Top 5 VMware Monitoring Software Solutions for Ultimate Performance Insights

Modern VMware infrastructures are complex and resource-dependent even in smaller organizations. Maintaining the optimal performance of VMware VMs is crucial for production environments and the availability of services. The right monitoring tool can make all the difference, helping you to ensure that machines and the infrastructure as a whole work as intended without resource or storage bottlenecks.

In this post, we explore the top 5 VMware monitoring software solutions with their advantages and disadvantages. Based on the info below, you can make an informed decision about which solution to use in your organization’s VMware infrastructure.

Why You Need VMware Monitoring

VMware monitoring is crucial to ensure efficient virtualized environments. The role of monitoring software is significant, as monitoring metrics can simplify and accelerate data analysis. Thus, you can react to resource deficiencies and resolve issues faster and more effectively.

Resource Allocation

With VMware performance monitoring, your IT administrators can improve resource allocation management capabilities. Understanding the resource utilization of virtual machines (CPU and RAM load), an admin has the picture of real requirements for a VM to function properly. Therefore, they can allocate just the required resources without causing resource under- or over-allocation. As a result, the VM works properly with sufficient resource capacity. Doing so for all virtual machines in your environment after checking their resource needs can help you significantly improve hardware utilization.

Performance Optimization

VMware performance monitoring solutions give you a real-time bird-eye view of key performance metrics in a virtualized environment: CPU utilization, RAM usage, disk drive, and network load, among others. Identifying performance bottlenecks becomes easier and faster. With that knowledge, you can fix resource issues and ensure optimal performance of VMs.

Capacity Planning

VMware monitoring solutions can be helpful in capacity planning as well. You can analyze historical performance data logs, figure out trends and load patterns and then predict upcoming resource needs of your infrastructure. Therefore, regular monitoring and analysis can help you ensure smooth and seamless scalability in terms of hardware performance and storage space.

Error Detection and Troubleshooting

Continuous monitoring of VM performance enables you to notice errors and malfunctions of workloads without delays. Moreover, detecting unusual behavior in a VM is also possible, allowing your IT team to react to fraud activities and cyberattacks quicker and more adequately. With early detection of troubles in your environment, admins can maintain the stability of an organization’s workloads and minimize downtime in emergencies.

Top VMware Monitoring Solutions

The market of VMware monitoring solutions has a lot of options to offer. Below we show the top 5 solutions to consider for your organization. We highlighted the strengths and drawbacks of every solution in the list for you to make a thorough decision and choose the most suitable solution for your VMware infrastructure monitoring.

1. SolarWinds

SolarWinds provides a comprehensive performance monitoring solution for VMware, enabling you to monitor resources, get notifications when things go wrong and recommendations on issue fixing. The capacity tracking tool is efficient and convenient, allowing organizations to plan to scale up and out in real time. Availability monitoring is another plus of the SolarWinds solution, shortening reaction time and enabling quick workload fixing to minimize downtime. Real-time issue resolution alerts are an additional effective tool here, providing information about the current status of infrastructure elements. The Root Cause analysis feature is an outstanding example of a troubleshooting and prevention tool for VMware.

On the downside, SolarWinds VMware monitoring solution costs may be too high for most organizations. And, in case you need VMware monitoring software for some smaller deployments, you might want to find a lighter and simpler alternative.

2. NAKIVO Monitoring for VMware

NAKIVO Monitoring for VMware provides lightning-fast performance monitoring. The solution is highly reliable for both VMware data protection and monitoring, simplifying issue prevention for the IT team. Comprehensive insight into VMware infrastructure with CPU, RAM, network and storage load/usage data from a single dashboard provides more control over the infrastructure. The real-time and historical monitoring data enables effective resource allocation at every moment. The user-friendly interface simplifies learning and enables you to use the available features and functions without delays.

NAKIVO Monitoring for VMware is almost excellent. The only drawback is that the solution isn’t free. However, the price is affordable for both SMBs and enterprise organizations.

3. VMware vRealize Operations Manager

The VMware vRealize Operations Manager is the native cloud-based monitoring solution for VMware environments. Being a VMware-provided software product, vRealize Operations provides all the necessary metrics for effective performance tracking in your infrastructure. Robust capacity management features, solid availability monitoring, and pinpointing the root cause of issues make this solution worth considering for organizations that need to boost their VM reliability, performance, and stability.

Still, despite the solution being developed by VMware for VMware environments, it is not perfect. Limited flexibility in licensing options, especially for smaller environments, may be a deal-breaker for organizations with specific budget and functionality requirements.

4. Dynatrace

The VMware monitoring solution from Dynatrace is another worthy example on the list. This software can be suitable if you are looking for full-stack monitoring capability with excellent infrastructure performance insights and effective resource optimization via capacity analytics. Also, availability tracking in Dynatrace enables issue prevention, while root cause analysis tools help resolve issues in a timely manner.

On the negative side, Dynatrace is not a solution for beginners: the functionality package is outstanding but complex to master and use. Lastly, the cost can be too high, especially for smaller organizations.

5. Datadog

Datadog is a worthy option for those who need a cloud-based versatile comprehensive VMware performance monitoring solution. Datadog also provides solid capacity analysis and effective availability tracking functionalities. Packed with root cause analysis tools for issue mitigation, this solution can be sufficient for the majority of smaller organizations.

Large enterprises may not like the price of a solution for scaled-out infrastructures. The last but not least important thing to mention here is that Datadog needs some familiarity with cloud-based solutions, posing certain qualification requirements for IT specialists to use the solution efficiently.

Conclusion

The five top-tier solutions for VMware monitoring mentioned in the list provide sufficient capabilities for organizations to track their virtual infrastructures.

Ultimately, your choice should align with your organization’s specific needs, budget, and scale. Take the time to explore these options, weigh their strengths and weaknesses, and find the VMware monitoring tool that perfectly suits your environment.