Crash Details - OS Test

Event logs on Windows VMs capture critical error conditions such as service crashes and application crashes on the VMs, application and service hangs, and service errors. Since the crash/slowness experienced by any mission-critical program/service on a Windows VM may affect the uptime of the dependent business services, administrators should be able to instantly capture these serious problem conditions, investigate the reasons for their occurrence, and promptly resolve them. This is exactly what the Crash Details -OS test helps administrators achieve! This test periodically scans the event logs on each Windows VM and reports the count of crashes, hangs, and errors that may have occurred recently on that VM. Detailed diagnostics provided by this test pinpoints the applications/services that crashed, hanged, or encountered errors, and thus enables quick and efficient troubleshooting.

Note:

This test will not report metrics on VMs running Windows 2000/2003/XP.

Target of the test: A Hyper-V server

Agent executing the test: An internal agent

Output of the test: One set of results for each Windows VM on a monitored Hyper-V server

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test period	This indicates how often should the test be executed.
Host	Specify the HOST for which this test is to be configured.
Port	Specify the port at which the target host is listening. By default, this is NULL
Inside View Using	By default, this test obtains the “inside view” of VMs using the eG VM Agent. Accordingly, the Inside view using flag is set to eG VM Agent by default. The eG VM Agent is a piece of software, which should be installed on every VM on a hypervisor. Every time the eG agent runs this test, it uses the eG VM Agent to pull relevant 'inside view' metrics from each VM. Once the metrics are collected, the eG agent then communicates with each VM agent and pulls these metrics, without requiring administrator privileges. Refer to Configuring the Remote Agent to Obtain the Inside View of VMs for more details on the eG VM Agent.
Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password, and Confirm Password	By default, these parameters are set to none. This is because, by default, the eG agent collects 'inside view' metrics using the eG VM agent on each VM. Domain administrator privileges need not be granted to the eG agent if it uses this default approach to obtain the 'inside view' of Windows VMs.
Report By User	For the Hyper-V monitoring model, the Report By User flag is set to No by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the Hyper-V server are identified using the hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, for the Hyper-V VDI model, this flag is set to Yes by default; this implies that in case of VDI servers, by default, the guests will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing the guest OS. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.
Report Powered OS	This flag becomes relevant only if the report by user flag is set to ‘Yes’. If the Report Powered OS flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtualmachine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the Report Powered OS flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently.
Report Powered ON	You can set the Report Powered ON status to Yes, so that the test reports an additional measure, Is VM powered on?, revealing whether a guest OS is currently running or not. The default status of this flag is set to Yes for a Hyper-V server. For a Hyper-V VDI server on the other hand, the default status of this flag is No. This is because, in such environments, the virtual desktops will be in the powered-off state most of the time.
Ignore VMs Inside View	Administrators of some high security Hyper-V environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the Ignore VMs Inside View parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your Ignore VMs Inside View specification can be: xp,lin,win,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on a Hyper-V host by default. Note: While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the Ignore VMs Inside View text box.
Exclude VMs	Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the Exclude VMs text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your Exclude VMs specification can be: xp,lin,win,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of VMs/VM name patterns in the Exclude VMs text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of VMs.
Ignore WINNT	By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the Ignore WINNT flag is set to Yes by default.
DD Frequency	Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD frequency.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measurements reported by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Recent application crashes:	Indicates the number of application crash events that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.	Number	An event with the ID 1000 is logged in the event log every time a program terminates unexpectedly on a virtual desktop. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 1000. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which programs and modules stopped suddenly.
Recent service crashes:	Indicates the number of service crash events that occurred on thisVM during the last measurement period.	Number	An event with the ID 7031 is logged in the Service Control Manager every time a service terminates ungracefully. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 7031. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of such events.
Recent application hangs	Indicates the number of application hang events that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.	Number	An event with the ID 1002 is logged in the Application Event Log every time an application hangs. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 1002. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of the recent application hang events.
Recent service hangs:	Indicates the number of service hang events that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.	Number	An event with the ID 7022 is logged in the Service Control Manager every time a service hangs. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with event ID 7022. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of the recent service hang events.
Recent service errors:	Indicates the number of service errors that occurred on this VM during the last measurement period.	Number	Events with the ID 7023, 7024, and 7026 are logged in the Service Control Manager every time a service error occurs. This measure reports the number of events in the event log with the aforesaid event IDs. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the complete details of the recent service errors.