vSphere 5.5 comes with many counters, many more than what a physical server provides. There are new counters that do not have a physical equivalent, such as memory ballooning, CPU latency, and vSphere replication. In addition, some counters have the same name as their physical world counterpart but behave differently in vSphere. Memory usage is a common one, resulting in confusion among system administrators. For those counters that are similar to their physical world counterparts, vSphere may use different units, such as milliseconds.

As a result, experienced IT administrators find it hard to master vSphere counters by building on their existing knowledge. Instead of trying to relate each counter to its physical equivalent, I find it useful to group them according to their purpose. Virtualization formalizes the relationship between the infrastructure team and application team. The infrastructure team changes from the system builder to service provider. The...