Guest OS perf monitoring

[harumscarum]

I am running a perf mon application to monitor network device interface util, CPU, mem, various snmp stats.... I have loaded the app on a guest OS of Win server 2008 R2.  VM is ESX (I THINK it is some flavor of 3.x).

I am not the OS guy (although I have done this in the past) or the VM guy...

When I was provisioned the virtual server by the VM and OS groups I was not given the 'recommended' memory or CPU for the app.  I have had perf issues with this app.  I started monitoring the Windows OS stats... CPU, Mem, Hard Page faults and when I confronted the OS/VM groups about the fact that there appeared to be issues they informed me the OS is 'lied' to by the VM about all of those stats and they are not reliable.  You have to leverage the VM perf monitoring tools (which I do not have access to).

This confuses me... it seems that it would be difficult to run a shop where your guest OS's have incorrect settings particularly if your VM group and OS group are not one and the same... The OS group would be almost useless since they can do no perf tracking in any capacity.

Regardless... can anyone explain this phenomenon to me?  And are ANY of the perf stats you pull from snmp in a guest OS reliable?!?!  Is it only CPU and mem that are not?

A reference point I was given is pasted below from a vm knowledge base...

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2032

[idle-jam]

you can view thru the performance tab in the vpshere client. if you have vcenter you can even view past performance info. also do look out for esxtop for deeper troulebleshooting.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop/

[harumscarum]

Where is the vsphere client?  Is that actually something I would need to load on my local pc?  Or is that actually a part of vmtools that gets placed in the guest system?

I am guessing the vsphere client is something I need to ask the VMware group to load on my pc?  (Currently we use remote desktop to manage our guest server)

[idle-jam]

yes you will need them to load for you and that given you the only permission access to the VMs are you entitled to. shown below is a sample of the screenshots.

[harumscarum]

Sadly I asked for vsphere to be loaded on my PC and they said they will only load it for the OS administrators.

Unfortunately neither group has been very responsive to our app's perf difficulties.

Know of any other methods to get accurate CPU/Mem stats in my guest OS?

Are any of the stats correct?  Like page faults?