WhatsUp Gold WhatsVirtual Plug-In

As a network or systems administrator in charge of running your datacenter environment, it is likely you have already embraced virtualization or are thinking of doing so. Apart from cost, virtualization also provides you the agility to quickly provision or reallocate server capacity whenever your business or applications so demand.

Managing virtualized environments presents different challenges than running physical infrastructure. For one, dynamic virtualized systems typically don't support the standard SNMP mode of data collection. Even if they do, they provide only limited or inaccurate information. As a result you are probably compelled to use a different server monitoring software for your virtual servers than you do for your physical systems infrastructure, making your job more difficult. And typically virtualization management software that ship with the software have rudimentary capability at best. You likely miss the breadth and depth of management information and real-time alerting that a full- fledged management system can provide.

New in WhatsUp WhatsVirtual v15

Our Most Powerful Virtual Discovery Engine. Discover and monitor VMware VMs, clusters and resources from within WhatsUp Gold, faster than ever before.

New Dynamic LiveMaps. Fully understand the changes and status of your VMware infrastructure, and physical to virtual associations at all times, directly from one single pane of glass-WhatsUp Gold.

New ESX/ESXi 4.1 Support. Plus, just like in earlier versions, WhatsUp WhatsVirtual v15 gives you right from a single WhatsUp Gold pane of glass:

• Native Integration with the Powerful VMware API (Includes support for vCenter, VMware vMotion & VMware High Availability)
• Active Management of your VMware Virtual Environment
• Workspace Reports for Physical Host Servers, Virtual Machines and Virtual Clusters

Integrated Monitoring and Management of Physical and Virtual Servers in One Single Console

WhatsVirtual is a newer plug-in to the WhatsUp Gold core platform that does just that. It allows you to discover, map, monitor and manage your VMware virtual server environment exactly in the same way and from the same console as your physical server infrastructure. And with the power of WhatsUp Gold to manage network and application components as well, you have complete visibility to manage your entire datacenter environment from one management system. You don't need to look at multiple screens trying to figure out what went wrong or is likely to do so - since WhatsVirtual and WhatsUp Gold bring it all together.

Advanced Capabilities for VMware Virtual Server Monitoring

WhatsVirtual is a newer plug-in to the WhatsUp Gold core platform that allows you to discover, map, monitor and manage your VMware virtual server environment exactly in the same way and from the same console as your physical server infrastructure, applications and network devices. Key features include the following:

WhatsVirtual Basics

• Fully integrates into Standard, Premium, and Distributed versions of WhatsUp Gold for single console operation of all infrastructure and applications
• Natively integrates with the VMware API ( based on the VMware vSphere Web Services SDK) to manage VMware ESXi v3.5 and upwards
• Oversees health, availability and performance of VMware vCenter Servers, the heart of your VMware investment
• NEW VMware vCenter, vMotion and High Availability support
• Seamless discovers all physical and virtual resources deployed in your environment
• Displays virtual server performance seamlessly along with information from your physical servers
• Tracks live virtual machines migrations in real-time, and understand virtual to physical relations at all times
• Automatically groups and maps ESXi hosts and all associated virtual machines for easy visualization of relationships
• Supports all existing WhatsUp Gold Alert Center workflows and threshold configuration capabilities for rapid problem identification and resolution anywhere in your infrastructure

WhatsVirtual Reporting

• Virtual Host List report details the name and IP address of the VMware ESXi host machine and all associated virtual machines.
• Virtual Host Attributes report displays all the host server details including running configuration of the server (for example, VMware ESXi and its version), the build number and boot time
• Extends individual server performance reporting including CPU, Memory, Disk and Network Interface utilization metrics to virtual machines
• New dashboard reports by resource shows resource (e.g. CPU, Memory, Disk, Network Interface) allocation and consumption by the host and associated guest machines

WhatsVirtual Management Actions

• Supports new VMware actions for multiple management tasks including:
  • Power On
  • Power Off
  • Suspend
  • Reset
  • Shutdown Guest
  • Reset Guest
  • Take Snapshot (back up of virtual machine image)
• New WhatsUp Gold Action library elements to support automated and scheduled execution of VMware management tasks

Others

• All data collected by WhatsVirtual uses FIPS 140-2 compliant algorithms for data integrity and privacy.
• WhatsVirtual is backed by the WhatsUp Gold technical support team (via phone or email)

Support Information

What Virtualization Platforms does WhatsVirtual Currently Support?

WhatsVirtual currently supports the VMware ESX 3.0 and later and VMware ESXi 3.5 and later virtualization host systems. These are available free from VMware (for example, ESXi can be downloaded for free) and can also be purchased as part of their vSphere offering which provides robust capabilities for provisioning and maintenance of virtual server infrastructure.

Future versions of WhatsVirtual will support additional vendor systems providing heterogeneous support of virtual infrastructure.

What version of WhatsUp Gold do I need to use WhatsVirtual?

WhatsVirtual is a separately licensed plug-in and requires the presence of WhatsUp Gold 14.2 and above as a base system.