Monitoring System Parameters of VMware ESX Servers Hosts and Virtual Machines

 Originally published on September 30, 2008 by Dirk Paessler
Last updated on January 23, 2024 • 2 minute read

With version 7.0.9 we are introducing specialized sensors for monitoring of VMware ESX servers. These sensors talk directly to the SOAP interface of ESX servers in order to monitor the system health of the host machine as well as the system health of each individual virtual machine.

The available readings are:

  • Downtime (%)
  • CPU Usage (%)
  • Memory Active (MByte)
  • Memory Usage (MByte)
  • Disk Read (mbit/s)
  • Disk Write (mbit/s)
  • Net Received (kbit/s)
  • Net Transmitted (kbit/s)

Using this technique you can monitor the system parameters of a virtual machine without actually accessing the virtual machine itself (e.g. through SNMP or WMI). Please click the image to zoom in.