Virtualization Monitoring with PRTG

Virtualization is the process of creating virtual versions of physical resources such as servers, storage devices, networks, or operating systems. Instead of relying on dedicated hardware, virtualization allows multiple virtual environments to run on a single physical system, each functioning as though it were an independent, isolated system.

Virtualization involves creating virtual machines (VM), which are software-defined representations of physical computers. Each VM runs its own operating system and applications independently, even though it's sharing physical hardware with other VMs.

A hypervisor, also known as a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), is the software layer that enables virtualization. It abstracts the physical hardware and allocates resources like CPU, memory, and storage to the virtual machines.

In virtualization, hardware, software, network functions, and thus also servers, operating systems, and applications are replicated virtually. This means that in virtualized environments, several servers are consolidated on a small amount of hardware, for example. This way, several virtual servers can run on one physical system, which saves energy costs and space, as the data center can be kept small.

However, virtualization has even more advantages: With network, operating system, and server virtualization, resources such as storage capacities (for example hard disk space) and computing capacities (for example RAM) are allocated dynamically. This allows virtual machines to be better utilized because they share physical resources. This way, you can provision capacity more quickly and without much effort.

Virtualization offers a range of benefits, especially in terms of optimizing resource usage, improving efficiency, and reducing costs. Here are some key advantages:

• Reduced hardware costs: By running multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical server, organizations can reduce the number of physical machines needed, leading to lower hardware acquisition costs.
• Energy efficiency: Fewer physical servers mean lower power and cooling requirements, which translates to significant energy savings.
• Better resource utilization: Virtualization allows better utilization of computing resources by distributing workloads across multiple VMs on a single physical server. This prevents the under-utilization common with dedicated servers.
• High scalability: Virtual environments can be easily scaled up or down based on business needs. Virtual machines can be created, modified, or deleted quickly, enabling rapid deployment of new services or applications.
• Dynamic resource allocation: Resources like CPU, memory, and storage can be allocated or reallocated to VMs in real-time, based on changing workload demands.
• Isolation: Each virtual machine is isolated from others, so issues in one VM (e.g., crashes, security breaches) do not affect others. This containment increases security and stability.
• High availability (HA): Virtualization supports features like live migration, which allows moving running VMs from one physical host to another without downtime. This is useful for maintenance and disaster recovery.
• Cross-platform compatibility: Virtualization allows different operating systems (e.g., Windows, Linux) to run on the same physical server, increasing flexibility for running diverse applications in a heterogeneous environment.

For your virtualization monitoring with PRTG, a variety of preconfigured sensors for the most popular vendors and systems (VMware, Citrix, Hyper-V, Nutanix, Azure) are available to instantly monitor all aspects of your virtualization environment such as CPU usage, memory capacity, data traffic, network speed, or host status. What's more, PRTG’s virtual machine monitoring lets you collect and analyze application and performance data from your VMs.

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.