vCPU consumption and conflicts. Resolving one
recommendation may clear others.
Important: If an error occurs when attempting recommendation actions, the actions are
reverted with results saved to the History tab.
Apply a recommendation
You can also apply multiple recommendations. For instructions, see Apply multiple recommendations
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1. On the All Recommendations page, select a recommendation you want to apply.
2. Click the risk description or recommendation description.
3. Check the explanation for more details about why a certain action is recommended.
The number of dependencies and prerequisites will be reduced in the final product
version. You will also be able to run the dependent recommendations separately or ignore
them separately.
4. Check the statistics for an overview of resource utilization over time.

For predictive recommendations, the statistics also contain information about the predicted
resource utilization in the future.
5. Check the details of the steps how the action will be executed. If the VM does not support live
changes, applying a recommended action should involve shutting the VM down, and then
starting it again. Select Power off the VM to turn the VM off while the recommended action is
executed and have it turned on again when the action is finished.
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6. Select to run the recommendation immediately, or schedule the action for outside of business
hours.
Perform Now immediately runs the recommendation.
Scheduled recommendations run according to the selected date and time you enter.
7. Click Apply Recommendation.

The recommendation moves to a new tab and act based on the selected time:
l Scheduled: recommendations display in the Scheduled tab in order of all scheduled jobs
by date and time. You can cancel any scheduled recommendations from this tab.
l Perform Now: recommendations move to Running tab, displaying the status as they run
and complete. You can cancel and revert if needed from this tab. When complete, the
recommendations display in the History tab.
Create policy for the recommendation (optional)

Optionally, you may want to create a policy to:
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l Exclude this recommendation and future recommendations for the affected virtual object (VM,
datastore, host, cluster)
l Disallow actions for this recommendation, such as moving a VM
For more information, see Manage recommendation policies and constraints.
Important: A policy can affect other recommendations. After creating a policy, all active and
scheduled recommendations are recalculated.
1. In a recommendation, select More Actions at the bottom of the page.

2. Select Create Recommendation Policy.
A Create Policy dialog opens with options for disallowing actions and excluding
recommendations based on your selection.
For example, the following screen displays the options for a VM recommendation.
3. Select a suggested policy for the recommendation:

l Disallow action of the virtual object from any recommendation: blocks resolution actions
for the virtual object in generated recommendations
l Exclude from all recommendations: excludes all generated recommendations for the
virtual object
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You can only select one option for the virtual object through this page. Add additional policies
for the virtual object through the Policies page.
4. Select the duration for the policy: 3 days, 1 week, Custom (for a selected date), and Always
(never expires).
If you set a specific date, 3 days, or 1 week, the policy ends allowing recommendations to
generate or actions to continue for the affected virtual objects.
Viewing recommendation results

After applying a recommendation, you can view the status from the Running or Scheduled tab
according to the recommendation execution as directly applied or scheduled.
The results of the recommended actions are logged in the Last 10 Audit events resource in the Orion
Summary Home.
You can also view all performed recommendations on the History tab of the All Recommendations
page.
Apply multiple recommendations

Recommendations supports applying multiple recommendations to resolve a mix of selected active
and predictive resolutions. To apply multiple recommendations, you access the Recommendations
page from a resource or the menu bar link. In the page, all available recommendations include
checkboxes to select multiple entries. The steps allow you to review the issues, steps, make
selections, and determine the next steps including applying immediately or on a schedule.
1. Open the Recommendations page, click My Dashboards > Virtualization > Recommendations.
2. On the All Recommendations page, select the checkboxes for multiple recommendations you
want to apply and click Apply Recommendations.
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3. The Recommendation engine reviews the recommendations and places them in an execution
order based on prerequisites per recommendation. A compilation of actions displays in an info
box, such as the message for 2 VMs powering off in the following screenshot.
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4. Expand each recommendation to review the recommendation resolution and any prerequisite
actions you need to select.
l To view a specific recommendation in the list, click the linked name. This opens a view
into the recommendation. In the Steps to Perform tab, you can read over the issue, risk
description, and resolution. Check the details of the steps how the action will be executed.
If the VM does not support live changes, applying a recommended action should involve
shutting the VM down, and then starting it again. Select Power off the VM to turn the VM
off while the recommended action is executed and have it turned on again when the
action is finished.
In the Statistics tab, review the projects affects of the changes.
l To see a list of the recommendations, hover over the Back to previous recommendations
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link.
5. To go back to the full list of selected recommendations, click the Back to previous
recommendations link. You can review each recommendation in the list using the links.
6. Select to run the recommendations immediately or schedule the actions for a specific time and
date, such as outside of peak or business hours. This time will run all recommendations in the
list.
Perform Now immediately runs the recommendation.
Scheduled recommendations run according to the selected date and time you enter.
7. Click Apply Recommendations.

The recommendations move to a new tab and act based on the selected time:
l Scheduled: recommendations display in the Scheduled tab in order of all scheduled jobs
by date and time. You can cancel any scheduled recommendations from this tab.
l Perform Now: recommendations move to Running tab, displaying the status as they run
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and complete. You can cancel and revert if needed from this tab. When complete, the
recommendations display in the History tab.
Cancel recommendations in VMAN

Recommendations may include multiple steps that can individually take time, or require additional
actions. If you need to cancel these recommendations, you can cancel a scheduled or running
recommendations.
In the All Recommendations page, use the following tabs to cancel or rollback recommendations:
l Scheduled tab lists all future scheduled recommendations by custom entered date
l Running tab lists all active recommendations in-progress
l History tab lists completed and canceled recommendations, sortable by completion and
execution time
The recommendation may trigger again if the issues persist that triggered it the first time. When
triggered, you can review and manage the recommendation as needed.
Cancel a scheduled recommendation
A scheduled recommendation has not run yet. Canceling this recommendation will not cause issues
for currently running steps.
1. On the All recommendations page, select the Scheduled tab.

2. Select the recommendation to cancel, and click Cancel the scheduled action(s).
3. Confirm the cancellation.
The canceled recommendation is tracked in the history tab with a status message.
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Cancel and revert a running recommendation
A running recommendation has completed any number of steps, working through each step until the
procedure is complete. If you cancel a currently running recommendation, any completed actions are
reverted.
1. On the All recommendations page, select the Running tab.

2. Select the recommendation to cancel, and then click Cancel & Revert.
When a running recommendation is canceled, any in-progress actions are stopped. Any actions
completed to cancel the recommendation complete steps with displayed status. Any reverted actions
display in a separate list with status.
VMAN Recommendations in Orion Maps

As of Virtualization Manager 8.3, you can now see which monitored virtual entities (vCenters,
DataCenters, Clusters, Hosts, Virtual Machines, and DataStores) currently have recommendations in
Orion Maps.
When selecting an entity in Orion Maps, you can see applicable recommendations in the context
menu on the right of the map screen by selecting the Recommendations icon to open the
Recommendations sub menu:
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Click a recommendation to view its details and apply it if desired.
Run scenarios with Capacity Planning

When planning your virtual environment infrastructure, resources, and allocation, you may need help
determining how much growth you are prepared for. How will adding a substantial amount of VMs
affect your resource usage and performance? Should you add one or more new hosts to keep up with
expansion? Do you need to worry about capacity right now, or will your environment be okay for the
next 6 months?
With VMAN 8.1, the new and improved Capacity Planning feature can help you answer these
questions. Capacity Planning provides a scenario wizard which helps you create and test variable
configurations quickly and on-the-fly - or more intensively after deep consideration of your
environment's historical performance, new system needs, and peak usage times.
Capacity Planning uses historical data and trending calculations to better determine the outcome of
your infrastructure needs. Run multiple types of expansion scenarios: Simulate adding VMs, adding
hosts, or both.
Every simulation generates an easy to use report that includes predicted VM workload, total resource
usage, and detailed usage over time charts for specific resources like CPU, memory, and storage.
Running the Capacity Planning Wizard

In the Orion Web Console, click on MY DASHBOARDS -> under VIRTUALIZATION -> Capacity Planning.
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Here you'll see Capacity Planning Reports. You can always find the reports for any Capacity Planning
you've done here. If this is your first time running the Capacity Planning Wizard, you won't see any
reports yet.
Click
to open the Capacity Planning Wizard.
The wizard will guide you through creating a Capacity Planning scenario, step-by-step.
Capacity Planning Wizard steps
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Simulation Mode - Choose from: Run a checkup, Simulate adding extra VMs, Simulate adding extra
host computers, and Simulate adding extra VMs and host computers
Time Frame - Choose how far ahead you want to project.
Pick Cluster - Choose the clusters of hosts and VMs that you want to use as a base for making
predictions. The planner will make predictions based on the past performance history of the cluster.
You can select more than one cluster, and a unique report will be generated for each cluster you
select.
VM Profiles - This step appears when simulating adding VMs. Choose a VM profile that matches the
type of VM you want to simulate adding. You can quickly choose from three present VM types: Small,
Medium, and Large; you can create VM profiles based on existing VMs in your environment; or you
can manually specify hardware configurations by building a custom VM profile.
Host Profile - This step appears when simulating adding hosts. Choose a host profile that matches
the type of host you want to simulate adding. Like VM profiles, you can create host profiles based on
existing hosts in your environment, or you can manually specify hardware configurations by defining
a custom host profile.
Resources - The planner can simulate CPU usage, memory usage, and disk space usage. Choose the
resources you want to simulate for the current report.
Historical Analysis - Choose how many days of your actual historical usage that the Capacity Planner
will consider when running the scenario. The more the planner knows about your environment's
history, the more accurate its predictions will be.
Advanced - In most cases, you'll want to leave the options here unchanged; however, the advanced
step gives you finer control over the simulation.
Resource Allocation Model - You can choose from three different models: The default is the
balanced model, which is appropriate for most production environments. You can choose to
use a more conservative or more aggressive model.
Failover Reservation - Use this option to remove a number of your currently existing hosts
from the simulation. If you're considering removing hosts from your environment, you can use
this option to simulate the effect this would have on your environment's resource usage.
Summary - The last step is to name the simulation you've configured. You can go back if you want to
change something, cancel this simulation, or click Generate Report if you're ready to start the
simulation and create the report.
Creating a Capacity Planning scenario

The wizard will guide you through setting up the parameters of your simulation. To help you get
started, here's a walkthrough of a simple Capacity Planning scenario: Predicting how the workload
handled by existing hosts will change when adding 10 new virtual machines to your environment.
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Open the Capacity Planning Wizard by creating a new report. In the Orion Web Console, navigate to
MY DASHBOARDS -> under VIRTUALIZATION -> Capacity Planning -> NEW.
1. Simulation Mode - since we want to simulate adding VMs, select Simulate adding extra VMs. Click
Next.
2. Time Frame - We just want a simple projection for how things will change in the near future. We'll
select 90 days from now.
3. Pick Cluster - Since we want to add some new machines in our existing cluster, select an existing
cluster.
4. VM Profiles - Use the Simulated instances field on the type of VM you'd like to simulate adding.
Set it to 10.
5. Resources - We want to consider all three for this scenario, so check CPU usage, memory usage,
and disk space.
6. Historical Analysis - Let's use the default value of 30 days.
7. Advanced - Here we'll choose the default Balanced and leave the failover reservation at its default
setting of 0.
8. Summary - The last thing to do is to name the report that will be generated by the Capacity
Planner. Click Generate Report.
When the report is ready, you'll find it in your Capacity Planning Reports page.
Capacity Planning Reports

After you've run a simulation or a checkup, you'll find your report in the Capacity Planning Reports
view.
In the Orion Web Console, click on MY DASHBOARDS -> under VIRTUALIZATION -> Capacity Planning.
Here you'll see Capacity Planning Reports. You can always find the reports for any Capacity Planning
scenario you've run here.
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Click the checkbox next to the report, then VIEW REPORT(S) at the top of the reports dialog. In VMAN
8.4 and later, you can select multiple checkboxes to view multiple reports at the same time.
Breaking down Capacity Planning reports
Workload - all the resources currently used and the projected growth in usage for your virtual
machines.
Resources - the currently available and projected growth in capacity for your host CPU, RAM, and
disk space for this scenario.
Simulated VMs - the type and number of simulated VMs added to the environment. Appears when
simulating adding VMs.
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Simulated Hosts - the type and number of simulated hosts added to the environment. Appears when
simulating adding hosts.
CPU Usage - Shows the predicted trend in total CPU usage over the timeframe selected when the
scenario was created.
Memory Usage - Shows the predicted trend in total memory usage over the timeframe selected when
the scenario was created.
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Disk Usage - Shows the predicted trend in total storage usage over the timeframe selected when the
scenario was created.
Steep trend lines in charts

l In CPU, memory, and disk usage charts, you may notice that the trend after "TODAY" on
the chart, can in some cases have a steep increasing or decreasing slope, which may look
as if your predicted use is skyrocketing or plummetting. This visual is expected and
happens because the scale of the chart after TODAY will be based on the prediction
period that you selected. The data to the left of TODAY covers a period of 30 days,
whereas the to the right of TODAY can cover larger periods of time, even a year.
l In other cases, if the trend appears to be too steep, even over a smaller timeframe, then
there may not be enough historical data. After VMAN has been able to gather more data,
the better the trend calculation will be.
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Available Virtual Capacity - Shows how many more of various kinds of VMs can be added to your
environment based on the remaining available resources after the current scenario's changes are
implemented. So if you're adding 10 medium VMs in this scenario, your environment will have room
for 4 more medium VMs after you've added the 10. The Constraint shown in the chart tells you which
resource will run out first, preventing you from adding more than the calculated number of VMs.
Additional Hosts Recommended - If the planner predicts that you're going to run out of resources at
the current rate of growth, you'll see a recommendation to add additional hosts. The planner shows
the type of host recommended, based on your current environment's hosts. It also shows you the
predicted amount of hosts you'll need to keep up with demand and when they will be needed.
The report will not recommend adding additional hosts if storage space is the only resource
that's predicted to run out.
Monitoring virtual disk statistics in VMAN

In VMAN 8.5, you can now monitor the IOPs, throughput and latency metrics at a virtual disk
granularity. To make use of this monitoring, create custom tables and custom chart widgets for use
in dashboards and reports.
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Latency for virtual disks is not available for Hyper-V VMs and only available for VMware VMs.
Create custom table and chart widgets

Use the Orion Web Console to create custom widgets containing the metrics for IOPS, throughput,
and latency metrics for your monitored virtual disks as needed. Create custom table widgets, custom
chart widgets, and more.
Create a custom table or chart widget with Virtual Disk statistics
While viewing a dashboard in the Orion Web Console:
1. Click the pencil icon on the left-hand side of the screen to Customize Page.
2. Click Add Widgets.
3. In the search bar for Available Widgets, search for "Custom".
4. Click and drag Custom Table or Custom Chart to an empty space on the dashboard.
5. Click Done editing.
6. In the newly created widget, click Edit or Configure this resource.
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7. Click Select datasource. Selecting the Datasource will determine the pool of nodes that the
table or chart will pull data from.
8. Select Advanced Selector

9. Set I want to report on "Virtual Machine"
10. Where (your condition)
11. Click "Select field ..."
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12. You can select Virtual Disk in the Orion Object dropdown if you wish the Datasource to be
determined by Virtual Disk statistics.
13. Select the metric that you want to monitor.
14. Click Add Column.
15. Repeat the steps for as many metrics that you wish to add.
16. Click Update data source.
17. For charts, add the data series to the chart's Left Y-AXIS and Right Y-AXIS.
18. For tables, add columns.
19. Fill out any remaining fields as needed.
20. Click Submit.
You can group data in charts by selecting the Data grouping option. Grouping by Virtual Disk
File Name is an easy way to make charts more readable.
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Example custom chart for virtual disk Maximum IOPS Total for virtual machines, with data grouped
by virtual disk file name:
See the Orion Platform Administrator Guide for more information about customizing
Orion Web Console views, and Widget configuration examples in the Orion Platform for other
examples. For information about adding custom tables and charts to a report, see Add a custom
chart or table to a web-based report in the Orion Platform.
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Create alerts based on virtual disk statistics

Create alerts that will trigger when the metrics for IOPS, throughput, and latency metrics for
monitored virtual disks exceed a threshold that you specify.
1. Navigate to Settings -> All Settings -> Manage Alerts (In the Alerts & Reports section).
2. Click Add new alert.
3. Fill in the appropriate fields and select virtual disk IOPS, throughput, or latency as the alert
trigger.
For more detailed instructions about creating alerts in the Orion Platform, see Create new alerts to
monitor your environment with the Orion Platform.
Manage and troubleshoot VMs using AppStack

With VMAN integrated with Server & Application Monitor (SAM) and the Orion Platform, the AppStack
maps your entire environment with a visual representation of objects and status. Every node and
application, through VM clusters down to datastores, is displayed with icons indicating warning and
critical issues.
At-a-glance, you can troubleshoot issues by reviewing the mapped applications and underlying
infrastructure. Selecting an icon highlights related servers, to better track down and resolve the root
cause. Regardless of your sprawling environment size, AppStack allows you to immediately detect
issues and locate the source. With the expanded features of VMAN, you can further restart or
suspend VMs, delete snapshots, and more.
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In this example, a datastore encounters performance issues displaying a critical alert in the
environment:
1. To view the entire network in the AppStack, click My Dashboard > Environment.
For this example, we find one of the datastores encountering an issue, possibly causing
additional issues up through the AppStack. By resolving this issue, we could solve others. The
tooltip displays limited free space compared to the capacity. This could lead to latency issues.
2. The AppStack highlights all connected servers to help pinpoint potential issues and related
servers.
The overview shows the VM has 3 critical and 6 servers offline.
Only the related servers display with the datastore selected.
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3. Click the server from this overview to open the details page and further troubleshoot.
A server-specific AppStack is also displayed in this page. As you resolve the issues, you can
view this AppStack for locating associated issues throughout the environment.
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4. Further reviewing the details page, you locate the captured alerts for the specific datastore,
related servers, and additional performance metrics. Based on reviewing this data, the datastore
shows:
l A related VM with old snapshots
l Datastore Overallocation and High Latency alerts for this VM
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Using management tools and options in the VM details page, resolve these issues to clear the alerts.
When resolved, the AppStack updates with the next polling to displays the latest status. If additional
alerts are captured, use the AppStack to troubleshoot and drill down into the VMs as with this
example.
Investigate VM performance with Performance Analysis

With complex networks consisting of cloud, hybrid IT, virtualization, storage area networks, and so
on, multi-faceted IT issues can be difficult to pinpoint and diagnose. When an issue surfaces, for
example a badly performing application or server, the investigation can take significant time to
locate the core issue. The problem could be in storage, network connectivity, user access, or a mix of
resources and configurations.
To investigate the issue, create troubleshooting projects with the Performance Analysis (PerfStack™)
dashboard that visually correlate historical data from multiple SolarWinds products and entity types
in a single view.
With Performance Analysis dashboards, you can do the following:
l Compare and analyze multiple metric types in a single view, including status, events, and
statistics.
l Compare and analyze metrics for multiple entities in a single view, including, nodes, interfaces,
volumes, applications, and more.
l Correlate data from across the Orion Platform on a single shared time line.
l Visualize hybrid data for on-premises, cloud, and everything in between.
l Share a troubleshooting project with your teams and experts to review historical data for an
issue.
For VMAN, the possibilities are endless for application analysis and hybrid environments:
l Visually walk through historical data for VMs in your environment

l Verify resource allocation issues in hybrid environments
l Correlate data to troubleshoot network traffic sent and received by virtual servers (hosts,
clusters, datastores, and VMs), on-premises servers, and cloud instances
The following example shows you how to identify a root cause for a VM experiencing performance
issues. In this scenario, a virtual host encountered a resource and performance issue to the point
where users encounter slower responses and access. The issue triggered an alert, which notified your
application owner, who escalated the issue to system and network administrators.
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Create a new troubleshooting project to investigate the issue to compare metrics for the host and all
related virtual environment systems to track trends and spikes in usage.
1. In the Orion Web Console, select My Dashboards > Home > Performance Analysis.
This opens the Performance Analysis, or PerfStack, dashboard to build charts and graphs using
metrics pulled from monitored applications and servers in the Metric Palette. Each chart can
hold multiple metrics to directly correlate data.
2. In the New Analysis Project, click Add Entities.
To get started, you need to locate and add the VM in distress. In the search field, enter syd to
bring up a list of virtual servers sharing that name. Expand and select Types or Status to filter
the list if needed.
From the list, we find the virtual host encountering the issues and triggering alerts. Select the
host and add it to the dashboard Metric Palette. Click the related entities icon to display all
related servers and services to the host.
Interested in all associated nodes, applications, servers, and more to this selected node?
Click the related entities icon. All related entities display in the Metric Palette
providing more options for metrics possibly causing issues.
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3. Select the syd host node to view and select metrics to drag and drop onto the dashboard. You
can drag them into the same chart to compare values between metrics.
To start investigating, pull a series of metrics for the host and cluster, comparing metrics to
find spikes or high usage. For this scenario, add these host metrics:
l Maximum Network Usage
l Maximum Network Transmit Rate
l Maximum Network Receive Rate
l Virtual Machines Running
For the cluster, add these metrics:
l Average CPU Load
l Average CPU Usage
The charts and graphs display with data and alerts for the Last 12 hours of metrics. You can
expand the date and time to see additional historical metrics over the course of the alert.
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Add usage metrics for VMs on the host to compare network usage and activity.
4. Analyzing the data, the issue looks to be a noisy neighbor for one of the virtual machines
consuming resources and experiencing high traffic causing bottlenecks and issues for VMs
sharing the host. Basically, another server, service, or application is consuming higher
bandwidth, disk I/O, CPU, and other resources causing issues for this specific application.
This information gives your network and system administrators a direction for further
investigation and resolving latency issues. To resolve, they can reallocate resources or move the
high-consumption application to another location.
5. Click Save and give the project a name.
The project saves as a dashboard with the selected metrics in the set date and time range.
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When saved, the URL becomes a sharable link. Copy and share the link to the saved dashboard
in tickets or emails sent by the system and network administrators and the product owner. They
can access the link to review the gathered data and troubleshoot.
After reallocating resources and making network changes, reopen the dashboard to verify
changes and new usage trends for polled metrics.
Customize and configure VMAN

With VMAN and the Orion Platform installed, configure key settings and features to effectively
monitor your environment, collect metrics, and troubleshoot performance and issues. You can modify
these settings anytime when using VMAN and monitoring your environment.
Most features begin collecting data and calculating metrics the moment you begin polling. These
features include additional settings to enable or disable actions or better manage VMAN actions and
responses.
l Recommendations: calculate metrics against the recommendations engine, performance

algorithms, and thresholds to determine active and predictive issues in your environment. To
generate recommendations, enable settings and configure thresholds.
Optional: You can generate recommendations using default settings. Update settings as
needed over time.
l Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: monitors your cloud instances and volumes for AWS and Azure
environments. To collect data, add AWS and Azure accounts and select instances to monitor.
Required: You must actively add cloud accounts and instances to begin monitoring.
Customize VMAN and the Orion Web Console
l Users: create Orion user accounts and manage roles to give your staff access to VMAN and the
Orion Platform.
Recommended: Create an admin account and user accounts for your staff. Set account
limitations as needed to define what features and data those users can access.
l Virtualization thresholds: define the warning and critical level thresholds to trigger warnings
and recommendations.
Recommended: Review the global thresholds and update virtualization and baselines as you
monitor your environment over time.
l Web-based License Manager: activate and maintain your VMAN license and other Orion
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Platform products licenses.
As needed: After installing and activating VMAN, you only need to manage licenses when
adding new products, adding additional servers, adding High Availability, and updating your
VMAN license with additional sockets for managing nodes.
l Customize the Orion Web Console: format the views, dashboards, colors, and more in the
console.
As needed: These formats control the look and feel of pages in the console. Use these
instructions to create new dashboards, especially helpful for NOC and cross Orion Platform
product data.
Configure Recommendations settings in VMAN

After you start monitoring and polling your environment, VMAN begins collecting and sending data to
trigger recommendations for active and potential issues. Recommendations settings are enabled
out-of-the-box and include a set of strategies defining the VM components to trigger
recommendations. You can configure the recommendation settings to ensure VMAN reports on alerts
and predictive actions based on your monitoring needs.
If you want to disable recommendations for a specific system or restrict available actions in
your virtual environment, you can create recommendation policies and constraints.
After configuring, consider reviewing global and virtual threshold settings. Recommendations and
alerts use thresholds to trigger actions and notify you of active and potential issues affecting your
environment.
1. Configure the recommendations settings from the Getting Started resource on the
Virtualization Summary page in the Orion Web Console. Click Manage Strategies.
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You can also access the Recommendations page anytime through the menu. Click My
Dashboards > Virtualization > Recommendations.
2. To configure the strategies, click Recommendation Settings.
The Recommendation Settings page displays with enable and disable options for all strategies.
When enabled, each strategy directs the Recommendation Engine to gather and review
monitored VM data to provide active and predictive recommendations.
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3. You can enable or disable each of the strategies:
l VM right sizing optimizations - These strategies locate VMs with under and over allocated
VM resources. Overallocated VMs have too many resources compared to usage and
needs, best utilized by underallocated VMs. Underallocated VMs do not have enough
resources allocated to them to support processes, potentially causing alerts. You can
expand Advanced Options for Overallocations and Underallocations.
l Host Performance and Capacity Assurance - These strategies locate hosts that will run
out of CPU or memory resources within a defined time period, and hosts with CPU or
memory usage currently over a critical threshold. You can expand Advanced Options for
Active Recommendations and Predictive Recommendations. For predictive
recommendations, you can modify the virtualization thresholds to affect the trigger
condition thresholds. For additional information on these thresholds, see this information.
l Storage Capacity Assurance - This strategy identifies datastores that may reach a
storage space or other limit within a defined time period.
l Balancing VMs on hosts - This strategy identifies VMs that may need to be distributed to
new hosts to achieve balanced usage and utilization.
Migrating VMs is only possible between hosts that are in the same cluster and have
shared storage.
4. When complete, click Recalculate Now.
The Recommendations Engine provides different levels of detail and precision based on how long it
has been collecting data:
l 1 hour: The minimum amount of data required to generate recommendations for immediate,
real-time issues.
l 1 week: The amount of data required to generate predictive recommendations about future
issues.
l 4 weeks: The amount of data required to generate optimal and more precise predictive
recommendations.
Configure virtualization thresholds

Alerts and recommendations are triggered when a monitored value exceeds a threshold. Thresholds
set the trigger levels for warning and critical alerts and recommendations. Thresholds include global
Orion Platform thresholds, global virtualization thresholds, and specific VM thresholds. As the Orion
Web Console collects and calculates data for VM performance, resource consumption, and status, all
thresholds are compared against the data to pinpoint active and potential issues.
Thresholds include:
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l Orion Platform thresholds - the Orion Platform comes with predefined static thresholds for
Orion product modules at the node level including average CPU load, disk usage, percent
memory used, percent packet loss, and response time.
l Virtualization Manager thresholds - VMAN uses a set of virtualization thresholds for triggering
virtual system specific alerts and recommendations. These thresholds include network
utilization, CPU load, memory usage, IOPS, latency, and capacity. You can configure these
thresholds globally or override per cluster, host, datastore, or VM.
Specific thresholds support only CPU load, memory usage, and network utilization.
If you want to change the predefined value for a threshold, use a static threshold or a dynamic
baseline threshold.
Static threshold
This threshold is a constant value that you set for your threshold. The value does not change unless
edited.
Example: You may enter a static value for the response time threshold as warning 500 ms and critical
as 1000 ms.
Dynamic baseline threshold

Data for a threshold is collected for a week and used to calculate mean and standard deviation. The
warning and critical threshold values are defined as 2 and 3 standard deviations above the mean,
respectively. Dynamic baseline thresholds are the most accurate way to define thresholds for a
specific device. You can recalculate baselines on demand after making threshold changes.
Example: If the mean value for packet loss for a specific node is 0%, the warning threshold for packet
loss would be 3% (+2 standard deviations) and the critical threshold would be 4% (+3 standard
deviations).
If you want to change the predefined value for a threshold, you use a static threshold or a dynamic
baseline threshold.
Using the dynamic baseline feature, you can display baselines on different charts in the Orion Web
Console. Dynamic baselines track performance and usage over time. This data generates into a
baseline threshold matching your specific environment.
deviations).
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Define a baseline for an individual node
1. Click Edit thresholds on the resource, and select the thresholds you want to edit.
2. Select Override Global Orion Threshold, and set either a static threshold, or click Use Dynamic
Baseline Thresholds to define a formula for calculating a baseline.
3. Click Submit.
Define a baseline for multiple nodes
1. In the Orion Web Console, select Settings > All Settings > Node & Group Management > and
click Manage Virtual Devices.
2. Click the Thresholds tab.
3. Select the entity type for which you want to configure a baseline threshold from the Show list.
4. Select the nodes for which you want to configure a baseline.
5. Click Edit Thresholds, and select the thresholds you want to edit.
6. Select Override Global Orion Threshold, and set either a static threshold, or click Use Dynamic
Baseline Thresholds to define a formula for calculating a baseline.
7. Click Submit.
For example, to configure thresholds for all virtual machines under a given host, first select all
vNodes, and then deselect the vNodes for which you do not want to define thresholds.
How thresholds work in VMAN

Alerts and recommendations are triggered when a monitored value exceeds a threshold. Thresholds
set the trigger levels for warning and critical alerts and recommendations. Thresholds include global
Orion Platform thresholds, global virtualization thresholds, and specific VM thresholds. As the Orion
Web Console collects and calculates data for VM performance, resource consumption, and status, all
thresholds are compared against the data to pinpoint active and potential issues.
Thresholds include:
l Orion Platform thresholds - The Orion Platform comes with predefined static thresholds for
Orion product modules at the node level including average CPU load, disk usage, percent
memory used, percent packet loss, and response time.
l Virtualization Manager thresholds - VMAN uses a set of virtualization thresholds for triggering
virtual system specific alerts and recommendations. These thresholds include network
utilization, CPU load, memory usage, IOPS, latency, and capacity. You can configure these
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thresholds globally or override per cluster, host, datastore, or VM.

Specific thresholds support only CPU load, memory usage, and network utilization.
If you want to change the predefined value for a threshold, you use a static threshold or a dynamic
baseline threshold.
Static threshold
This threshold is a constant value that you set for your threshold. The value does not change unless
edited.
Example: You may enter a static value for the response time threshold as warning 500 ms and critical
as 1000 ms.
Dynamic baseline threshold
deviations).
Learn more
To manage thresholds:
l Edit a VM global threshold

l Edit a VM specific threshold
Edit a VM global threshold

Recommendations and alerts trigger based on global and specific VMAN thresholds in the Orion Web
Console. If the global settings are not appropriate for your environment, you can adjust them.
Additionally, you can set specific thresholds for VMs that handle vital business applications or
services to warn staff prior to performance bottlenecks or issues.
In the following scenario, a virtual environment supports multiple heavy load applications and jobs
including Microsoft Exchange, the Orion Platform, and automated database backups and snapshots.
The VMs fill to capacity, the Exchange servers encounter issues, and new backups and snapshots
cannot be saved.
To avoid potential storage and capacity issues for Microsoft Exchange, backups, and snapshots, the
global threshold for Storage Capacity Usage needs to be reduced. A lower setting triggers alerts and
recommendations before an issue occurs.
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1. Click Settings > All Settings > Product Specific Settings > Virtualization Global Thresholds.
The Virtualization Global Thresholds page displays the global settings for all VMs.
2. Locate the Storage Capacity Usage threshold.

The default amounts are 80% warning and 90% critical.
3. Enter a lower threshold amount to receive alerts earlier.

Enter 70% warning and 80% critical.
4. Click Submit.
Learn more...
l Edit a VM specific threshold

l How thresholds work in VMAN
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Edit a VM specific threshold

As recommendations and alerts trigger, the default global thresholds may need to be adjusted for the
baselines of your environment. In some cases, alerts may constantly trigger or cause false positives
depending on factors including the amount of network traffic, capacity usage, and intended use of
the cluster, host, datastore, or VM.
For this example, the CPU load for Microsoft Exchange VM servers can greatly differ than the load by
normal application and storage VMs. The default thresholds for CPU load may trigger false positive
alerts for the Exchange servers. To better monitor and generate alerts, create specific VM thresholds
for the Exchange servers using Dynamic Baselines.

2. In the Product Specific Settings section, click Virtualization Settings.
3. In the Virtualization Settings section, click Virtualization Thresholds.
The Virtualization Thresholds page displays with a list of VMs.
4. Locate and select the checkboxes your Microsoft Exchange VMs, and click Edit Thresholds.
An Edit Properties page displays with thresholds to override and edit.
5. For the CPU load and Memory Usage, click Override Global Orion Threshold or Set Dynamic
Threshold.
For this example, Microsoft Exchange VMs undergoes consistent, heavy CPU load, memory
usage, and capacity usage. Setting a specific warning or critical amount could still generate
false positives. Due to the constant fluctuation, using dynamic baselines allows the system to
calculate the correct baselines based on actual tracked usage and metrics for the VM.
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6. Click Latest Baseline Details to review the latest metrics tracked for the VM. The following
example gives you insight to how the baselines are generated. Metric over Time tracks the full
bandwidth of CPU load, indicating the actual average CPU usage. A spike in usage as noted in
the tooltip shows the above average usage compared to the baseline.
VMAN creates a baseline of normal, warning level, and critical level of CPU usage directly from
this captured data.
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Click Cancel to close.

7. Click Use Dynamic Baseline Thresholds.
This option calculates and sets baselines based on monitored metrics over time for the
Exchange servers, providing more accurate alerting and recommendations.
8. Click Submit.
Learn more
l Edit a VM global threshold

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Edit a global Orion threshold
Alerts trigger using built-in global thresholds applied to every monitored node and VM in the Orion
Platform.
To modify thresholds specifically for VMAN, see Edit a VM global threshold.
1. To edit global statistics, click Settings > All Settings, and in the Thresholds & Polling group, click
Orion Thresholds.
2. Enter a value for each of the thresholds you want to modify.

3. Click Save.
Results
During the next polling, alerts and recommendations trigger using these modified thresholds.
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Learn more...
How thresholds affect recommendations in VMAN

Recommendation strategies look at the environment to solve specific issues and to adjust
allocations, performance, and also storage. All warnings and critical alerts and recommendations
trigger based on captured data compared to set global and VM specific thresholds. You can
configure these thresholds to better manage baselines, potential problems, and active issues.
You can review and modify two types of thresholds for VMan:
l Virtualization Thresholds: set thresholds at the specific VM level. You can override the global
settings per VM through these settings. To view, click Settings > All Settings > Virtualization
Settings > Virtualization Thresholds.
l Virtualization Global Thresholds: set global thresholds for all VMs. To view, click Settings > All
Settings > Thresholds & Polling > Virtualization Thresholds. All alerts and recommendations
trigger based on these thresholds.
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These settings provide the baselines, warning, and critical levels for alerts and the Recommendations
Engine to calculate against to report issues and solutions. On the All Recommendations page, you
can view all recommendations and see if any warning thresholds have been reached. In the example
below, a memory utilization threshold had been reached.
Click on the warning to see detailed information, and recommendations on how to solve the issue.
Click Statistics to view detailed information about the warning.
Click Steps to Perform, to see the recommendation on how to solve the issue. Follow the steps to
perform, and then click Apply this recommendation.
page 99
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The VMAN Appliance
For versions prior to 8.0, the VMAN virtual appliance was the polling engine for VMAN. The appliance
is installed as a virtual machine instance in your VMware or HyperV environment. To work with the
Orion Platform, the appliance must be integrated and synchronized.
Important: As of version 8.0, the appliance is no longer required, and VMAN is now a full Orion
Platform product.
New users
New users do not need to install or use the appliance. VMAN is fully functional as part of the
Orion Platform out of the box. The Orion Platform now includes the built-in Orion VMAN poller.
Existing users already using the appliance

Existing users upgrading to VMAN 8.0 or later can choose to:
l Continue using the appliance and integrate it into the Orion Platform.
- or -
l Retire the appliance and move fully over to the Orion Platform.
If you're upgrading VMAN, follow our VMAN Upgrade Guide which will walk you through the upgrade
process.
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VMAN appliance integration and synchronization with VMAN

in the Orion Platform
With VMAN 8.0 and later, VMAN recommends new installations using the single deployment of
VMAN with the Orion Platform or into an existing Orion Platform environment. Once installed with an
activated license, a fresh installation automatically has fully integrated features for VMAN directly
within the Orion Platform. In this case, you do not need to install the appliance.
However, if you decide to also install and use the VMAN appliance, you can integrate it with VMAN in
the Orion Platform. After installing both VMAN in the Orion Platform, in the Orion Web Console,
navigate to Settings > All Settings > Virtualization Settings > Setup Virtualization Manager
Integration.
For existing customers upgrading an existing VMAN appliance installation to an installation of

VMAN 8.0 and later in the Orion Platform, see the VMAN Upgrade Guide for detailed instructions for
upgrading VMAN and synchronizing entities.
Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard

For new and existing deployments using the VMAN appliance, you may see resources in the
Orion Web Console displaying no data and information about integration and the Synchronization
wizard. This wizard syncs your monitored virtual entities (VMware, vCenter, and Hyper-V) with the
Orion Platform and displays metrics and management options through the Orion Web Console.
Synchronization only affects your monitored virtual environment, not your monitored cloud
infrastructure using Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring.
The Synchronization wizard provides the following options:
l Recommended: migrates all entities into the Orion Platform and changes the polling method to
the VMAN Orion poller. Virtualization Manager nodes will be monitored and managed through
the Orion Web Console. Data sources are migrated into the Orion Platform and polled by the
VMAN Orion poller, replacing the VMAN appliance. Licenses will be consumed for monitored
nodes according to the polling method used. We recommend the VMAN Orion poller.
For new and existing VMAN deployments, we strongly recommend using the
Recommended option for VMAN entity migration and VMAN Orion poller.
l Advanced: allows selection of specific entities to display in the Orion Web Console for
managing, access, displaying metrics, running alerts and reports. It continues using the polling
method of VMAN appliance. To modify the polling method, go to Virtualization Settings >
Virtualization Polling Settings.
page 102
Regardless of selection, existing VMAN deployments using the appliance should read the
section Existing VMAN appliance polling and Synchronization. You may encounter
performance issues due to double polling.
Existing VMAN appliance polling and Synchronization

For existing VMAN deployments using the VMAN appliance and selecting the VMAN Orion poller,
VMAN continues double polling entities. What this means is, the VMAN appliance continues polling
every entity until modified directly through the appliance console regardless of the selected polling
method of VMAN Orion or Basic (which is Orion agent for Windows or Linux, WMI, or RPC).
To only poll once using the VMAN Orion poller, you must access the VMAN appliance console directly
and unmanage the entities. Every entity continues polling strictly through the selected poller in the
Orion Web Console: VMAN Orion poller (recommended) or Basic (not recommended for virtual
environments). For more information on poller options in VMAN, see Learn More about VMAN polling
and pollers.
Synchronize entities with the Orion Platform

To move polling over from the VMAN appliance to VMAN Orion poller, follow these steps:
1. Open the Orion Web Console.

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3. In the Product Specific Settings section, click Virtualization Settings.
4. In the Virtualization Settings section, click VMware Settings.

5. Select the nodes you want to modify the settings for.
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6. Click Polling Method > VMAN Orion.
The polling method changes from VMAN appliance to VMAN Orion polling.
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Virtualization Manager Licensing Model

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is licensed according to the number of CPU sockets per monitored
host. When you monitor a virtual host, VMAN collects metrics and data for all children VMs. If you try
to monitor more sockets than your license allows, you will not be able to add more data sources or
apply VMAN upgrades.
Orion Platform products support both perpetual licenses and subscription licenses. See
License types in the Orion Platform documentation for details.
VMAN includes two licenses:

l Primary license to be used in the Orion Web Console for VMAN in the Orion Platform.
l Secondary license to be used for legacy VMAN installations with the legacy VMAN appliance
(the VMAN appliance is not needed after VMAN 8.0).
See Virtualization Manager Primary and Secondary licenses for more information.
VMAN is available in the following license sizes:

License Tier Sockets
VMS8 8
VMS16 16
VMS32 32
VMS64 64
VMS112 112
VMS192 192
VMS320 320
VMS480 480
VMS640 640
VMS800 800
VMS1120 1120
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License Tier Sockets
VMS1440 1440
VMS1680 1680
VMS1920 1920
VMS2400 2400
VMS3040 3040
VMS3840 3840
VMS4800 4800
Get your license key

You can obtain the primary and secondary license keys through the Customer Portal.
1. Log in to the SolarWinds Customer Portal.

2. Select Licenses > Manage Licenses.
3. Locate an unregistered Virtualization Manager activation key. Make note of the license key.
Add primary license to VMAN in the Orion Platform

1. Log into the Orion Web Console.
2. Click Settings > All Settings, and click License Manager.
3. In the License Manager, click Add/Upgrade License.
4. Enter the Activation Key and Registration Information for the VMAN primary license, and click
Activate.
Add a secondary license key for the VMAN appliance online

You will add the secondary license key on the VMAN appliance using the VMAN console. These
instructions walk through adding the license online.
1. Log in to the VMAN console.

2. Click the Setup tab and select License Information.
3. Click Activate License.
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4. Enter the secondary license key.

5. In the Computer Name field, enter localhost.
6. Enter the other required information, and click Send Activation Request.
Add a secondary license key for the VMAN appliance offline

You will add the secondary license key on the VMAN appliance using the VMAN console. These
instructions walk through adding the license offline.
1. Log in to the VMAN console.

2. Click the Setup tab and select License Information.
3. Click Unique Machine ID, copy the machine ID, and save it on a flash device.
4. From a computer with Internet access, log in to the SolarWinds Customer Portal.
5. Click Licenses > Manage Licenses, and locate an unregistered Virtualization Manager activation
key.
6. Click Manually Register License, and enter the required information.
7. In the Computer Name field, enter localhost.
8. In the Unique Machine ID field, paste the machine ID copied from VMAN.
9. Click Generate License File, and download the license file.
10. Transfer the license file to a computer with access to VMAN.
11. Click Upload License File, select the license file, and click Open.
Exclude hosts from monitoring

If there are not enough SolarWinds Virtualization Manager licenses to cover every powered on virtual
machine managed by a vCenter server, change the access permissions of the vCenter user account to
limit what it can access.
Restricting the virtual machines accessible by the user account reduces the number of virtual
machines or sockets SolarWinds Virtualization Manager can collect data from. This way you can
control which virtual machines are being monitored.
You can control access permissions in the VMware client by assigning the No Access role to the
vCenter account for the hosts and virtual machines you want to restrict.
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ADMINISTRATOR GUIDE

Last Updated: Wednesday, June 3, 2020

© 2020 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.

SOLARWINDS DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, CONDITIONS, OR OTHER TERMS, EXPRESS OR

VMAN in the Orion Platform 5

New to the Orion Platform? 6

Get started with VMAN 6

Adding virtual systems in VMAN 6

Alerts and events in VMAN 20

VMware Events in VMAN 24

Optimizing virtual resources with VMAN 38

Evaluate VMs using the Sprawl dashboard 39

Manage virtual environments with recommendations 43

Run scenarios with Capacity Planning 66

Monitoring virtual disk statistics in VMAN 73

Manage and troubleshoot VMs using AppStack 78

Investigate VM performance with Performance Analysis 82

Customize and configure VMAN 86

The VMAN Appliance 101

New users 101

Existing users already using the appliance 101

Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard 102

Virtualization Manager Licensing Model 106

VMAN includes two licenses: 106

VMAN is available in the following license sizes: 106

Get your license key 107

Add primary license to VMAN in the Orion Platform 107

Exclude hosts from monitoring 108

VMAN in the Orion Platform

New to the Orion Platform?

Get started with VMAN

To fully experience VMAN, start with the following topics:

Adding virtual systems in VMAN

Supported versions of VMware, Hyper-V, Windows Server, and Nutanix

l vCenter Server 5.5 Update 3e

Supported versions of Hyper-V and Windows Server:

Supported versions of Nutanix:

l Nutanix AOS 5.10

Adding and updating VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix credentials in

Adding credentials to the Orion Web Console

VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix (API) credentials

Nutanix CVM credentials

Updating VMware credentials

Updating Hyper-V credentials

Updating Nutanix credentials

Nutanix API credentials

Nutanix CVM credentials

Required permissions for VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix credentials

VMware The VMware user account needs the following permissions:

Nutanix API credentials

Nutanix CVM credentials

You can also reach the same wizard in other ways:

Follow the steps in the wizard to add a new device:

4. The Metrics screen shows you what VMAN will monitor.

Manage virtual servers in VMAN

The options includes general management options including:

l Power off/on VM: use to power down and up a VM.

A snapshot generates and saves for the current VM.