vScope Explorer: Free VM Health Tool

This powerful visualization capability, displaying the results of intensive analytics of 20 key VM performance metrics, provides a number of important capabilities for a virtualized data center's staff. These capabilities are listed below:

Identify VM Performance Issues Across an Environment

Based off intensive analytics from VKernel's Capacity Analytics Engine™, vScope Explorer assesses the performance health of all VMs in an environment, across data centers and from multiple vCenter servers, displaying any existing or developing issues in an easy-to-read heat map. This allows a VM administrator to assess the performance health of all VMs in an environment on one screen. Mousing over a VM will show a pop up dialogue box with a brief description of the issue a VM is experiencing.

Spot Host Performance Problems Across an Environment

vScope Explorer assesses the performance health of all physical hosts in an environment, across multiple data centers, displaying any existing or developing issues in an easy-to-read heat map. This allows a VM administrator to assess the performance health of all hosts in an environment on one screen. Mousing over a host will show a pop up dialogue box with a brief description of the issue that that host is experiencing.

Find Host Capacity Issues Across an Environment

Based off intensive analytics from VKernel's Capacity Analytics Engine™, vScope Explorer assesses the remaining capacity of all hosts in an environment, across data centers and from multiple vCenter servers. Additionally, the analytics behind vScope Explorer run predictive models based on trending growth and usage patterns, forecasting when a resource is forecast to become scarce, or when performance problems based on resource shortages may occur. This visualization ability allows a VM administrator to assess the capacity status for all hosts in an environment on one screen. Mousing over a host will show a pop up dialogue box with a brief description of the capacity status or forecasted issues a host may soon experience.

Identify VM Resource Efficiency Issues Across an Environment

vScope Explorer assesses the resource efficiency of all VMs in an environment based on peak and average CPU, memory and storage usage across data centers and from multiple vCenter servers. The end result is a display of all VMs that are over or under-allocated presented in an easy-to-read heat map to help assess severity. This allows a VM administrator view the resource efficiency of all VMs in an environment on one screen. Mousing over a VM will show a pop up dialogue box with a brief description of which VM resources are misallocated.

Spot Inefficient Datastores Across an Environment

vScope Explorer assesses the efficiency of datastores in an environment, screening for datastores that contain a large quantity of unused data files such as abandoned VMDKs, unused snapshots, templates and powered-off VMs. The datastores' efficiency status are displayed in in an easy-to-read heat map, allowing a VM administrator to assess the all datastores in an environment on one screen. Mousing over a datastore will show a pop up dialogue box with a brief description of what is affecting the storage efficiency of the datastore.

Project Environment Health onto a Data Center NOC Screen

vScope Explorer's highly scalable color-coded heat maps are ideal for monitoring environment health for the entire virtualized environment. vScope Explorer can federate multiple vCenter servers and data centers, taking up to thousands of virtual machines and displaying them all accessibly on a single screen which can be projected on a data center wall. Because vScope Explorer is packaged as a virtual appliance, it can support multiple log-ins from different browser sessions, so that performance status for hosts and VMs, capacity status for hosts, and efficiency status for VMs and datastores can all be assessed simulataneously from the same vScope explorer appliance and projected on different screens.

See All VMs, Hosts and Datastores Across Many vCenters and Data Centers

vScope Explorer can federate multiple vCenter servers, allowing for a single pane of glass view of all VMs, datatores and hosts in an environment. Additionally, all VMs, hosts and datastores are presented in context, so VMs are seen within hosts, which are seen within clusters, and clusters are included withing the data center that they are a part of. This context allows for VM administrators to also assess which clusters and even entire data centers in a large infrastructure may be facing performance, capacity or resource efficiency issues based on the multiple VMs or hosts that are showing severe issues within the visualization.

Resolve Performance, Capacity and Efficiency Issues with vOperations Suite Trial

For virtualized data centers that would like to resolve issues that vScope Explorer identifies, a trial of VKernel vOperations Suite is easily accessible by clicking on the trial activation link on the top right corner, filling out a quick contact information form, and then inserting the trial key that is subsequently emailed. The trial of the vOperations suite includes vScope Explorer with this additional functionality:

• Drill-down functionality for each identified performance issue that will show root cause of performance problems with resolution steps
• The capability to pivot the vScope visualization on vCenter folders or specific infrastructure areas with a synchronized vCenter navigation tree
• Drill-down functionality for noted capacity issues with further detail on how to avoid impending capacity-related performance problems
• The ability to pivot vScope visualization on user-created Free Form and Smart Business Views that can show all VMs, hosts and datastores for specific applications, departments or other business-related groupings
• Drill-down functionality for each VM and datastore identified as inefficient with actionable steps on how to increase efficiency
• An additional vScope cost index showing a stack ranking of VMs by operational costliness

System Requirements and Installation

vScope Explorer installs as a single virtual appliance in OVF Format. System requirements are:

After download, installation takes just minutes. Quick install steps and an installation video is available here. After an initial data collection, vScope Explorer will begin to provide visualization results based on intensive data analysis immediately.

Other Free VM Tools

• SearchMyVM Explorer is a “Google-like” search tool that helps you quickly find information about VMs, hosts, clusters, resource pools, and more.
• ApplicationVIEW allows system administrators to effortlessly monitor and diagnose capacity bottlenecks in the environment’s top five application VMs.
• CapacityVIEW quickly finds capacity, performance, and over-allocation issues within the entire virtualized infrastructure.
• Capacity Modeler easily predicts capacity and performance issues from proposed hardware, maintenance and configuration changes.