Virtual environments can make your network more efficient and enable you to use your on-site resources differently. However, they can also contribute to more traffic and make it more challenging to administrate your network.
Virtual server monitoring tools help you keep an eye on your virtual machine environments. They can identify resource issues and show you how to adapt your network to function more efficiently.
In this guide, we’ll discuss what virtual machines are and why they need monitoring. Then, we’ll review three of the best virtual server monitoring tools on the market.
What a Virtual Machine Monitor Is (And Why You Should Consider Using One)
A virtual machine acts as an interface between your server and your network users’ operating systems. It manages multiple operating systems and controls all elements within the server.
Virtual machines enable you to use multiple operating systems within a single network. They also reduce your overhead and centralize all your data in one place. Finally, they allow you to scale your virtual environment as your business and servers grow.
However, virtual machines can take a lot of storage space from your server. They may hog your bandwidth, capacity, and memory, slowing down connections for your users. As such, using a virtual machine monitor can help you keep tabs on storage usage and allocate resources more effectively.
3 Best Virtual Server Monitoring Tools
1. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
SolarWinds® Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is a comprehensive program that enables you to monitor multiple aspects of your virtual environments. It can gather extensive data on every facet of your servers and breaks it down into graphs and other readable information.
The VMAN sits within your SolarWinds dashboard and has multiple sub-sections, including:
- VMware virtual machines
- Hyper-V
- Capacity planning
- Nutanix
- Storage
- Reporting
- Sprawl
Using this tool, you can manage your virtual machine servers by powering them up or down, suspending or resuming their activities, or rebooting them. You can view snapshots of your virtual machines and allocate memory resources as needed.
VMAN includes sophisticated data visualizations, including the option to develop your own virtual disk statistics. Here, you can create custom charts and tables to monitor your server latency, throughput, and IOPS.
VMAN is a time-saving tool that sends you performance recommendations. You can fix them with a single click and resolve any virtual machines running slowly.
Pricing: VMAN starts at US$1,716.
2. Sematext Full Stack Infrastructure Monitoring
Sematext includes Full Stack Infrastructure Monitoring built into its main dashboard. The overall platform collects and displays real-time data related to multiple aspects of your online environment, including your virtual servers.
The program integrates across your entire stack and works with multiple databases and server types, including Java virtual machines. You can evaluate data from on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid environments.
Using the Sematext monitoring software, you can filter your infrastructure data according to tags, disks, hosts, and network interfaces. The dashboard also provides a top-down overview of your server performance so you can get right to the most critical metrics.
The Full Stack Infrastructure Monitoring software enables you to create visualizations, so you can undertake capacity planning and optimize your servers for changing circumstances.
Pricing: There are free plans available for a maximum of three hosts. The most expensive plan costs US$0.011 per container host per hour.
3. Site24x7 Virtualization Monitoring
The Site24x7 Virtualization Monitoring program is one of the best virtual machine monitor tools for enterprises. You can monitor multiple aspects of your virtual environment, including:
- Individual virtual machines
- Associated datastores
- Virtual machine hardware sensors
- Data centers and clusters
- Hosts
The tool gives you a quick snapshot of your virtual server performance. For example, it displays memory, disk, and CPU utilization data.
You can go deeper into the metrics to analyze latency and storage data. You can use the Virtualization Monitoring software to plan space distribution and storage for different parts of your servers.
The software includes a user-friendly resource pool where you can monitor your virtual machines. Here, you can power them on and off as needed. Additionally, you can create reservations and limits for memory and CPU to improve performance.
Pricing: Plans start at US$9 per month.
Conclusion
Virtual server monitoring tools enable you to view your server performance and adjust as necessary. They can be vital for maintaining your virtual environment performance.
To recap, these are three of the best virtual server monitoring tools:
- SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN): This comprehensive tool enables you to create virtual data statistics and streamline your server efficiency.
- Sematext Full Stack Infrastructure Monitoring: This tool collects data in real-time about your servers, containers, networks, and databases.
- Site24x7 Virtualization Monitoring: This enterprise-grade tool enables you to monitor all aspects of your VMware environment.
Prices as of February 2022