'Unavailable VMs' and VMware Tools

[DAVE_WITHERS]

I have about 50 *nix VMS we do not install VMware tools on.  Balance shows these as unavailable for monitoring.  Is my only option to add them as 'physical' servers to get the monitored?  Seems like even without VMware tools installed that balance should still allow me to select all of them and set the correct credentials on rather than entering them by hand one by one.   Thanks.

[dbourque · Accepted solution]

Hi Dave,

Balance requires VMware tools to be installed and preferably up to date.   You DO NOT want to add the VM's using the method for adding physical servers. If you add them this way the VM's will not map to the host or storage.  if you do, You will receive only guest OS stats and will loose much of the end to end analytics available.

best regards

Don Bourque

[DAVE_WITHERS]

Thanks Don.

[plauterb]

Even without monitoring the Linux VMs, you will get a Performance Index for the VM, which is a measure of how much more performance headroom you have.

Curiously, why do you not install VMware Tools on some Linux VMs? I thought best practice was to have VMware Tools installed on every VM you could get it on.

[DAVE_WITHERS]

Lets just say certain *nix flavors on certain legacy systems that are more trouble than its worth to compile vmwaretools or open-vmtools on.   They will be eventually replaced. 95% of our *nix based systems are running tools.