Top 10 Tips for Optimizing Performance with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Beginner’s Guide to SolarWinds Virtualization Manager: Features & BenefitsSolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is an infrastructure monitoring and management tool built to simplify the administration of virtual environments. Whether you run VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, or a mixed environment, VMAN centralizes visibility, performance monitoring, capacity planning, and troubleshooting for virtual machines (VMs), hosts, datastores, and clusters. This guide explains core features, practical benefits, and how to get started using VMAN effectively.

What is SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a purpose-built solution that integrates with virtualization platforms and other SolarWinds products (such as Network Performance Monitor and Server & Application Monitor) to offer a unified view of virtual infrastructure health and capacity. It collects performance metrics, analyzes configuration and resource usage, and provides recommendations to optimize performance and utilization.

Key Features

• Performance monitoring and alerting

  • Monitors CPU, memory, storage I/O, network usage, and latency for VMs and hosts.
  • Real-time and historical performance charts make trends visible at a glance.
  • Configurable alerts notify you of performance degradation, resource contention, or unusual behavior.

• Dependency mapping and topology views

  • Automatically discovers virtual machines, hosts, datastores, and clusters.
  • Visual topology maps show relationships between VMs, hosts, storage, and physical infrastructure.
  • Ability to drill down from a high-level map to individual VM performance and configuration details.

• Capacity planning and forecasting

  • Tracks historical resource consumption and projects future capacity needs.
  • “What-if” modeling allows you to simulate adding VMs or changing resource allocations to see when you’ll run out of capacity.
  • Shows underutilized and overprovisioned VMs so you can right-size for efficiency.

• Intelligent remediation and recommendations

  • Suggests actions such as VM migration (vMotion), adjusting reservations/limits, or reclaiming idle VMs.
  • Provides root-cause analysis to isolate the source of performance issues (e.g., noisy neighbor VMs, datastore contention).

• Storage and datastore analytics

  • Monitors datastore utilization and performance metrics like IOPS and latency.
  • Correlates VM performance with datastore health to identify storage-related bottlenecks.

• Reporting and dashboards

  • Built-in dashboards for health, capacity, and performance overview.
  • Customizable reports for SLA compliance, capacity planning, and operational reviews.
  • Ability to schedule and export reports for stakeholders.

• Integration and extensibility

  • Integrates with other SolarWinds modules (e.g., Orion Platform) to provide metric correlation across networks, servers, and applications.
  • API support for automation and custom integrations.

Benefits for IT Teams

• Faster troubleshooting: Correlated metrics and topology maps help you find root causes quickly, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).
• Improved resource utilization: Capacity planning and right-sizing recommendations reduce waste caused by overprovisioned VMs and free up hardware resources.
• Proactive problem detection: Alerts and forecasts allow teams to prevent outages before they occur.
• Simplified operations: Centralized monitoring across vendors and platforms reduces tool sprawl and simplifies daily administration.
• Cost savings: Better capacity management and reduced downtime translate to lower operational costs and improved ROI on virtualization investments.

Typical Use Cases

• Small-to-medium IT teams needing centralized visibility into virtual environments without deploying multiple point tools.
• Enterprises with mixed virtualization platforms wanting unified monitoring and cross-correlation with network and server metrics.
• Capacity planning teams responsible for forecasting resource needs and optimizing hardware purchases.
• Managed service providers (MSPs) monitoring multiple client environments for performance and SLA compliance.

Getting Started: Practical Steps

1. Deployment options

   • VMAN runs as a module within the SolarWinds Orion Platform. Install Orion first if you don’t already have it.
   • Ensure system requirements are met (CPU, memory, disk) — SolarWinds provides detailed sizing guidelines based on the number of monitored objects.

2. Discovery and inventory

   • Configure credentials for vCenter, ESXi hosts, or Hyper-V servers.
   • Run discovery to populate VMs, hosts, datastores, and clusters into VMAN inventory.

3. Baseline and thresholds

   • Allow VMAN to collect data for a few days to establish baselines.
   • Review and customize alert thresholds to reduce noise and focus on actionable alerts.

4. Configure capacity settings

   • Set business hours, growth rate assumptions, and retention periods for forecasting.
   • Use “what-if” scenarios to model upcoming projects or VM deployments.

5. Customize dashboards and reports

   • Tailor dashboards for roles (operations, capacity planners, management).
   • Schedule regular capacity and performance reports for stakeholders.

6. Implement remediation workflows

   • Configure automated or semi-automated actions (e.g., notifications, runbooks).
   • Use VMAN recommendations as part of change control and performance tuning processes.

Best Practices

• Start small and expand: Begin monitoring critical clusters and VMs, tune alerts, then scale coverage.
• Regularly review recommendations: Treat VMAN’s remediation suggestions as inputs into your change process rather than automatic fixes.
• Consolidate data retention: Balance historical granularity with storage costs—keep high-resolution data for shorter windows and aggregated data longer.
• Integrate with ITSM: Feed alerts and incidents into ticketing systems to ensure follow-up and track remediation.
• Train staff on topology maps and capacity forecasting to get the most value from VMAN’s visualizations.

Limitations & Considerations

• Licensing and cost: SolarWinds licensing is typically per-CPU or per-VM; evaluate TCO including Orion Platform licensing.
• Resource overhead: Collecting high-resolution metrics can increase load on monitoring servers; size the Orion instance appropriately.
• Learning curve: Teams may need time to adopt VMAN workflows and to fine-tune alerts and recommendations.
• Platform dependencies: Deep integration requires access to vCenter or Hyper-V with appropriate permissions.

Example: Quick Troubleshooting Workflow

1. Receive alert: High CPU usage on an application VM.
2. Open VMAN topology map to see host, datastore, and neighboring VMs.
3. Check historical charts for CPU, memory, and I/O to determine if spike is transient.
4. Review VMAN recommendations — e.g., migrate the VM off a noisy host or adjust resource shares.
5. Implement remediation (migration or configuration change), then monitor to confirm resolution.

Conclusion

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a powerful tool for gaining visibility, improving performance, and optimizing capacity in virtual environments. For teams serious about maintaining healthy virtual infrastructure, VMAN combines monitoring, analytics, and actionable recommendations to reduce downtime, lower costs, and streamline operations. Start with focused monitoring, tune alerts and forecasts, and integrate VMAN outputs into your operational processes to realize its full benefits.