SolarWinds Virtualization Monitor

Pros

• Management dashboards
• Management actions

Cons

• None

SolarWinds Virtualization Monitor is a powerful tool for monitoring and managing virtual environments.

SolarWinds Virtualization Monitor is an enterprise-class solution for the Windows operating system. The tool assists with the implementation, management and control of one or more virtual environments. What virtual environment means depends on the scenario, but a simple scenario is a cloud-based system that provides resources to clients, employees, vendors and so forth. SolarWinds Virtualization Monitor gives network administrators great insight into such a system and the tools to plan and react.

SolarWinds Virtualization Monitor is more than just a monitor. It provides the tools and other resources needed to optimize and troubleshoot your virtual environments. The user interface is highly customizable. It consists of tabs or pages, such as Summary, Storage and Asset Inventory. You can add and remove pages as needed. Each tab comprises various widgets.

Widgets on the Summary tab may include Average Response Time & Packet Loss, CPU Load & Memory Utilization, List of Virtual Machines and so forth. You can add and remove these components as needed. Pages are also able to host proprietary components that you’ve created or have licensed from another developer that focuses on a specific area of virtualization that concerns you.

These components support monitoring and reporting. Reports can be created on the fly but also compiled, analyzed and distributed on a scheduled basis. Motoring components can send notifications and alerts. Those triggers can be as simple as sending a text message out to pertinent IT professionals or as complex as setting external mechanisms in motion.

SolarWinds Virtualization Monitor lets you manage VMWare, vSphere and Hyper-V environments from a single pane. Key features include management dashboards, management actions, capacity planning, VM sprawl control, active virtualization alerts and predictive recommendations. It can also integrate with the SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor for management of applications in context.

This application can be installed in under an hour in most cases. Even in the most complex scenarios, it can be configured and up and running in under day. The developer claims that compared to a non-solution, their solution reduces downtime by 59 percent, fixes problems 65 percent faster and reclaims 23 percent of virtual resources on average.

SolarWinds is one of the most widely used enterprise-scale virtualization monitors on the market. There are no downsides to mention. Whatever your environmental needs, you can tailor this tool to them. However, all such monitors on the market have certain blind spots and areas where they excel, and it’s important to audit your needs and evaluate SolarWinds and your other options based on them.

Pros

• Management dashboards
• Management actions

Cons

• None