Hyper-V Monitoring and Reporting with Veeam Management Pack for System Center

Mike Resseler Veeam Product Strategy Specialist, MVP, Microsoft Certified IT Professional, MCSA, MCTS, MCP Hyper-V Monitoring and Reporting with Veeam Management Pack for System Center

Introduction Running a virtual infrastructure is and always has been a big challenge for IT teams. After initial setup and configuration of your hardware, networking, storage and virtualization layer, you need to maintain, manage and monitor it. The lifecycle of your environment is the part that costs the most and is sometimes ignored when implementing a solution. In an ideal world, you would implement a solution that would run solid for its lifetime and you would not need to manage, monitor or update it. But this ideal world doesn’t exist, and you need to have a good management solution.

The Microsoft System Center suite delivers a perfect solution that allows you to maintain, update, manage and monitor your environment. One of the components of System Center is Operations Manager ‒ a management and monitoring framework. Operations Manager is extensible through management packs (MPs), which contain the knowledge, rules, monitors, graphical views, reports and more to manage and monitor your infrastructure.

There are many MPs available. In fact, Microsoft provides System Center MPs to manage and monitor Microsoft solutions such as DNS, DHCP, AD, SQL, Exchange and others. Other MPs are from third-party hardware vendors such as IBM, HP, and Dell and allow you to monitor the hardware through Operations Manager. Those MPs are free when you buy hardware from the respective vendors. There are also third-party vendors that sell MPs to monitor non-Microsoft solutions―MySQL, Oracle, and BlackBerry―and vendors such as Veeam® that sell an MP to monitor and manage VMware vSphere infrastructures.

This white paper examines Hyper-V management and monitoring provided by Veeam Management Pack within Microsoft System Center. Hyper-V monitoring Microsoft has its own MP for monitoring key components in the Hyper-V stack. MPs such as the clustering MP, Hyper-V MP and the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) MP can be used for monitoring Hyper-V, Hyper-V clustering and SCVMM and its components. Veeam has its own Hyper-V monitoring that comes with Veeam Management Pack™ v7 for System Center and delivers more value and insight into your virtual environment compared to the Microsoft standard management packs.

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Why do you need the Veeam MP to monitor Hyper-V? If Microsoft has its own MPs for monitoring Hyper-V, why and when should you consider Veeam Management Pack for monitoring Hyper-V?

The answer: Veeam Management Pack for System Center provides deep visibility with dashboards, monitoring, reporting, capacity planning and more.

Microsoft’s MPs monitor some of the same aspects as Veeam MP, but Veeam MP extends System Center, collecting critical information from all related resources involved in running a complex virtualized environment. Rather than focusing on the differences between Veeam MP and Microsoft MPs, this white paper addresses some key areas where you can use Veeam Management Pack for System Center in your environment. Deep visibility One of the biggest challenges in an IT environment is visibility into the infrastructure. In many cases, multiple point solutions are used and although these provide visibility of a part of the infrastructure, it is a very challenging way to manage your environment. Such tools do not give you all the components in a single view, so when something goes wrong, it becomes very difficult to search for the root cause.

For example, if you run Exchange in a virtual machine on Hyper-V, underneath Hyper-V there is a hardware server attached to a Storage Area Network.

Now imagine that the service desk gets a call from an end user complaining that email is not working. And after that, many more calls come in confirming there is a significant issue. The IT team would open Operations Manager and see that the Exchange application is in a critical state. At the same time, they also see that the operating system is in a critical state. Then they open a point solution to investigate the hypervisor layer. They see that it is in a critical state also. This continues until the technician finally finds the root cause related to the issue, which could be at the bottom of the stack. As you can imagine, it would take significant time before they find this problem because they don’t have a single view of the environment or correlation between the different tools to show dependencies and relationships. In fact, the Operations team often does not even know that the virtual environment is part of the problem because they don’t have insight in that layer. And when they look at the email server, it isn’t obvious that it is a virtual machine.

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With Veeam MP’s app-to-metal view¹, you get a full view of your environment, from the hardware to the application (see Figure 1). Because of the correlation between all the components, the help desk or service desk can pinpoint the root cause very rapidly and notify the right team for the fastest time to resolution. It also gives the service desk an overview of the environment, even if they lack permissions to administer all the various parts. Having a full view of the environment is critical for being able to understand what is going on.

Figure 1: App-to-metal view Monitoring Veeam MP delivers more monitors, rules and performance collection for Hyper-V compared to Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Clustering MPs. Veeam MP correlates all parts of your virtual environment. If there is a problem on your clustered storage, Veeam MP understands that this is virtual machine (VM) storage and lists the impacted VMs that use that storage.

On the performance side, Veeam MP collects the metrics that matter and that you need to maintain your environment (see Figure 2).

1. Full app-to-metal functionality requires a SCOM agent in the virtual machine, and a hardware MP delivered free from the hardware vendor. 4 Hyper-V Monitoring and Reporting with Veeam Management Pack for System Center

Figure 2: Performance charts

But there is more. Instead of just alerting, Veeam MP uses smart analysis techniques to enhance the alert with the necessary information.

An example of an alert is shown in Figure 3. Besides reporting the alert, Veeam MP automatically gives you more information on the root-cause of the high memory pressure; for example, the cause could be that VM memory allocation is too low or that the host memory resources are exhausted. Veeam MP performs that analysis and provides the root-cause right in the alert description. This gives you much faster resolution times without the need for further troubleshooting.

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Figure 3: Smart Analysis monitor Knowledge base When reviewing alerts or warnings, it is important to have a good knowledge base (KB) to review possible solutions and/or to get more information on the type of counter, monitor or rule that triggers the alert.

Veeam MP comes with an extensive knowledge base that provides insight into the alarm and presents information on probable causes and possible resolution steps. And every KB article also comes with links to external information such as the Veeam help center and Microsoft documentation (see Figure 4).

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Figure 4: Knowledge base article Dashboards, widgets and much more! Alerting alone isn’t enough. It provides the information you need when your environment is approaching or already in an unhealthy state. However, you need proactive monitoring to keep your environment healthy and to solve potential issues before they arise. This requires deep visibility within your environment. Veeam Management Pack for System Center provides this with multiple unique views.

Global dashboards

Veeam MP’s global dashboards display top-10 information for different assets in your environment and give you a quick view of performance in your environment. An example is the Top Virtual Machines dashboard, which shows the top 10 virtual machines for CPU usage, storage errors, memory pressure and IOPS in a single view (see Figure 5).

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Figure 5: Top virtual machines dashboard

If you want to investigate more deeply, select an object and right-click to get more detailed dashboards. Figure 6 shows an example of drilling down into an object (VHVMP1) to view more details on the memory pressure of that virtual machine. Because Veeam MP correlates data among all the different management packs, you see all alerts and warnings to help quickly pinpoint the potential issue.

Figure 6: Drill through dashboard

Veeam traffic light widget

System Center 2012 brings a standard Top N widget to the framework. Veeam MP v7 enhances that standard widget by adding a traffic light feature. In the blink of an eye you can see whether objects in your environment are performing well (green), not so well (yellow) or poorly (red), based on customizable thresholds (see Figure 7).

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Figure 7: Top N widget for virtual machines

Veeam heatmap widget

Heatmap widgets and dashboards give you at-a-glance visualization of multiple metrics and are color-based so you’ll quickly see how your environment is performing. Based on the colors and size, you quickly know where you’ll need to take action to solve potential issues. You can also select a block and drill- down to more detailed dashboards (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: Veeam heatmap widget

Analysis dashboards

In-context analysis dashboards speed up the troubleshooting process and get you to the root-cause rapidly. These dashboards launch from the tasks pane or directly from a selected object on any of Veeam MP’s other dashboards. The host compute analysis dashboard (Figure 9) is an example of an in-context dashboard; it provides a quick overview of host compute (memory and CPU) for a selected host over the past 24 hours, and it also displays the VMs running on that host and their consumption of compute resources. Combined with other heatmaps, you will be able to pinpoint the root-cause in no time.

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Figure 9: Host compute analysis

Capacity planning widgets

In a virtualized world, capacity planning is extremely important. The ability to quickly deploy workloads or to increase the memory, CPU or storage requirements of an existing workload is definitively an advantage of virtualization, but there is also the danger of running out of resources. Having the ability to predict when you will run out of resources is a fantastic asset and with Veeam MP’s capacity planning widget, operators can quickly forecast how much longer resources will last (see Figure 10). When it looks as though the infrastructure might run out of resources soon, the operator can use the detailed capacity planning reporting to investigate (see Reporting, below).

Figure 10: Capacity planning widget

Veeam Task Manager for Hyper-V

Administrators have been using task managers regularly to troubleshoot problems in their environments. But with Hyper-V, this isn’t so easy, because Windows Task Manager does not understand the compute architecture of a Hyper-V host. When you open Windows Task Manager on a Hyper-V host, you see the CPU usage of the parent Hyper-V partition only, not including the CPU usage of the VM workloads running on that host. The Windows Task Manager shows the total memory used, but it won’t show memory consumption details for each running VM.

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Veeam Task Manager for Hyper-V solves this problem. It includes real-time host and VM compute metrics and can be launched in-context for any host object, straight from the System Center Operations Manager console. This dashboard shows you, at a glance, how your compute resources are being used and what components, host or VMs, are using them (see Figure 11).

Figure 11: Veeam Task Manager for Hyper-V Reporting When managing and monitoring a virtual environment, reporting is key to maintaining and improving the environment. For example, reporting gives you the ability to make forward-looking decisions and shows you poorly configured workloads. With objective data, you will make good decisions for the health of your environment and justify purchase and strategic actions with data.

Veeam MP delivers advanced reporting, such as capacity planning, what-if modeling, performance forecasting for clusters and storage, host-failure modeling, configuration tracking, undersized and oversized VMs reporting and more.

Capacity planning

In addition to the capacity planning widget discussed previously, Veeam MP includes capacity planning reports to predict when key resources will reach your thresholds (using various parameters) and provide detailed information about what is happening in your environment (see Figure 12).

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Figure 12: Capacity planning and forecasting

And Veeam MP now offers capacity planning for hybrid cloud. These reports analyze your environment and recommend the cloud IaaS resources you would need to run your workload either for Microsoft Azure or VMware Hybrid Cloud Service (see Figure 13).

Figure 13: Capacity planning for hybrid cloud

Host failure modeling

One of the most overlooked tasks in a virtual environment is tracking what happens if one of your hosts fails. A failure could be the result of a hardware problem or simply scheduled maintenance on the host. Virtualization has the advantage that you can live-migrate your workloads to another host when necessary but in many cases the VM density on the remaining hosts is too high and not enough resources are available to run everything when one or more hosts are down.

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Veeam MP’s host failure modeling report calculates what happens when such a host is down and tells you if you can still run all of your workloads with the remaining capacity (see Figure 14).

Figure 14: Host failure modeling What-if modeling When asked how many more workloads you can run on your environment, you usually have to do some manual calculations before giving an answer. Veeam MP has two what-if modeling reports that can help you with this question.

In one of these reports, you can select a running VM or set of VMs and, based on the current and historic performance data, the report will calculate how many sets of VMs you will be able to deploy on your current infrastructure and will show where the bottlenecks are. For example, imagine that a typical development environment consists of one SQL server, one web server and one application server. Those VMs require storage space, IOPS, memory and compute. The report tells you how many of these VM sets you still can deploy. The report further breaks it down into the different parameters so you can see what kind of resource you are missing the most (see Figure 15).

Besides running this report on an existing VM or set of VMs, you can also model the resources that will be needed and review the same information.

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Figure 15: What-if modeling report Configuration tracking and alert correlation Virtualization environments are always changing. It’s not easy to keep track of all the changes. Veeam MP’s configuration tracking and alert correlation report shows all the configuration changes of your environment, including the host details and configuration, cluster details, VM details and more. The report provides the date and details when there is a configuration change and allows you to correlate alarms with changes in the environment (see Figure 16).

Figure 16: Configuration tracking

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But there is more than this report. By integrating Veeam MP into System Center Service Manager, you can automatically build and maintain your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) with all the information and configuration of your virtual environment. For more on this subject, read the white paper: You can’t afford not to automate the System Center Service Manager CMDB. Storage performance profile In a virtual world, storage is the number one performance issue. Troubleshooting storage issues isn’t always easy and analyzing your current storage is probably even harder. Veeam MP’s storage performance profile report tracks latency and IOPS and matches highest latency to the time of the highest IOPS (see Figure 17). Your storage team will appreciate this report as it helps them to understand the real-world performance of storage and optimize the environment when necessary.

Figure 17: Storage performance profile Idle virtual machines Another known issue in a virtualized world is the concept of idle virtual machines. Idle virtual machines are difficult to find as they are still running and using resources, but in reality they aren’t doing much. These machines might be left over from a pilot or proof-of-concept project, or they are running an app that is no longer used, and they should be decommissioned. They are using valuable resources that can be used for new or existing workloads. Veeam MP’s idle VM report tracks those VMs (see Figure 18). This gives you the necessary information to talk to the workload owner to see if the idle VMs can be shut down, removed or archived.

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Figure 18: Idle virtual machines report Right-sizing When you deploy a new workload it is often very difficult to predict what kind of resources are needed for that specific workload. In many cases, the resource allocation is too high and in some cases too low. Two right-sizing reports are included in the Veeam MP to find oversized and undersized VMs so you can adapt where necessary to optimize your environment (see Figure 19).

Figure 19: Oversized reports

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Conclusion The management packs Microsoft includes with System Center for managing and monitoring your Hyper-V infrastructure deliver basic functionality. Veeam Management Pack extends System Center with more monitors, alerts, rules and performance collection. It also brings crucial new perspectives to the table, such as unique dashboards, heatmaps, widgets and topology views, to help you better understand and manage your environment.

Capacity planning, right-sizing and what-if modeling are a few examples of Veeam Management Pack reports that give you the data you need to optimize your environment, plan and forecast your future needed purchases, maximize the use of your valuable existing resources and allow your environment to run smoothly.

Veeam Management Pack for System Center offers key capabilities to make your virtualization projects successful, and they perfectly complement the native, out-of-box features in Microsoft System Center.

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About the Author Mike Resseler is a Product Strategy Specialist for Veeam. Mike is focused on technologies around Hyper-V and System Center. With years of experience in the field, he presents on many occasions at large events such as MMS, TechEd and TechDays. Mike has been awarded the MVP for System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management since 2010. His major hobby is discussing and developing solid disaster recovery scenarios. Additionally, he has enterprise-class experience in private cloud architecture and deployment, with marked focus on protection from the bottom to the top. He holds certifications in many Microsoft Technologies such as MCITP.

Follow Mike on @MikeResseler or @Veeam and on Google+. About Veeam Software Veeam® enables the Always-On Business™ by providing solutions that deliver Availability for the Modern Data Center™, which provides recovery time and point objectives (RTPO™) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data. Veeam recognizes the challenges in keeping a business up and running at all times and addresses them with solutions that provide high-speed recovery, data loss avoidance, verified protection, risk mitigation and complete visibility. Veeam Backup & Replication™ leverages technologies that enable the modern data center, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, NetApp storage, and HP 3PAR StoreServ and StoreVirtual Storage, to help organizations meet RTPOs, save time, mitigate risks, and dramatically reduce capital and operational costs. Veeam Availability Suite™ provides all of the benefits and features of Veeam Backup & Replication along with advanced monitoring, reporting and capacity planning for the backup infrastructure. Veeam Management Pack™ for System Center the most comprehensive, intuitive and intelligent extension for app-to-metal management of Hyper-V and vSphere infrastructures, and includes monitoring and reporting for Veeam Backup & Replication.The Veeam Cloud Provider Program (VCP) offers flexible monthly and perpetual licensing to meet the needs of hosting, managed service and cloud service providers. VCP currently has more than 4,500 service provider partners worldwide. Monthly rental is available in more than 70 countries from more than 50 Veeam aggregators.

Founded in 2006, Veeam currently has 25,000 ProPartners and more than 101,000 customers worldwide. Veeam’s global headquarters are located in Baar, Switzerland, and the company has offices throughout the world. To learn more, visit http://www.veeam.com.

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To learn more, visit http://www.veeam.com/backup 19