Foglight

Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition 6.5.2 User Guide

 2013 Quest Software, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

This guide contains proprietary information protected by copyright. The software described in this guide is furnished under a software license or nondisclosure agreement. This software may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of the applicable agreement. No part of this guide may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording for any purpose other than the purchasers personal use without the written permission of Quest Software, Inc. The information in this document is provided in connection with Quest products. No license, express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise, to any intellectual property right is granted by this document or in connection with the sale of Quest products. EXCEPT AS SET FORTH IN QUEST'S TERMS AND CONDITIONS AS SPECIFIED IN THE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR THIS PRODUCT, QUEST ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER AND DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY RELATING TO ITS PRODUCTS INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL QUEST BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION OR LOSS OF INFORMATION) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS DOCUMENT, EVEN IF QUEST HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. Quest makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this document and reserves the right to make changes to specifications and product descriptions at any time without notice. Quest does not make any commitment to update the information contained in this document. If you have any questions regarding your potential use of this material, contact: Quest Software World Headquarters LEGAL Dept 5 Polaris Way Aliso Viejo, CA 92656 www.quest.com email: legal@quest.com Refer to our Web site for regional and international office information.

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Trademarks
Quest, Quest Software, the Quest Software logo, Foglight, IntelliProfile, PerformaSure, Spotlight, StealthCollect, TOAD, Tag and Follow, Vintela Single Sign-on for Java, vOPS, and vFoglight are trademarks and registered trademarks of Quest Software, Inc in the United States of America and other countries. For a complete list of Quest Softwares trademarks, please see http://www.quest.com/legal/trademark-information.aspx. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Third Party Contributions

Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition contains some third party components. For a complete list, see http:// edocs.quest.com and look for the License Credits page for your specific product release.

User Guide April 2013 Version 6.5.2

Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition: User Guide

Table of Contents
Introduction to this Guide..................................................................................................................................................4
About Quest Software, Inc. ............................................................................................................................................................. 4 Contacting Quest Software ..................................................................................................................................................... 4 For More Information....................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition Overview.......................................................................................................6

Environment Explorer Overview...................................................................................................................................................... 6 vScope Explorer Overview .............................................................................................................................................................. 7 Performance vScope....................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Capacity vScope ........................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Efficiency vScope .......................................................................................................................................................................... 11 SearchMyVM Explorer Overview .................................................................................................................................................. 13 Searching by Name............................................................................................................................................................... 14 Using the Advanced Search.................................................................................................................................................. 14 Saving Searches ................................................................................................................................................................... 15 Exporting Search Results as a Report .................................................................................................................................. 16 Storage Explorer ........................................................................................................................................................................... 16 Change Explorer .......................................................................................................................................................................... 17 Snapshot Explorer......................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Orphaned Snapshots ............................................................................................................................................................ 19

Activating a Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition Trial................................................................................21 Index ..................................................................................................................................................................................23

Introduction to this Guide

This User Guide provides instructions for using the dashboards and views that are available in the Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition.

About Quest Software, Inc.

Established in 1987, Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) provides simple and innovative IT management solutions that enable more than 100,000 global customers to save time and money across physical and virtual environments. Quest products solve complex IT challenges ranging from database management, data protection, identity and access management, monitoring, user workspace management to Windows management. For more information, visit www.quest.com.

Contacting Quest Software

Email Mail info@quest.com Quest Software, Inc. World Headquarters 5 Polaris Way Aliso Viejo, CA 92656 USA www.quest.com

Web site

Refer to our Web site for regional and international office information.

For More Information

Get the latest product information, find helpful resources, and join a discussion with the Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition team and other community members at http:// communities.quest.com/community/vops.

Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition: User Guide Introduction to this Guide

Users of Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition are not supported through standard support channels. Community support is available only through the Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition Community which will provide product support and offer users best practices for managing the performance of virtual environments along with tips and tricks from product experts.

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Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition Overview
Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition provides six valuable utilities for use in the management of your virtual environment. Each utility is accessed by clicking the tab at the top of the main view. Environment Explorer provides a detailed at-a-glance view of your entire environment. This view opens by default when you log in to Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition. For more information, see Environment Explorer Overview on page 6. vScope Explorer provides an environment-wide, cross-hypervisor visualization of the status of your infrastructure. You can visualize status by Performance, Capacity, or Efficiency. For more information, see vScope Explorer Overview on page 7. SearchMyVM Explorer provides an environment-wide, cross-hypervisor search tool for your virtual infrastructure. Using the SearchMyVM options, you can search through your virtual machines, resource pools, hosts, or clusters. For more information, see SearchMyVM Explorer Overview on page 13. Storage Explorer provides performance and capacity details for datastores and virtual machines, within the last 24 hours. For more information, see Storage Explorer on page 16. Change Explorer provides a list of all changes that occurred to datacenters, clusters, resource pools, hosts, virtual machines, and datastores within the last seven days. For more information, see Change Explorer on page 17. Snapshot Explorer provides an overview of snapshots (count, age, and size) and allows you to set filters to find specific problems, such as orphaned snapshots. For more information, see Snapshot Explorer on page 18.

Environment Explorer Overview

The Environment Explorer provides a detailed, at-a-glance view of your entire environment. This view opens by default when you log in to Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition. Use this view to gain an understanding of potential issues in your environment, broken down into the following categories: Environment Summary

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Performance Inefficiency & Waste Capacity Changes Snapshots You can also access the Learning Center and other resources for help in achieving environment management results.

From this view, you can access a trial version of Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition, which provides tools for remedying issues. For more information, see Activating a Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition Trial on page 21.

vScope Explorer Overview

vScope Explorer assesses the health of virtualized environments and immediately identifies VMs, hosts, and datastores that are experiencing performance, capacity, and efficiency issues.

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Performance vScope
The Performance vScope indicates which VMs or hosts are either experiencing or on the verge of experiencing performance problems. Two different views are provided in the form of heat maps, one from a VM-focused perspective, and one from a host-focused perspective.
Note
To access Performance vScope, you must have a Java plug-in installed for your Web browser.

VM Performance View

In the VM Performance view, each colored box represents a single VM, grouped by host, cluster and data center. The color of each VM indicates the severity of identified performance issues. Red indicates serious performance problems, while yellow indicates less serious or imminent performance issues. VMs with no identified issues are green. To see what specific issues are impacting the performance health of the VM, hover your cursor over the VM box. A popup opens, listing the details. From here, you can quickly activate a free Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial to see further details about the issues.

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Host Performance View

In the Host Performance view, each colored box represents a single host, again grouped by cluster and data center. The colors of the host boxes have the same meaning as those of the VMs. To see what specific issues are impacting the performance health of the host, hover your cursor over the host box. A popup opens, listing the details. From here, you can quickly activate a free Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial to see further details about the issues.

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Capacity vScope
The Capacity vScope indicates the capacity state of all hosts and clusters in the form of a heat map. Each colored box represents a single host. Hosts are further grouped by cluster and data center. The color of each host indicates its capacity-related health. Hosts with no factors negatively impacting their capacity are green, hosts with some minor factors or future/negatively trending factors are yellow, and hosts with significant factors are red. To see what specific issues are impacting the capacity health of the host, hover your cursor over the host box. A popup lists the details. From here, you can quickly activate a free Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial to see further details about the issues.

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Efficiency vScope
vScope provides an environment-wide, cross-hypervisor visualization of the status of your infrastructure. The Efficiency vScope indicates the efficiency of resource allocation or usage from either a VM-focused perspective or a datastore-focused perspective in the form of a heat map.

VM Efficiency View
In the VM Efficiency view, each colored box represents a single VM, grouped by host, cluster, and data center. The color of each VM indicates the degree to which it inefficiently uses resources. Severely oversized VMs are red, moderately oversized VMs, and suspected zombies are yellow. VMs with no identified issues are green. To see what specific issues are impacting the efficiency health of the VM, hover your cursor over the VM box to open a popup with detailed information. From here, you can quickly activate a free Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial to diagnose the VM.

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Datastore Efficiency View

In the Datastore Efficiency view, each colored box represents a single datastore, grouped by hypervisor environment. The color of each datastore indicates the extent of wasted storage identified, where red means very extensive waste, yellow is moderate waste, and green identifies datastores with little or no wasted storage. To see what specific issues are impacting the efficiency health of the host, hover your cursor over the host box to open a popup with detailed information. From here, you can quickly activate a free Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial to see further details about the issues.

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SearchMyVM Explorer Overview

SearchMyVM Explorer provides an environment-wide, cross-hypervisor search tool for your virtual infrastructure. From this view you can search through your virtual machines, resource pools, hosts, or clusters.

To search for all objects of a selected type:

1 Select the object type you want to search (for example, Virtual Machine). 2 Type an asterisk (*) in the search box. Note
Do not include the brackets ( ).

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3 Click Search.

Searching by Name
Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition finds all objects of the selected type (Virtual machine, Host, Cluster, or Resource Pool) that contain the case insensitive characters entered in the search box. For example, to locate all virtual machines with OS in their name, type OS in the search box and click Search.

Using the Advanced Search

If you need to create a more complex search query, you can use the Advanced Search to create rule sets. Each rule set can contain multiple rules. For example, a rule set containing Guest OS Name contains linux and VM Name contains VMware will find all Linux-based virtual machines with VMware in the name. To create an advanced search query:
1 In the SearchMyVM view, below the Search box, click Advanced Search.

The Advanced Search dialog box appears.

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2 Select the Object Type. 3 Type a name for the rule set in the Name box. 4 Click in the Characteristics field to open a list of characteristics. Note
This option is required.

5 Select a characteristic from the list.

The Condition list opens automatically.

6 Select the condition to use (for example, matches). 7 Type a value in the Value field. 8 To add another rule, press Tab. The Characteristics list opens in a new row. Repeat step 5

through step 7.
9 When you are finished adding rules, click Search. Note
You must configure the default rule set (Rule Set 1) before you can create additional rule sets using the New Rule Set button.

Saving Searches
If you need to repeat a certain search regularly, you can save that particular search as a time-saving measure. To save a search:
1 In the SearchMyVM view, below the Search box, click Save This Search.

The Save Search dialog box appears.

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2 Type a name for the search in the Name box. 3 Type a description for the search in the Description box. 4 Select the Object Type. 5 Select an existing rule set, or create a new one. For more information, see Using the

Advanced Search on page 14,

6 Click Save.

Reviewing Saved Searches

To review and re-run a saved search:
1 In the SearchMyVM view, below the Search box, click Saved Searches.

The Saved Inventory Searches dialog box appears.

2 Select a saved search from the list. 3 Click Search to re-run the search. Tip
You can also edit the search before running it, or create and save a new search from this dialog box.

Exporting Search Results as a Report

You can export search results as a report file in one of three formats: XML, PDF, or CSV. This allows you to review the results offline or to send a report to another interested party.

To export search results as a file:

1 Click the icon for the file type you want to export to.

A message box appears while the report is prepared.

2 You are prompted to save or open the report.

Storage Explorer
Storage Explorer displays the performance and capacity details of the datastores and virtual machines in the environment, within the last 24 hours. Note that the top 10 objects in each category are displayed.

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Datastore and VM issues such as low capacity, high latency, and low available disk space are identified by colour highlighting. Red indicates serious capacity or performance problems, while yellow indicates a less severe or imminent issue. You can quickly sort on any metric to find issues that are specific to your requirements. You can also drill down to explore further details by activating the Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial. For further details, see Activating a Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition Trial on page 21.
Note
VMware Tools must be installed on virtual machines for capacity metrics to be collected and displayed in the VM Capacity table.

Change Explorer
Change Explorer lists all changes that occurred to datacenters, clusters, resource pools, hosts, virtual machines, and datastores within the previous seven days.

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Each row of the report shows the potential risk of performance impact, the time of the change, the object on which the change occurred, the change type and brief description, before and after values when available, the user who made the change, and the full path to the changed object. By default, entries are ordered by the time the change occurred. At the bottom of the screen, a graph shows the numbers of changes that occurred within the previous seven days, allowing easy identification of periods in which unusual numbers of changes occurred. Hovering your cursor over a bar in the chart causes a tooltip to appear showing the total counts of changes at each risk level. Every report in Change Explorer can be sorted by clicking on the appropriate column header, or filtered using one of the following mechanisms in the report-level toolbar just above the report: Nametype a name to filter the report by the name of the VM or object. Usertype a user name to filter the report by the name of the user who made the change. Typeselect the change or deviation types to display. You can filter by the type of object on which the change occurred, the type of change, or the impact risk level.

Snapshot Explorer
Snapshot Explorer provides a listing of VM snapshot files. This listing includes the snapshot age, size, and a count of the snapshots that can be found on a specific VM. You can filter snapshots by age, size, count, or VM name. It is also possible to use multiple filters, such as greater than 14 days and greater than 10 GB.

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A summary of the snapshots in your environment appears at the top of the page. Click any of the links to display further details in the Snapshot List table. If you want to remove snapshots or set up other types of waste detection, activate the Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial. For further details, see Activating a Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition Trial on page 21.

Orphaned Snapshots
An orphaned snapshot is a snapshot file that the hypervisor has lost control of. This can occur if a snapshot or snapshot tree is deleted or committed, and for some reason is unable to merge with the base disk. Over time, these delta files can cause a datastore to run out of disk space, thus prompting a serious outage. Snapshot Explorer detects the following types of orphaned snapshot files: .VMSNstores the running state of a VM when a snapshot was taken. A large file size indicates that memory was included when the snapshot was taken. .VMDKdelta disk which contains all changes since a snapshot was taken. To filter for these file types:
1 In the Snapshot Summary Counts table, located at the top of the page, click Orphaned

Snapshots. The Filters area refreshes with various filter options.

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2 Select the file type that you want to use to filter or type a specific file name.

The Orphaned Snapshots list is refreshed.

Removing Orphaned Snapshot Files

There are two methods for removing orphaned snapshot files, depending on the version of vSphere that you are using. To remove an orphaned snapshot file using vSphere 5.0:
1 Log in to the vCenter 5.0 Client. 2 Click the Virtual Machines tab. 3 Select the required VM. The VM is the one on which the snapshot file resides. 4 Right-click and select Snapshot > Consolidate.

The orphaned snapshots are consolidated.

5 Verify that there are no orphaned snapshots remaining in the VM folder.

To remove an orphaned snapshot file using an earlier version of vSphere (4.x):

1 Create a new snapshot of the virtual machine. 2 Remove the snapshot file that you created. This operation deletes the file and consolidates

the data.
3 Verify that there are no orphaned snapshots remaining in the VM folder.

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Activating a Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition Trial
A 30-day free trial of the complete Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition is readily available. To activate the free trial:
1 Click Activate Trial at the top of any view.

A Request a Trial License dialog box appears.

2 Fill in all the fields and then click Request the License.

The request is processed and installed immediately.

3 Click Finish.

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The browser window refreshes and displays the Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition log in page.
4 Type the default user name and password: vkernel. 5 Click Login.

Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition loads.

To return to Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition at any time: Type the IP address of the Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition virtual machine, followed by /free, in the browsers navigation bar.

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Index
A
activating Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial 21 advanced search 14 reviewing saved searches 16 saved searches 15 SearchMyVM Explorer 6, 13 Snapshot Explorer 18 Storage Explorer 16

C
Capacity vScope 10 Change Explorer 17 CSV 16

T
trial version 21

V
vScope Capacity 10 Efficiency 11 Performance 8 vScope Explorer 6, 7

E
Efficiency vScope 11 Environment Explorer 6 Explorer Environment 6 SearchMyVM 6, 13 vScope 6, 7 exporting search results 16

X
XML 16

F
Foglight for Virtualization, Standard Edition trial version 21

P
PDF 16 Performance vScope 8

R
reports, exporting search results 16 reviewing saved searches 16

S
saving searches 15 searching advanced 14 by name 14 exporting results 16