Documentation forServer & Application Monitor
Monitoring your applications and environment is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Essentials edition. Server & Application Monitor (SAM) is also available in a standalone module.

Monitor VMware performance counters using an application monitor in SAM

To monitor VMware performance counters, used by application monitor templates and component monitors:

  1. Click Settings > All Settings > SAM Settings > Component Monitor Wizard.
  2. Select a VMware Performance Counter Monitor, and then click Next.
  3. Enter the IP address of the VMware node, or click Browse to select a node from a list.
  4. Select or enter the appropriate credentials, then click Next.
  5. Select whether you want to monitor a single system or multiple systems.
    • Choosing a single system provides specific counters that apply to the target system only; choosing Multiple systems provides more generic counters that can be applied to multiple systems.

    • Choosing Multiple systems provides only aggregate performance counters (without instances). Therefore, the application monitor created can be considered as generic and assigned to different ESX/vCenter target hosts. Individual monitors will contain the ${VMWARE_ENTITY_NAME} variable in the Entity Name field of the monitor. When the monitor runs, this variable is resolved to the first available entity on a target host with the desired Entity Type (for example, the first Host System).

  6. Select a VMware Entity to monitor, then select a Performance Object (group) to monitor.
  7. Select the counters to monitor for the selected Performance Object, then click Next.
  8. On the Edit Properties page, modify settings as desired and click Next.

Add components to the application monitor

  1. Expand the Component list to display the list of counters or counters to be added.
  2. Select New Application Monitor. Then enter a name for the new Application Monitor, then click Next, then OK, Create.
  3. Click View SAM Summary Page. Your new VMware monitor appears in the tree view for the All Applications widget. The polling results for the new monitor are updated after a few minutes.
    • Cluster Compute Resource (only available if the VMware vCenter Performance Counter Monitor type is selected) – Data object that aggregates the computation resources of its associated Host System objects into one single computation resource for use by virtual machines. The cluster services such as HA (High Availability), DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduling), and EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility), enhance the usefulness of this single computation resource. This Entity Type is specific to vCenter systems.
    • Host System – Managed object type that provides access to a virtualization host platform.
    • Resource Pool – Represents a set of physical resources which may be a single host, a subset of a host's resources, or resources spanning multiple hosts. You can subdivide Resource pools by creating child resource pools. to run, a virtual machine must be associated as a child of a resource pool. In a parent/child hierarchy of resource pools and virtual machines, the root resource pool is the single resource pool that has no parent pool.
    • Virtual Machine – Managed object type for manipulating virtual machines, including templates that can be repeatedly deployed as new virtual machines. This object type provides methods for configuring and controlling a virtual machine.