Net Inspector supports monitoring the organization's virtualization infrastructure, i.e., virtualization servers (VMware ESX/ESXi and vCenter and Microsoft Hyper-V) and the associated virtual machines (VMs).
The software incorporates the auto configuration functionality, which enables automatic adding of network devices to Net Inspector Device Panel and, optionally, to workspace maps.
A part of the auto configuration functionality is a feature that discovers the virtualization server topology and guest virtual machines (VMs) on virtualization servers and automatically adds these as monitored devices to Net Inspector.
For other auto configuration options, please refer to the Adding Devices from SNMP Traps and NetFlow (Auto Configuration) topic.
This section describes how to add an entire virtual topology consisting of a virtual server, host and virtual machines (VMs) to a Net Inspector map using the auto configuration feature.
Note: Only users with administrator access rights are permitted to configure auto configuration options and add new devices to Net Inspector.
Click the Settings tab in Net Inspector header to display the Settings page.
Click the Auto Configuration button in the Settings page to open the Auto Configuration dialog box.
In the Auto Configuration dialog box, the Add devices on new Virtual Machine discovered frame controls how Net Inspector handles discovered virtual machines on virtualization servers, as follows:
To enable adding devices for all discovered guest VMs, select the Add all VMs option from the drop-down list.
To enable adding devices for all discovered guest VMs that are currently running (powered on), select the Add running VMs only option from the drop-down list.
To enable adding devices for newly discovered guest VMs to the same map as the parent device (i.e., virtualization server or host), select the Add new virtual machines on the map beside parent option.
Click the OK button at the bottom of the Auto Configuration dialog box to close it and apply the settings.
Add a new device representing a virtualization server (VMware vCenter or ESX/ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V) to a Net Inspector map, as described in the Adding Devices Manually topic.
In the New Device or Edit Device Monitoring Options dialog box, in the General tab, configure the following settings (as shown in the figure below):
Figure: Configuring the properties of a virtualization server device (polling profile, access profile)
Leave the Monitoring state switch in the ON position to enable device monitoring.
Into the Name input line, enter the name of the virtual server device, as it will appear in Net Inspector.
Into the Address input line, enter the IPv4 or IPv6 address or the fully qualified domain name of the virtual server device.
In the Class drop-down list, optionally select the class of the device (e.g., Virtual Server).
In the Icon drop-down list, optionally select the icon for the device (e.g., virtual-server).
In the Polling profile drop-down list, select the polling profile to be used for polling the given virtual server device. This poling profile must be configured to use the WMI protocol (when polling Microsoft virtualization servers) or the VMware protocol (when polling VMware vSphere virtualization servers). To create a new polling profile or edit existing ones, click the Browse (...) button next to this input line to open the Polling Profiles dialog box, where you can manage polling profiles.
In the Access profile drop-down list, select the access profile to be used for accessing the given virtual server device. An access profile contains credentials for accessing devices using supported protocols/methods, in this case either WMI or VMware. To create a new access profile or edit existing ones, click the Browse (...) button next to this input line to open the Access Profiles dialog box, where you can manage access profiles.
In the Polling engine drop-down list, select the IP address of the Net Inspector polling engine that will be used for polling the given device (e.g., 127.0.0.1 for the local polling engine or the IP address of a remote polling engine - if installed).
After configuring the above settings in the New Device or Edit Device Monitoring Options dialog box, click the OK button to close this dialog box and apply the settings.
Net Inspector will query the given device via the respective protocol (WMI or VMware) and start discovering the virtualization topology (server, hosts, VMs and their connections).
When Net Inspector finishes discovering the virtualization topology, it will automatically add new devices to the system (Device Panel) and to the workspace (selected user view and map). New device icons representing VMs will be automatically connected to the virtual server or virtual host type of device (the latter is also automatically added if VMware virtualization is used), as shown in the figure below.
Figure: Virtualization infrastructure topology discovered by the auto-configuration feature
Note: The performance metrics of all virtual machines are monitored by polling the virtual server device.
In Net Inspector, virtualization servers are normally devices of type virtual server or virtual host, and virtual machines are devices of type virtual machine.
In case of VMware virtualization, a three-level virtualization topology hierarchy is used, with the top level being the virtual server. The second level is (one ore more) virtual host, and the third level is the virtual machines (VMs). In this case, the virtual server represents the control plane of the virtualization infrastructure, which is either a vCenter server or a control plane of the ESXi hypervisor. The virtual host represents the host computer that runs the virtual machines (VMs).
In case of Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization, a two-level topology is used, with the top layer being a virtual server and a lower layer being the subordinated VMs.