Monitoring with a CA Virtual Systems Monitor › How a CA Virtual Systems Monitor Works as a Monitoring Device › Plan for Deployment

Plan for Deployment

The CA Virtual Systems Monitor must be able to "see" the virtual server-to-virtual server traffic on the ESX Host without also seeing any external traffic outside the ESX Host. Take the following into consideration as you plan for the installation:

• Which multi-tier applications do we need to monitor?
• Which servers on the ESX Host create server-to-server traffic? Enable the CA Virtual Systems Monitor to see the network traffic for this virtual server-to-virtual server communication.
• Which servers communicate with external devices, such as a virtual server on another ESX Host, or a physical server? Do not allow the CA Virtual Systems Monitor to see this communication. Instead, mirror the traffic to a physical monitoring device, such as a CA Multi-Port Monitor.

  Note: Separating the external traffic at the monitoring device enables the management console to automatically assign the CA Virtual Systems Monitor to monitor the virtual server-to-virtual server traffic, and automatically assign a physical monitor to monitor the physical-to-virtual traffic.

• If the virtual machine you plan to monitor is assigned to more than one virtual NIC, the management IP address for the virtual machine must be assigned to a network adapter that belongs to the last physical NIC on the ESX Host (the virtual NIC). This is a VMware issue -- when selecting a network adapter, VMware only exposes the IP address of a network adapter if it is assigned to the last virtual NIC. For example, a virtual machine with 3 virtual NICs (VMNIC1, VMNIC2, and VMNIC3) will report the IP address for the network adapter that is assigned to VMNIC3, but not VMNIC1 and VMNIC2.

More information:

Monitoring Device Recommendations