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Availability is a crucial attribute for modern servers. Organizations routinely operate 24/7, and planned uptime can reach four, five, and even six "9s". In non-virtualized server environments, the sheer number of physical servers limits the affect of faults -- if a single server fails, only the application on that server becomes unavailable.
The risk is exacerbated in a virtual setting because a physical server fault can take down all of the VMs running on that server. Consequently, data center professionals must take extra care to ensure the proper ongoing operation of physical server hardware.
Resource shortages are one of the biggest threats to virtual server availability. Not only will inadequate CPU, memory, disk I/O or network bandwidth impair performance, it can also cause VMs on the server to crash and sometimes take down the entire physical server. Hardware upgrades can be an effective way to fend off resource shortages and prevent server problems.
Software monitoring tools can help you determine the actual resources available in (and used by) a physical server, There are numerous third-party monitoring tools available such as Vizioncore's vFoglight or HP OpenView, along with open source tools like GroundWork monitoring software.
Still, experts note the value of monitoring and management tools provided by major hypervisors from Microsoft, VMware or Citrix. "Because they're giving away the hyp...
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