I know you shouldn't use hardware monitoring software for VM's, but why is this one VM generating alarms all the time for high input and output network packets?
Probably yes (I don't know this app!) - get a network sniffer and take a look at the traffic.
I assume AV and stuff like that is in place and up to date.
I assume you are using the VMXNET.
VMXNET uses smaller packets (and therefor more packets) than the e1000.
Does that mean this is a bogus alarm?
It depends (as always)
Does the VI statistics correspond to the alarm?
What services does this VM provide?
What OS is the VM running?
It could be a security problem too.
VC doesn't show any excessive network traffic.
It's running Windows 2003 and is a contact management server.
Let me guess: your clients constantly poll the server and the server replies (as it should).
You can take a look at the network screen in esxtop - I bet it shows a high PKTTX/s value compared to your other VMs
Hmmm. Would that just be normal traffic then for this app?
Probably yes (I don't know this app!) - get a network sniffer and take a look at the traffic.
I assume AV and stuff like that is in place and up to date.
Everything is up to date. Esxtop looks ok I guess. There is another VM that is actually running higher. I'll chalk it up to bad monitoring tools?
If another VM is running higher I'd get rid of this monitoring tool or its configuration
I've been telling the eng. that is monitoring the VM's that you can't monitor hardware on VM's like a physical box. I think he's finally listening.