4. VMware Tools

The following table explains the meaning of the value of Tools status property

Value	Description
Guest Tools Not Installed	Tools are not installed on the VM. You should install it as you get both drivers and visibility
Current	Tools version matches with the Tools available with ESXi. Each ESXi has a version of Tools that comes with it. See this for the list. This is the ideal scenario
Supported New	Newer than the ESXi VMware tools version, but it is supported
Supported Old	The opposite of New. It is also supported. Even it is older by 0.0.1 is considered old. It does not have to far behind
Too Old	Tools version is older than the minimum supported version of Tools across all ESXi versions. Minimum supported version is the oldest version of Tools we support. Basically, guest is running unsupported Tools. You should upgrade. As of now for Linux and Windows guests. minimum supported version is the Tools version bundled with ESXi 4.0 which is 8.0.1. Supporting such old versions is challenging. We are planning to change this in future to something newer. In the meantime, you should upgrade as might not work as expected
Unmanaged	Tools installed in the guest did not come from ESXi, so Tools is not being managed by ESXi host. It may be supported or maybe not, depends on what type of Tools is running in the guest. We support open-vm-tools packaged by Linux vendors and OSPs, which both show up as unmanaged. If a customer builds their own open-vm-tools from source code, we may not support that because we will not know if they have done it correctly or not

I covered the various counters used by Tools in their respective section. The following table provides a summary with their key and formula. Not all counters are exposed by Tools and vRealize Operations.

If you notice a rare intermittent collection, check vmware.log of the VM. It could be that vmtoolsd daemon in Guest OS paused for a while, due to guest workload or other issue in Windows or Linux.

Linux Memory Metrics

Stat Name	Source	Unit
guest.contextSwapRate	"ctxt" from /proc/stat	Number/sec
guest.mem.activeFileCache	"Active(file)" from /proc/meminfo	KB
guest.mem.free	"MemFree" from /proc/meminfo	KB
guest.mem.physUsable	Sum of /proc/zoneinfo#present across all zones. Equals to VM configured RAM.	KB
guest.mem.needed	"guest.mem.physUsable" - max(0, "MemAvailable" from /proc/meminfo - 5% of "guest.mem.physUsable")	KB
guest.page.inRate	"pgpgin" from /proc/vmstat The rate of reads going through the underlying paging/cache system. It includes not just swapfile I/O, but cacheable reads as well. I think Tools take the last value, and not the average over the last collection period. Meaning if Tools collect every 60 seconds, it takes 1 value at 60th second, not the average of 60 values in the entire 60 seconds.	Pages/sec
guest.page.outRate	"pgpgout" from /proc/vmstat The rate of writes going through the underlying paging/cache system. It includes not just swapfile I/O, but cacheable writes as well.	Pages/sec
guest.swap.spaceRemaining	"SwapFree" from /proc/meminfo The amount of swap space remaining, taking into account the possibility of swapfile growth where possible. If the OS is configured without a swapfile, this will return zero.	KB
guest.page.size	sysconf(_SC_PAGESIZE)	Bytes
guest.hugePage.size	"Hugepagesize" from /proc/meminfo	KB
guest.hugePage.total	"HugePages_Total" from /proc/meminfo Total large pages allocated	Large page count
guest.mem.neededReservation	5% of "guest.mem.physUsable"	KB
guest.mem.available	"MemAvailable" from /proc/meminfo	KB
guest.mem.slabReclaim	"SReclaimable" from /proc/meminfo	KB
guest.mem.buffers	"Buffers" from /proc/meminfo	KB
guest.mem.cached	"Cached" from /proc/meminfo	KB
guest.mem.total	"MemTotal" from /proc/meminfo	KB

The above mapping and calculation are based on latest Linux document and source code. As older Linux has used different formula, the future may change.

Windows Memory Metrics

Stat Name	Source
guest.contextSwapRate	Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_System = @#ContextSwitchesPersec from WMI
guest.mem.activeFileCache	Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory = @#SystemCacheResidentBytes from WMI
guest.mem.free	Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory = @#FreeAndZeroPageListBytes from WMI
guest.mem.physUsable	Win32_OperatingSystem = #TotalVisibleMemorySize from WMI
guest.mem.needed	guest.mem.physUsable - max(0, UNNEEDED_BYTES - 5% of guest.mem.physUsable), where UNNEEDED_BYTES = "Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory =@#FreeAndZeroPageListBytes" + "Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory =@#StandbyCacheReserveBytes"
guest.page.inRate	Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_Memory = @#PagesInputPersec from WMI
guest.page.outRate	Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_Memory = @#PagesOutputPersec from WMI
guest.swap.spaceRemaining	(maximum possible - used) swap space
guest.page.size	SYSTEM_INFO.dwPageSize returned by GetSystemInfo()
guest.hugePage.size	GetLargePageMinimum()
guest.mem.neededReservation	5% of "guest.mem.physUsable"
guest.mem.availableToMm	Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory = @#AvailableBytes from WMI
guest.mem.standby.normal	Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory = @#StandbyCacheNormalPriorityBytes from WMI
guest.mem.standby.reserve	Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory = @#StandbyCacheReserveBytes from WMI
guest.mem.standby.core	Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory = @#StandbyCacheCoreBytes from WMI
guest.mem.modifiedPages	Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory = @#ModifiedPageListBytes from WMI

Linux CPU and Disk Metrics

Name	Source	Unit
guest.cpu.runQueue	“procs_running” from /proc/stat	Number
guest.disk.requestQueue	Sum of pending IOs from /proc/diskstats across all active block devices	Number
guest.disk.requestQueueAvg	Sum of weighted time deltas across all active block devices	Number

Windows CPU and Disk Metrics

Stat Name	Source
guest.processor.queue	Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_System = @#ProcessorQueueLength from WMI
guest.disk.queue	Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfDisk_PhysicalDisk.Name = \"_Total\"#CurrentDiskQueueLength" from WMI
guest.disk.queueAvg	Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfDisk_PhysicalDisk.Name = \"_Total\"#AvgDiskQueueLength" from WMI

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This page was last updated on June 30, 2021 by Stellios Williams with commit message: "Cleaned MD syntax"