The nWorks Management Pack for VMware for Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager 2007 is a long name for a tool that provides strong VMware monitoring and management capabilities that are ultimately driven by Microsoft’s management platform.
It requires, as the name implies, Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager 2007, which in turn, requires a Windows 2000 SP4+ host (we used Windows 2003 Standard Server Edition). Although it can be installed ‘spontaneously’, we discovered that a bit of planning pays off, as nWorks MP requires a comparatively sophisticated installation to pay out eventual monitoring and management rewards.
It takes longer to install the Microsoft System Center portion than the nWorks add-ons. nWorks MP for VMware connects as an add-in to System Center, between System Center and either VMware VirtualCenter, or VMware ESX directly. An nWorks Virtual Infrastructure Collector (called the ‘VIC’) connects to a VMware ESX Monitor to gather topological and inventory information. The Collectors (each for different VMware Hosts) are set up and configured for connectivity to Microsoft’s System Center.
Once it’s all installed, and it took well over three hours to install both product sets (with requisite updates), there’s a wealth of information that can be tracked and managed, hindered only occasionally by the busy if beautiful Microsoft System Center user interface. The devil-in-the-details is deciding how to view the collected information – either in long lines of status/alerts or graphs of comparative performance data; and aligning actions to be taken when target thresholds are exceeded. The mundane details of sorting event logs within Microsoft System Center is simple for examination, and setting trigger alerts to be spawned from logs or events is equally simple.
Their process of setting details, thresholds and filters inside of System Center is a bit tedious. Although the tedium is somewhat assuaged by evolving administrator-defined groups of objects whose characteristics can be dealt en masse in a single action, such as aggregating, then setting bandwidth thresholds for VM Web server instances. Once this setup process is finished, using a console with two monitors can provide greater amounts of information to be displayed handily, and also permitted the busy System Center display to have a more comprehensive representation for the amount of information that’s provided by nWorks MP.
A ‘server state’ view of System Center gives the best rapid visual indicator of overall systems health. As a tabular view of important information (including overall status, CPU threshold, network I/O, and other default or definable data), the system told us if all was well and healthy at a glance. We could then point to any VMware host, and generate a topological view of VM instances inside detailing their health characteristics.
NWorks gets information from the VMware Virtual Interface API and through VMware’s VirtualCenter. We could find little difference in speed in the VM ‘guest’ instances between using VirtualCenter and Virtual Interface except when VM host utilization was at peak.
Stunning network and VM topological views can be easily configured, so that layouts can be viewed and understood. We created numerous custom templates with ease. Performance views are also easily made and enhance the value of twin monitors/displays to show comparative data graphically. The effect is very much like when Macs and Windows began to be used, and people would send memos with 20 fonts on them. Once under control, we found that sparse views of system health tabular data were the ones we referenced most.
The nWorks MP package, coupled to Microsoft’s System Center, takes a long time to setup and configure, but pays off in monitoring control. Deciding thresholds and actions takes longer and requires a bit of practice. It’s not a proactive package, and doesn’t project thresholds like PlateSpin PowerRecon, and it has little knowledge of storage-area networks topologies, like Onaro SANscreen.
What we didn’t like about nWorks MP mostly had to do with System Center. As an example, options to take actions that are nonsensical aren’t disabled. One can take a silly action, like shutting down something that can’t be shut down, only to have a nihilistic run at the attempt of shutting it down, generating a nice and inarticulate error report. PlateSpin and Onaro studiously avoid this. The nWorks MP also works with HP’s OpenView, according to nWorks.
Overall, though, if Microsoft System Center is a management tool of choice, then nWorks MP for VMware makes a very good VM monitor and manager.
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