Learn More about VMAN polling and pollers

Virtualization Manager supports multiple polling options for monitoring your virtual environment. Depending of the type of polling method used, the polled device consumes a license either as a node or socket.

For best results, SolarWinds recommends always using the VMAN Orion polling method, which collects extensive data and metrics for virtual systems including clusters, hosts, datastores, and virtual machines.

If you are an existing customer with a VMAN appliance, you need to migrate polling over from the appliance to VMAN Orion.

Here are the different types of pollers VMAN can use:

  • Basic: polls using Orion polling methods (Orion agents, WMI, SNMP) for general metrics per managed node. This method is not recommended for virtual systems in VMAN. The poller consumes a node license and only collect basic data for the virtual item for only the specified system. For example, if you monitor a virtual host with Basic polling, you do not receive metrics for children VMs.
  • VMAN Orion (Recommended): polls using the VMAN Orion polling method for extensive metrics for the host and child VMs. This poller consumes a VMAN licensed socket and polls directly through the Orion server. This option is available for new VMAN users, without the VMAN appliance and users who have retired the VMAN appliance integration.
  • VMAN Appliance: polls using the VMAN appliance for extensive metrics for the host and child VMs. This poller consumes a VMAN licensed socket. This option is only available for users who have integrated the VMAN Appliance with the Orion Platform. The VMAN Appliance is typically used by existing VMAN users with a VMAN appliance deployed in the Orion environment. See The VMAN Appliance for more information.

VMAN pollers access metrics and data through VMware and Hyper-V virtual systems, capturing alerts and events, virtual resource usage, and additional information available through resources and dashboards. Numerous troubleshooting options also access this data:

  • Recommendations for generating active and predictive solutions for issues in your virtual environment.
  • Sprawl Dashboard for quickly viewing specific data including orphaned VMDKs, snapshots, and more.
  • PerfStack for troubleshooting any issue or performance trend encountered in your environment. Drag and drop any metric monitored by the Orion Web Console including VMAN and other Orion Platform products installed or integrated in your environment.

If you are an existing user on an appliance, you can synchronize your VMAN entities using the recommended option to migrate all entities and use VMAN Orion poller. See Synchronize VMAN entities with the Synchronization wizard.

Change the polling method for Hyper-V clusters, VMware vCenters, or ESX hosts.

You can change the polling used for a monitored virtual device at any time depending on your needs. Here's how:

  1. Navigate to Settings > All Settings > Manage Virtual Devices (under Node & Group Management).
  2. Select the tab for the type of virtual entity that you want to change the poller for: VMware or Hyper-V.
  3. Select the virtual device that you want to change the polling method for.
  4. Select Polling Method.
  5. Choose the type of polling that you want for the selected device.

Setting the polling method on a Hyper-V cluster means that all hosts and VMs in the cluster will use the same polling method. You cannot change the polling method per virtual entity.