Performance instrumentation such as "Current Utilization" is not created for Interfaces to a Windows Host

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance
• VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Smarts IP/Smarts SAM Performance monitoring for Interfaces on Windows hosts is not working. Utilization data is missing for on Windows server interfaces in a VM.

IP and SAM do not show value for Windows host performance metrics such as Current Utilization, and Interfaces on Windows Hosts managed by Smarts IP and Smarts SAM show 0.0 % for  Current Utilization

Environment

Smarts 10.X / 2.X

Cause

In Smarts IP and Smarts SAM applications (as of June 2013), only Interface fault is monitored for Windows Hosts by default. 

Performance monitoring for Interfaces on Windows host is not turned on and must be enabled to monitor performance metrics such as Current Utilization.

Resolution

To enable Smarts IP and Smarts SAM to monitor performance metrics such as Current Utilization on Windows hosts, do the following:

• Open the Smarts tpmgr-param.conf configuration file for editing using sm_edit.

./sm_edit ../local/conf/discovery/tpmgr-param.conf

• Find the FallbackInterfaceMonitoringToMIB2 parameter and change its value from FALSE to TRUE.
• If the Windows Host is using Gigabyte Interfaces, find the MonitorHostGigaInterfaceByMIB2 parameter and also change its value from FALSE to TRUE.

With these parameters enabled, Smarts can use the 32-bit counters with Windows Hosts for Interface Performance (see Notes).

You may also need to modify the threshold and polling, settings.  

Additional Information

Windows hosts still use 32-bit MIB-2 counters for Interface Performance.  

Regarding the Gigabyte Interfaces, the following note is from the tpmgr-param.conf configuration file:

If InHCOctets/IfMIB table[64bit octet] counters are NULL and FallbackInterfaceMonitoringToMIB2 is TRUE and if below FLAG is set to TRUE, then system will force all Host GB interface to be instrumented by MIB2.  This option works only for HOST interfaces.  If Customer wants to monitor Host GB interface then he can enable this option, if he feels that their Host interfaces ifTable[MIB2/32bit] counters will not roll in the successive polling period.