VMware vSphere encompasses the entirety of the VMware virtualization platform. Formerly known as VMware Infrastructure, vSphere consists of several products and technologies that provide the infrastructure to virtualize your environment. These technologies include:

• ESXi – a Type-1 hypervisor. ESXi runs on hosts to manage execution of the virtual machines (VMs) and allocates resources to them as needed.
• vCenter Server – an advanced server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling vSphere environments. Use vCenter Server to automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure.
• vCenter Client – a management interface that enables users to remotely connect to vCenter Server.
• Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) – a cluster file system for ESXi virtual machines.

According to VMware, vSphere enables you to “unleash a powerful, flexible, and secure foundation for business agility that accelerates your digital transformation to hybrid cloud … helping you run, manage, connect, and secure your applications in a common operating environment across clouds.”

Monitoring vSphere application performance with IBM Instana^™

Effectively monitoring your vSphere solution-based applications requires visibility at every layer of your application stack. IBM Instana automates the process of monitoring your vSphere environment including automatic discovery of all application components, vSphere components and technologies, VMs and services. Once installed, IBM Instana will automatically deploy sensors for each application component while mapping every dependency. The solution monitors your full stack application performance with virtually no effort on your part. With the IBM Instana platform, you get the following:

Automatic and continuous discovery

IBM Instana uses a single lightweight agent per host to continually discover all components—ESXi, VMs, vCenter Servers and so on—and deploy the appropriate sensors for each technology. These sensors then pull all the configuration data and performance metrics that are needed to determine the health of your environment:

Automatic visualization and dependency mapping

The IBMInstana solution automatically maps and visualizes your entire vSphere environment, providing an exact understanding of the relationship and dependencies of every component. Every component is mapped, and its corresponding metric data, configuration, dependencies and component health are captured:

Immediate performance feedback

TheIBM Instana platform immediately provides visibility and performance feedback as new code moves through your build and release pipelines. The platform automatically traces every application request flowing through your vSphere environment and pulls together each distributed trace for a full, end-to-end view. By doing so, IBM Instana ensures you’ll always have the complete data set to see the exact impact of every deployment and every change:

Exact root cause determination

IBM Instana automatically delivers a full analysis of every user impact. The solution’s automated anomaly detection correlates metrics, traces, exceptions, logged errors and configuration data based on application and service dependencies, providing exact root cause analysis in seconds:

With the IBM Instana solution’s automated monitoring for vSphere solution-based applications, you’ll always know what’s happening within your vSphere environment. Because of its continuous discovery, dependency mapping, metric monitoring, distributed tracing, anomaly detection and analytics across the complete data set, you’ll be able to optimize your vSphere applications and immediately get to the root of any customer-impacting issue. With the IBM Instana solution’s immediate, exact understanding of quality, you’ll be able to confidently deliver better-quality software, faster.