Overview of Performance Monitoring
Monitoring performance is a key component of datacenter management. Fortunately, vCenter Server provides a number of ways to get insight into the behavior of the vSphere environment and the VMs running within that environment.
The first tool we'll explore is vCenter Server's alarms mechanism. Alarm definitions can be attached to just about any object within vCenter Server, and alarms offer an ideal way to proactively alert you or your datacenter staff about potential performance concerns or resource usage. We'll discuss alarms in detail in the section “Using Alarms.”
Another tool is the content area on the Summary tab of ESXi clusters, ESXi hosts, and VMs. The content area contains quick “at-a-glance” information on resource usage. This information can give you a quick barometer of performance, but for more detailed performance information, you'll have to dive deeper into the vCenter tools we'll discuss...
