Confio Monitoring

Monitoring Databases on VMware
Ensure optimum performance with the correct metrics
By Dean Richards, Senior DBA March, 2012

Confio Software 4772 Walnut Street, Suite 100 Boulder, CO 80301 866.CONFIO.1

www.confio.com

A White Paper by Confio Software

Introduction Databases are one of the last frontiers for virtualizing into a VMware environment. They can be very resource intensive somany companies have been hesitant to move them into a virtual environment. Most of the hesitation has come from poor experiences during initial tests of VMware. Many of our customers are successfully running databases inside VMware and the key for them was monitoring the correct metrics that can help show where the bottlenecks are. This paper will review the VMware metrics that helped manycompanies have a far better virtualization experience. Database Support On VMware Many companies are also hesitant to move databases to VMware because of potential support issues. Typically most database vendors do not officially support or certify the database running on VMware. If there are issues, the vendor may ask for the problem to be reproduced on physical hardware, which can be problematic attimes. However, there are no documented bugs in the vendor support sites related to their database running on VMware. Also, many companies are already running a database on VMware, even mission critical applications, which is another example that is seems acceptable for many environments. Database Licensing on VMware This paper will not discuss database licensing in detail, but when virtualizingdatabases in a VMware environment, understand that for many platforms, license fees can be charged for each CPU/Core the database could run on. If your VM running the database is operating within a cluster of 4 hosts that each have 8 cores, Oracle, Microsoft and other vendors may charge you for 4 * 8 cores or 32 cores. This is something to be aware of and talk to your vendor representatives for fulldetails. For this licensing reason, many companies are configuring dedicated clusters and hosts for databases so licenses are not required for physical hosts not running the database. Terms and Concepts Before getting into the details of which metrics to use for monitoring, the following are some key VMware terms and concepts. • • • ESX / ESXi – the hypervisor and foundation for virtualization.ESX is installed into a Linux O/S while ESXi takes the place of the O/S and is the only option for VMware 5.0 and higher. Physical Host – underlying hardware that ESX is installed. Virtual Machine (VM) – container inside the physical host that runs a guest O/S like Windows or Linux. This, for most intents, acts and looks like a normal physical machine. This is where the database software isinstalled and managed. vCenter Server – centralized management of VMware environment. Performance information is also collected and stored here.

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Monitoring Database Performance on VMware Confio Software© 2012

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A White Paper by Confio Software • • • vSphere Client – the GUI for connecting to vCenter and visualizing metrics via charts. The GUI is also used for managing the VMwareenvironment. Cluster – made up of two or more physical hosts that share common storage. Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) – monitors each physical host’s resource consumption. Within a cluster, DRS tracks many resources and can move a VM (vMotion) to another physical host to keep resource consumption balanced. vMotion – live migration of a VM from one physical host to another. This can either be manual orautomated so that resource consumption is balanced across all physical hosts in the cluster.

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vSphere GUI For monitoring a database running within a VM, the vSphere GUI, or other tool like IgniteVM from Confio Software, will be the primary interface. There is both a Windows client (downloaded to your desktop) and a web client for accessing vSphere information. However, the web version is...