Documentation forVirtualization Manager
Monitoring virtual environments is a key capability of Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced and is also available in a standalone module, Virtualization Manager (VMAN). Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced and VMAN are built on the self-hosted SolarWinds Platform.

Monitoring virtual environments with VMAN

Virtualization Manager provides intensive metrics gathering and data breakdowns into dashboards and details pages so you can easily evaluate environments and react to issues. Use VMAN to manage your sprawling VM virtual and cloud environment through a single console with account management and direct VM tool capabilities.

Features include:

  • Monitoring virtual environments: review and study collected metrics for virtual objects, cloud instances, and other systems and applications depending on your VMAN and SolarWinds Platform products. Learn more about monitoring data, setting alerts, and managing events and reports.
  • Optimize virtual resources: provide troubleshooting and resource management with tools including PerfStack, Sprawl dashboard, and tracking of snapshots and orphan VMDKs.
  • Recommendations: optimize resource allocation based on performance metrics, historical data, available resources, and storage capacity. Recommendations calculate trends and risks based on enabled strategies, providing plans of action to consider and apply to resolve immediate issues or preemptively prevent issues from occurring.
  • Capacity planning: create simulations and generate reports using historical data for trending usage and resource consumption over an extended period of simulated time. Set simulations against production, lab, and other virtual environments.
  • Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: provides visibility into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure including cloud EC2 instances and attached EBS volumes. This feature completes the Orion tools you need to monitor and administer hybrid environments.

VMAN in the SolarWinds Platform

Virtualization Manager is part of the SolarWinds Platform suite of SolarWinds products. As of VMAN 2022.3, VMAN is fully installed with the new SolarWinds Installer and is part of the SolarWinds Platform. VMAN extends SolarWinds Platform monitoring to poll extensive metrics, data, and events in VMware and vCenter systems, Microsoft Hyper-V systems, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud instances and volumes. This monitored data is far more extensive than the standard high level virtualization metrics collected by other SolarWinds Platform products like NPM and SAM.

Access all features and monitored nodes through the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, including any additional SolarWinds Platform products. This web interface acts a single pane of glass for monitoring your virtual and cloud environments and supports all SolarWinds Platform products. You never need to flip between multiple consoles or systems; it's all in one place.

New to the SolarWinds Platform?

If this is your first time using a SolarWinds Platform product, start by learning about the SolarWinds Platform, which will teach you how to create and manage users, create views, customize resources, create reports, and more.

 

Get started with VMAN

New to VMAN? Start with the VMAN Installation Guide to completely install VMAN and the SolarWinds Platform.

To fully experience VMAN, start with the following topics:

  • Configure VMAN and the SolarWinds Platform: set up Orion user accounts, modify configurations and features including recommendations and Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring.
  • Add and manage virtual systems to monitor: add systems to monitor and manage as nodes for virtual environments and cloud instances.
  • Monitor virtual environments: review polled metrics and performance for virtual and cloud systems, including alerts, events, and reports.
  • Optimize virtual resources: use VMAN features including Recommendations, the Sprawl dashboard, snapshot management, orphan VMDK management, PerfStack, and AppStack to optimize allocations and more.
  • Capacity planning and simulations: create scenarios using historical and trending data to determine resource usage in virtual environments. Based on reports generated from the scenarios, you can better determine and plan your virtual resource allocation, clusters, hosts, and more.