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Inside vPV: a new way to monitor and troubleshoot virtualization performance

HPSW-Guest| December 11, 2012
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by Sudhindra Kumar TL, Operations and Performance Management

HP Software Products and Solutions

 

Administering the proliferation of virtualized infrastructures has become a full-time job—and then some. Virtualization administrators and Virtualization Subject Matter Experts (vSMEs) need to monitor many elements and domains, including the status, problems and wastage of virtualized servers, storage and network infrastructure. They also need troubleshooting tools and workflows to pinpoint problems, foresee capacity issues and identify underutilized systems.

 

It’s a complex role to play, and vSMEs often spend too much time troubleshooting, find it difficult to see all the details and must constantly switch between too many tools.

 

HP’s new Virtualization Performance Viewer has been developed as a real-time diagnostic and triage tool to improve how vSMEs and other virtualization administrators perform their roles, allowing them to quickly visualize data from a single console and begin to diagnose performance issues rapidly.

 

Here is an overview of how administrators can use vPV to troubleshoot, perform triage analysis and report on virtualized infrastructures.

 

1. Troubleshooting with Treemaps

The primary method that vPV uses to help admins identify patterns of problems across elements of similar type is Treemaps. These visual analytic representations of data trees are commonly used by financial analysts and stock trading websites to analyze complex patterns and behavior of financial instruments. Treemaps organize objects in structured hierarchies to represent multidimensional performance data using easily identifiable size and colour indicators.

 

In vPV, Treemaps (Fig. 1) provide an intuitive, visual way to identify issues with resource utilization and capacity. The dashboard displays an ordered listing of elements based on various factors, such as # of CPU cores or size of memory for hosts, or usage and latency for storage.

 

TreeMap-blur.png

Fig. 1

 

Admins can also group and filter their view of the hierarchy (Fig. 2), including an “interesting” subset, as well as easily switch between hosts, VM, storage and other views via a navigation dashboard.

 

 

image003.png 

Fig. 2

 

 

2. Performing triage analysis with Workbench

 

In order to trend server utilization over different time ranges, vPV offers a Workbench view (Fig. 3). This standard Explorer-based UI allows vSMEs to quickly visualize performance of individual entities and perform triage as necessary by tracking across days, weeks, or a month. Performance counters also enable administrators to compare usage rates of systems in the near term.

 

Workbench.png

Fig. 2

 

3. Reporting performance trends

 

vPV offers multiple kinds of out-of-the-box reports available in both HTML and PDF format (Fig. 4). These include:

  • Inventory reports
  • Monthly trends of usage, activity
  • Top and bottom Utilization
  • Pie-chart of usage
  • Group and individual reports
  • Storage reports
  • Storage used by VM breakdown

Reports.jpg

Fig. 4

 

Gaining visibility into virtualized infrastructures

It’s important for vSMEs to quickly and easily troubleshoot performance issues, with both high-level views and the ability to drill down into specific performance bottlenecks for ad hoc analysis of performance issues. vPV provides this capability, with real-time insight into underlying virtualized environments.

 

Learn more about vPV

Available as a Virtual Appliance, Linux installer and extractable archive, HP vPV provides support for multiple hypervisors, including VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V.

 

Interested in getting more information? Here are two ways for you to further evaluate what vPV can offer your organization:

 

Tags: BSM| BSM 9.2| Business Service Management| virtualization| vpv View All (5)
Labels: BSM| bsm 9.2| business service management| virtualization| vPV
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About the Author(s)
  • Beth Parker is a Product Marketing Manager for HP Software. Beth is responsible for outbound marketing and sales enablement for the HP Systems Management portfolio including HP Operations Manager, Operations Agents, Smart Plug-ins and SiteScope. She is based in Naples, Florida.
  • Doug is a subject matter expert for network and system performance management. With an engineering career spanning 25 years at HP, Doug has worked in R&D, support, and technical marketing positions, and is an ambassador for quality and the customer interest.
  • This account is for guest bloggers. The blog post will identify the blogger.
  • Jim is a technology marketer with over two decades experience in product launch, branding, and product marketing
  • Jimmy Augustine is Director of Product Marketing within HP Software and leads the HP Application Performance Management and Configuration Management System product marketing teams. JImmy has been with HP for over a year. Prior to HP, Jimmy was VP of Marketing for ASG Software Solutions. Prior to joining ASG, Jimmy was at IBM for ten years. He was a marketing manager for IBM's Outsourcing business, the market leader, and helped launch IBM's market leading web hosting business. Jimmy holds an M.S. in industrial engineering and a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida. Jimmy resides in Naples, FL with his wife and two children.
  • Ken is responsible for worldwide marketing of HP’s virtualization and systems management products. His experience includes over 20 years in marketing, product management and business development. In addition to IT management software, his background includes enterprise storage and systems.
  • Mark Pinskey is the Product Marketing Manager for HP Network Management Solutions within HP Software and concentrates on HP's Network Management Center software solutions. Mark has been with HP for over 29 years. Prior to HP, Mark has worked within the IT organization for the FBI in Washington D.C.. Mark has spent much time evangelizing HP's Automated Network Management solution and the value proposition this solution provides to customers. Mark holds a dual major B.S. in Political Science and Biology and additional credentialis in Computer Science. Mark resides in the Cleveland, Ohio area with his wife and two grown children.
  • Ramkumar Devanathan works in the IOM-Customer Assist Team (CAT) providing technical assistance to HP Software pre-sales and support teams with Operations Management products including vPV, SHO, VISPI. He has experience of more than 12 years in this product line, working in various roles ranging from developer to product architect.
  • Sonja is a Product Marketing Manager for the HP Software Operations Center portfolio of products. She has 19 years of product marketing, product management, engineering, and consulting experience with privately-held, start-up, and Fortune 500 companies. Sonja has been responsible for positioning, messaging, strategy, and go-to-market programs for both consumer and B2B product lines.  Companies that she has worked for include InstallShield, Loudcloud, Sun Microsystems, and AT&T.


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