Real time VMware VM resource monitoring using PowerShell

This post is about monitoring resource usage of a list of virtual machines hosted on VMware ESXi clusters using PowerCLI. Output format is given below which gets refreshed automatically every few seconds.

Prerequisites:

• VMware.PowerCLI module should be installed on the node from which you are running the script
• You can verify using: Get-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -ListAvailable
• If not installed, you can find the latest version from the PSGallery: Find-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI
• Install the module: Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI

Note:

• I am using PowerCLI Version 11.0.0.10380590

Latest version of the project and code available at: github.com/vineethac/vmware_vm_monitor

Sample screenshot of output:

Notes:

VMware guidance: CPU Ready time and Co-Stop values per core greater than 5% and 3% respectively could  be a performance concern.

Hope this will be useful for resource monitoring as well as right sizing of VMs. Cheers!

References:

• http://docs.hol.vmware.com/HOL-2012/HOL-INF-04_EN/HOL-INF-04-m1/lessons/Part_1_of_4__Performance_101_-_vSphere_Performance_Basics_-_CPU__C__.html
• http://virtualization.solutions/2018/02/04/performance-monitoring-cpu/

VM Resource Metering

'VM Resource Metering' is a feature in Windows Server 2012 R2, which will help us to keep track of the resources consumed by virtual machines. By default this feature is disabled.

You can enable metering for a particular VM using the PowerShell command : Get-VM <virtual machine name> |  Enable-VMResourceMetering

If you want to enable it for all VMs, you can use : Get-VM | Enable-VMResourceMetering

You can view the resource usage list of all virtual machines using : Get_VM | Measure-VM

You can sort the list using : Get_VM | Measure-VM |sort AvgRAM –descending