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TheVMinator
Expert
Expert

vCenter Server performance metrics

I have a question about vCenter Server performance metrics when troubleshooting performance issues.  Suppose that I have checked all the performance metrics in vCenter server using the VMware recommended process

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10352

and there are NO indications of performance problems based on any of the criterion or metrics as viewable in vCenter Server but I'm still seeing application performance issues.  Is it worthwhile to in addition use a third party tool to gain a different perspective?  Are there situations where I still may miss something by viewing only what I see in vCenter Server?  If the issue is purely inside the application itself and not with the VM / host I want to focus where the issue is.  I want to make sure I have totally ruled out performance problems on the ESX host / VM.

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

most 3rd party tools pull from the vCenter API, so if you have no indication of performance issues by looking at all the vCenter metrics, then you shouldn't see anything different from 3rd party solutions.  It could simply be an application problem.  I would work with your application group to determine root cause and if a  Windows Guest maybe run some perfmon tests as well.

jonpartridge
Contributor
Contributor

I agree with Troy.  A third party tool may only give you the same information organized in a slightly better fashion.  If you are looking at vCenter performance metrics in "Real Time" then you are getting new data every 20 seconds.  If you are looking historically you should be getting data in the following increments (unless you had changed the default values):

1 Day = 5 Minutes

1 Week = 30 Minutes

1 Month = 2 Hours

1 Year = 1 Day

Typically if your app is having performance problems (mem leak, excessive cpu usage, etc.), you'll be able to catch this in the "Real Time" charts.  However, if it's a temperamental problem, you may be better off running Perfmon on guest OS and gathering those statistics as well.

It also benefits to have a clear picture of how your app works, what other servers it needs to contact (SQL, etc).  This way you can verify that there is not a bottleneck up/down stream.  If after this you still see no performance problems with the host, I'd look towards potential problems with the app.  If this is an inhouse developed app, there are plenty of application monitoring products that you can purchase/run as well.  Typically these tools work well with .NET or Java based apps.  You could use one of these tools to find out where in the application the slow down is occurring.  For instance, a .NET app that has a really inefficient SQL call.

Good Luck!

TheVMinator
Expert
Expert

Thanks for the input

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SlobodanS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello,

You can check for 4.1 docs update http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-14905

Be aware when you set your level statistics, my SQL database grow up from 30BG to 90GB in 3 week (19 esx)

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