This section describes how to install and view VMware-specific performance data for virtual machines that run Microsoft Windows operating systems. VMware provides performance counters that enable you to view data on many aspects of guest operating system performance for the Microsoft Windows Perfmon utility.

Some virtualization processes dynamically allocate available resources depending on the status, or utilization rates, of virtual machines in the environment. It can make obtaining accurate information about the resource utilization (CPU utilization, in particular) of individual virtual machines, or applications running within virtual machines, difficult. VMware now provides virtual machine-specific performance counter libraries for the Windows Perfmon utility. It enables application administrators to access accurate virtual machine resource utilization statistics from within the Windows Perfmon utility.

You can take advantage of virtualized CPU performance counters to use performance tuning tools inside the guest operating system. See the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration documentation.

Enable Statistics Collection for Guest Operating System Performance Analysis

VMware-specific performance objects are loaded into Microsoft Windows Perfmon and enabled when VMware Tools is installed.

To display a performance chart for any performance object, you must add counters. See View Performance Statistics for Windows Guest Operating Systems

View Performance Statistics for Windows Guest Operating Systems

You can display VMware specific statistics in the Microsoft Windows Perfmon utility.

Prerequisites

Verify that a virtual machine with a Microsoft Windows operating system and VMware Tools is installed.

Procedure

  1. Open a console to the virtual machine and log in.
  2. Select Start > Run.
  3. Enter Perfmon and press Enter.
  4. In the Performance dialog box, click Add .
  5. In the Add Counters dialog box, select Use local computer counters.
  6. Select a virtual machine performance object.
    Virtual machine performance object names begin with VM.
  7. Select the counters that you want to display for that object.
  8. If the performance object has multiple instances, select the instances you want to display.
  9. Click Add.
    The Performance dialog box displays data for the selected performance object.
  10. Click Close to close the Add Counter dialog box and return to the Performance dialog box.