State Monitoring Definitions in the Virtual Server 2005 R2 Management Pack

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The Virtual Server Management Pack provides state monitoring through two roles:

  • Virtual Machine role   Displays state for virtual machines. For a virtual machine host, the Virtual Machine role displays overall state for all virtual machines that the Virtual Server service is hosting. For the Management Pack to monitor the heartbeat of a virtual machine, the virtual machine must be running Virtual Machine Additions. Otherwise, state for the virtual machine only reflects the virtual machine's status in Virtual Server (running, stopped, saved, or paused) and unresolved errors.

  • Virtual Server role   Displays state for the Virtual Server service, virtual hard disks, and the Virtual Machine Remote Control client (VMRC) on the virtual machine host.

Table 2 summarizes the health indicators for each state associated with the Virtual Server role. Table 3 summarizes the health indicators for the Virtual Machine role. For a full listing of the Virtual Server errors that affect state in MOM, see Table 11 for the Core Service rule group in Technical Reference for the Virtual Server 2005 R2 Management Pack.

Table 2   State Monitoring Definitions for the "Virtual Server" Role

State

Health Indicators

Green

A Green state indicates both of the following conditions on the virtual machine host:

  • The Virtual Server service is running.

  • No unresolved error or warning alerts exist for the Virtual Server service, virtual hard disks, or the Virtual Machine Remote Control client (VMRC).

Yellow

  • The virtual machine host is not a member of an Active Directory® directory service domain, so Kerberos security cannot be used for users accessing virtual machines by using VMRC.

Red

  • The Virtual Server service is not running, has suffered a fatal error, or a service-level exception has been raised.

  • The Virtual Server installation has been corrupted or has expired.

  • Physical disk space or memory on the host computer is critically low.

  • A user is unable to access a resource because of insufficient permissions.

  • Virtual Server was unable to create, compact, convert, or merge a virtual hard disk or to expand a virtual hard disk on a FAT volume.

  • Virtual Server cannot access or update files or disks for a virtual machine on the host.

  • Virtual machines cannot access networks because the physical network adapter could not be found.

  • Users cannot access virtual machines remotely by using VMRC.

Table 3   State Monitoring Definitions for the "Virtual Machine" Role

State

Health Indicators

Green

  • The virtual machine is running and is returning 50 percent or more of expected heartbeats.

Yellow

  • The virtual machine is returning from 15–49 percent of expected heartbeats.

  • The virtual machine is paused.

Red

  • Virtual Machine Additions either has not been installed on a virtual machine or the installed version is out of date. As a result, MOM cannot monitor the heartbeat of the virtual machine and cannot accurately report the state of the virtual machine.

  • A running virtual machine is returning 14 percent or fewer of expected heartbeats.

  • A virtual machine is turned off, has Saved status, or has been reset.

  • A virtual machine is low on physical disk space.

  • A virtual machine could not be started, saved, or restored because of insufficient memory on the host, a shortage of disk space, or some other issue.

  • A user on a virtual machine could not access network resources or a local device.

  • A user could not connect to a virtual machine using VMRC.

  • Disk access problems are causing a virtual machine not to function properly.

  • The name assigned to a virtual machine does not match the computer name of the guest operating system. As a result, the name will be inconsistent in MOM.