VMware VirtualCenter 1.1 Support DocumentationFeatures | Documentation | Knowledge Base | Discussion Forums Understanding the Information ElementsThe information elements include the symbols, attributes, lists, and charts. The information elements are covered in the following sections: Monitoring data appears in the form of tables and charts, and uses color, icons, and timelines for easy viewing and analysis.
Inventory Panel Handling of Color Coding and Filtering Lists Color coding — Depending upon the location of the colored icon, the color indicates status or power state. The color options are red, yellow, and green. Color conditions are propagated up the hierarchy. Icons — Used in conjunction with color mapping to add a visual representation of the associated text. Icons for virtual machine power states are the same as those used with other VMware virtualization platform products, such as ESX Server or GSX Server. Attributes are the resources that are being monitored and managed for all the hosts and virtual machines in your VirtualCenter environment. Attributes status and states appear on the various inventory panels. Custom attributes — These attributes can be used to associate user-specific meta-information with virtual machines and hosts. Once you have created the attributes, set the value for the attribute on each virtual machine and/or host as appropriate. This value is stored with VirtualCenter and not with the virtual machine or host. Then use the new attribute to filter information about your virtual machines and hosts. If you no longer need the custom attribute, remove it. A custom attribute is always a string. To add a custom attribute:
Sort any list by clicking in the column label heading. A triangle in the column head shows the sort order as ascending or descending. The Virtual Machines tab for virtual machines provides a means to filter for selected virtual machines. A filter is sorted by a key word. Select which columns to search for the keyword. To sort a list: Click on a column heading to sort the list by entries in that column. The current selection does not change. To change ascending or descending: Click the triangle in the column heading. To select items in a list: Click on an individual item. Press Shift-click or Ctrl-click to select multiple items. All lists can be sorted. To view or remove columns in a list: Right-click the column header and select the column name from the list. To filter the view of virtual machines: Click the arrow to view a list of attributes from which to select. Type text directly into the filtering field to specify search criteria. The Filter field does not support boolean expressions or special characters. Click Ok to display only those virtual machine that match the criteria. Click Clear to change the filter. To remove a filter: Click Clear, or delete the entry in of the filtering field and click OK. VirtualCenter displays the full list of available items. To select columns to search for the filtering keyword: Right-click in the contains: field and select or deselect the appropriate column names. Filtering is inclusive, not exclusive. If the keyword is found in any of the selected columns, the line item is included in the list. Each chart contains data relative to the selected object in the inventory panel. The charts display the data across time. Each resource has a summary graph and one graph per instance of that resource. For example, the CPU Usage resource has one graph per CPU and net usage has one graph per NIC. View only one set of resource graphs at a time. Note: The graphs for a virtual machine show the shares allocated to that virtual machine as a percentage of the host CPU. To view the large version of a chart: Click on the thumbnail and the larger version appears in the information panel.
Information Panel Chart View Elements To configure the increments of time: Click on the pull-down menu and select the appropriate increment. The options are: Past Hour —Displays the status of the item in one minute intervals Day — Displays the status of the item in five minute intervals Week — Displays the status of the item in one hour intervals Month — Displays the status of the item in one day intervals Year — Displays the status of the item in one month intervals To customize the graph view: Click the Customize Chart button and select from the options.
The graph options vary, depending upon the resource selected. In the example above the options divide into the representation of the data in the primary chart. |
