How do you monitor your VM environment?

[abugeja]

Hi,

Without using products such as VCops how do you monitor your virtual environment to ensure that its running at its best? Do you use scripts or other ways that don't cost anything?

Thanks.

[AndySimmons]

It really depends on your needs, and your vSphere license levels. I'm mostly wondering if you have the option of leveraging vCenter (both native functionality and the APIs).

Quite a few vendors make free versions of their performance monitoring products (Veeam ONE, VMturbo, vFoglight, vKernel vOPS, SolarWinds, etc). As you probably know, VMware also provides vCOPS Foundation free with all vSphere editions. Is there something in particular you don't like about vCOPS Foundation, that you're hoping to address with another free solution?