VCenter Performance tab: Overview view missing memory metrics. Only shows balloon.

[MMcDonald_EWS]

Excuse my post if this is a duplicate but I cannot find anything on this in any of the searching I've done.

I have several vCenter environment/clusters.  All of my ESX servers are  ESXi 4.1, and only one of my vCenter servers was updated to vCenter 5.1.

When I connect via vCenter client to my vCenter 4.x hosts and I view the performance tab of any of my VMs, on the overview view, the memory chart shows various counters, including Active, Shared, Balloon target, Balloon, and Swapped.

However, when I connect via vCenter client to my vCenter 5.1 host and try to do the same, the memory chart only has one counter, Balloon.  It is missing all of the other metrics.  I can go to advanced and pull them out manually, but I'm curious as to why they don't show on the overview tab.

Is this normal or is there something wrong in my environment?

TIA,

Matthew

[WiliamMerlin · Accepted solution]

I've had the same "problem" if you want to have this kind of information you will have to go to the menu administration on your vsphere and inside vcenter Server settings, after that you will need to go to the Statics option and change the static levels to 2. This change usually increases a lot the use of the database so be careful to change the least you can. In my case I just adjusted the 5minutes interval duration to Statistics Level 2 since I just need this kind the metrics for a day.

regards,

Wiliam

[MMcDonald_EWS]

Sorry for the delay and thank you for responding WiliamMerlin.

I'm not sure I understand your comment.  I understand increasing any statistics gathering would lead to inflation of the database, but given that the information I see is available under the advanced chart functions, I'm not clear as to why I must increase any statistics at all.

Can you elaborate?

Also, I may need to clarify my original post.. I'm trying to remember my environment when I posted this originally, but I think I was mistaken about what was actually upgraded to 5.1.  My ESXi hosts are all 4.1 and the only thing upgraded to 5.1 was my vCenter server.  When vCenter was upgraded to 5.1 is when I lost the additional memory counters.  I thought it may have been as a result of having 5.1 vCenter still managing 4.1 ESXi hosts, but I have since added newly built ESXi 5.1 servers and the issue remains.

Message was edited by: mcdonamwION

[WiliamMerlin]

Hi mcdonamwlON, not a problem. I understand you can see the counters on advanced chart fuctions, but have you tried to actually add the counters to the current view, let's say going back a week for example? no data will be shown, only the real time one. That's because of the configuration of Vcenter 5. What happens is, by default vcenter 4.1 has its statistics set to 2 on a daily basis. when this option is enabled the vcenter keep the detailed counters for a day, that way, in the overview you will be able to see the memory counters as shared, balloon target, active, swapped, ballon when you click on a VM (1 Day is the default view once you click the performance tab). When you upgraded for vcenter 5, the statistic for 1 day was set to level one instead of 2, and that's why you can't see the information you want. Since the statistics are stored in the vcenter database, it doesn't really matter what version of ESX(i) you are using, the vcenter does all the log keeping. That's why the change has to be done in the vcenter properties. I don't know why vmware changed that option on vcenter 5, they are maybe trying to reduce the size of the database, who knows. But the level of details was reduced on the vcenter 5. that's for sure. And in case you need a detailed performance chart you will have to edit the configuration yourself.

let me know if you still have doubts.

Regards,

Wiliam

[MMcDonald_EWS]

You are correct... Going back the available counters are much less than those on the real-time checks.

I submitted a request to VMware support and they pretty much confirmed all of this, and routed me towards an interesting document:  

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vCenter-DBPerfBestPractices.pdf

This document explains a lot of those changes.

I also did not realize vCenter 5.1 has a built in calculator to estimate the size of the DB when upping the stats levels.

I just have to now figure out which levels I need for which retention periods and balance with DB growth, which I fear will not be an easy exercise.  At any rate, thank you for your help.