Documentation forVirtualization Manager
Monitoring virtual environments is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Advanced edition. Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is also available in a standalone module.

Virtualization Manager Licensing Model

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is licensed according to the number of CPU sockets per monitored host. When you monitor a virtual host, VMAN collects metrics and data for all children VMs. If you try to monitor more sockets than your license allows, you will not be able to add more data sources or apply VMAN upgrades.

SolarWinds Platform products support both perpetual licenses and subscription licenses. See License types in the SolarWinds Platform documentation for details.

VMAN is available in the following license sizes:

License Tier Sockets
VMS8 8
VMS16 16
VMS32 32

VMS64

 64
VMS112 112
VMS192 192
VMS320 320
VMS480 480
VMS640 640
VMS800 800
VMS1120 1120
VMS1440 1440
VMS1680 1680
VMS1920 1920
VMS2400 2400
VMS3040 3040
VMS3840 3840
VMS4800 4800

Get your license key

You can get your license key through the Customer Portal.

  1. Log in to the SolarWinds Customer Portal.
  2. Select Licenses > Manage Licenses.
  3. Locate an unregistered Virtualization Manager activation key. Make note of the license key.

Use license key to Activate VMAN in the SolarWinds Platform

  1. Log into the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.
  2. Click Settings > All Settings, and click License Manager.
  3. In the License Manager, click Add/Upgrade License.
  4. Enter the Activation Key and Registration Information for the VMAN license, and click Activate.

Exclude hosts from monitoring

If there are not enough SolarWinds Virtualization Manager licenses to cover every powered on virtual machine managed by a vCenter server, change the access permissions of the vCenter user account to limit what it can access.

Restricting the virtual machines accessible by the user account reduces the number of virtual machines or sockets SolarWinds Virtualization Manager can collect data from. This way you can control which virtual machines are being monitored.

You can control access permissions in the VMware client by assigning the No Access role to the vCenter account for the hosts and virtual machines you want to restrict.