Installing and Configuring VROPS
Installing and Configuring VROPS
This is a great helpful resource for systems guys and management as it not just monitors, But
also analyses, forecasts capacity planning and gives recommendations and its pro active
• Master Node – Mandatory first node in the cluster, or single standalone node in smaller
deployments.
• Master Replica Node – This is the replica node for Master Node
• Data Node – Used for scalability.
• Remote Collector Node – Used to overcome data collection issues, used when poor network
infra. This node is stateless.
Note: this series we are not covering Replica node installation, however it is straight forward
HTTP Service: This service supports product UI, admin UI, and Suite API.
Collector Process: Collects inventory and Data from configured sources.
Transaction Locator Process: Responsible for coordinating between the master, replica and
remote collector nodes.
Transaction Service Process: Does caching, processing, and retrieving metrics for analytics.
Analytics: processing all incoming data by generating SMTP and SNMP alerts on the master
and replica nodes.
Common DBs: stores collected data, user content, metric key mappings, and role privileges,
manage cluster administration data ,stores all resource, collector, adapter, collector group,
and relationships
Resource DB : holds resource, collector, adapter, collector group and relationships
The recommended architecture for vROPS for enterprises is to have a master node, replica of
master for HA and as many data nodes required for redundancy in a vROPS cluster.
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The main pre-requisite for deploying the vROPS appliance successfully is to have DNS
forward and reverse lookup records created with static IP’s from same subnet. Please note
remote collectors can be in different subnet but its recommended for master, replica and data
nodes part of cluster to be in same subnet or vLan. In our case below three records are created
in advance.
192.168.1.204 – vrops-01.sslab.com
192.168.1.205 – vrops-02.sslab.com
192.168.1.206 – vrops-03.sslab.com
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Step 1: Login to vCenter – Right click Cluster or Host – Deploy OVA template – provide
Name for appliance and select the OVA file downloaded.
Note: you will follow these same steps for deploying all three appliances.
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Step 8: Select the Network port group for vROPS appliance vLan and Next
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
Domain Name: sslab.com
Domain Search Path: sslab.com
Domain Name servers: 192168.1.150 (DNS servers with comma)
Network 1 IP: 192168.1.204 ( this is vROPS appliance IP- it is diff for 3 appliances)
Network Netmask: 255.255.255.0
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Step 11: Similarly follow above steps and Deploy 2 more appliances for replica and data
nodes, which we will use in next posts.
Step 12: The console of vROPS appliance will look like this, as you notices it has
automatically detected the DNS record from DNS server as shown below.
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Step 13: Open vROPS using https://fqdn/admin or https://IP/admin as shown below. vrops-
01.sslab.com is my first and master node.
Step 15: Provide the appliance admin account password for ui access.
Step 16: Use default certificates or if you like to have certificate from external CA go ahead
and install.
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Step 17: Provide the appliance or Master node Name as in DNS record
Step 18: We will configure the cluster later, ignore this and click next.
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Step 20: Now Cluster will start creating on this master node. wait for 10-15 mins to complete.
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Step 21: Once done – Click on Start vRealize Operations Manager to start cluster
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Step 23:It takes a while and shows the cluster state as Online as shown below.
Step 24:After the Cluster is created we need to do the initial configuration for vROPS.
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Close the admin view and open https://fqdn or https://ip of master node, this will take to user
UI – Next
Step 26:I am going with evaluation, If you have key enter it now or it can be done later.
Step 28:finish
As we had installed master node in post 1 will cover configuring vROPS cluster HA and
replica master node in this post.
The only prerequisite for part 2 is to deploy appliance for replica node covered in part 1 ( link
is below for part1) from steps 1 – steps 11. with DNS record in place for node2.
192.168.1.205 – vrops-02.sslab.com
First will add the second node as data node, Once successful will get option to enable HA and
configure replica.
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Next
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Click Finish
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This will try to add the second node to cluster. please give 10-15 mins.
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Click on Finish Adding New Nodes and wait for 10-15 mins.
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click ok
Select Node 2 name – select enable high availability button below – Ok.
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Select yes
After a while it will bring Cluster Online and Enabled high availability as shown below with
status as online for nodes.
We had covered Deploying 3 appliances, Master and replica Nodes configuration in first 2 parts. Will
cover deploying data nodes for redundancy and cluster availability in this part 3.
The only prerequisite for part 3 is to deploy appliance for replica node covered in part 1 ( link
is below for part1) from steps 1 – steps 11. with DNS record in place for node3.
192.168.1.206 – vrops-03.sslab.com
Open https://fqdn or IP of node in browser – Click Add and expand existing installation.
next
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Finish
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Allow it for adding to cluster for first use , it takes 5-10 mins
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Click OK
Click on Finish adding new Nodes and wait for 10-15 mins to complete data node adding to
cluster
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Once done all three nodes are shown as below with cluster as online and HA status enabled.
Login to first or second node https://fqdn or IP – This will take to portal login – provide
admin as user & password
Click on Objects on top and select the access for this user – click finish and accept any
popups.
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Now vCenter collection will start and it will take time based on no of objects in vCenter.
Select the cluster to populate information as shown below. As shown my cluster memory 88
% is utilized.
There are several components to the UI, and several paths to the same content. The
major areas of navigation are:
1. The Title Bar
2. The Content Pane, which will usually display a dashboard containing other links
3. The Navigation Pane, which is contextual to the title bar and can be hidden or
displayed by clicking on the chevron << in the top right-hand corner of the pane.
4. Note the chevron for hiding or showing the navigation pane.
Administration View
Administration
Administration will take you to the Administration page which contains all
administration options including Solutions (Adapters), User Management and Support
tools. This is where you will configure Management Packs, Certificates, Policies, etc.
Administration is out of scope for this vRealize Operations Manager overview, but feel
free to take a look around at the different configuration options here.
You can use vRealize Operations to resolve problems that your customers raise, respond
to alerts that identify problems before your customers report them, and generally
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Object Search
Let's say we receive a call that a virtual machine (VM) called "weblogic-01" is having
performance issues:
1. Search for "weblogic-01" in Quick Search (magnifying glass icon to open
search bar).
2. Click on the VM name in the results list.
Click to enlarge
vRealize Operations rolls up information collected from objects to identify the health of your
environment at-a-glance:
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Metrics - Raw data is collected from an object in the form of a metric observation or value
(for example CPU Usage and Memory Contention %). Additional metrics may be calculated,
such as capacity metrics, badge metrics, and health metrics.
Badges - A visual overview of several related metrics. The color of the badge reflects the
status of that badge. Green indicates the status of the badge is normal.
Health - The health of an object is determined by the status of the related badges. Minor
badges are rolled up into three major badges:
Health Badge - indicates a situation requiring immediate attention. It consists of of
Workload, Anomalies and Faults.
Risk Badge - indicates an issue that will require attention soon. It consists of Stress, Time
Remaining and Capacity Remaining.
Efficiency Badge - identifies optimization opportunities in the environment. It consists of
Reclaimable Waste and Density.
Let's see how those concepts are at play on the dashboard that we found for the VM
weblogic-01:
1. Make sure you are on the Summary tab for the dashboard
2. Cycle through the Badges displayed in the Recommended Actions Pane. Hover over the
badge for a text pop up of the badge, then click on it to switch the view:
o Health
o Risk
o Efficiency
3. Did you notice the status changes to match the selected badge?
4. Are the associated issues different depending on which badge you are viewing?
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Now let's see how we would drill down further into the information for this VM using
Metrics.
Notice how the historical data for the selected metrics are displayed in the right-hand pane.
Let's review what we found for our VM with a performance issue. The weblogic-01
dashboard displayed the following information:
We then looked at the All Metrics tab. From there we could look at all metrics and historical
data collected for this virtual machine.
This exercise was intended to introduce you to the concept of badges, health and metrics. We
are not going to examine this issue any further at this time. Further troubleshooting examples
are available later in this module.
Actionable Alerts
Alerts are generated when a metric or a group of metrics exceeds a threshold. Thresholds can
be dynamically determined by vRealize Operations analytics, or manually set by an
administrator.
Alert definitions are a combination of symptoms and recommendations that identify problem
areas and generate alerts. Alert definitions are provided for various objects in your
environment. You can also create your own alert definitions.
Alerts within vRealize Operations not only identify an issue, but also provide
recommendations and actions to be taken when an alert is triggered. These actions can be
triggered automatically (either immediately or during a scheduled window), or configured to
require manual initiation. Actionable alerts are central to the Self-Driving Data Center as they
provide several levels of automation that can be increased as users become more comfortable
with letting the environment respond to issues in an automated fashion.
Symptoms
Recommendations
Actions
Notifications
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Alert Definitions
Dashboards and Reports in vRealize Operations are used to display information that is
consumable and contextual to the needs of the user. Dashboards and reports are made up of
smaller units of display called widgets and views.
Dashboards present a visual overview of the performance and state of objects in your
infrastructure. You use dashboards to determine the nature and timeframe of existing and
potential issues within your environment.
Reports are point-in-time (scheduled or on-demand) snapshots of views and dashboards
that can be exported in PDF or CSV format.
There are dozens of dashboards and reports available with the core solution. vRealize
Operations Advanced (or higher) also allow the creation and customization of dashboards and
reports.
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Dashboard Navigation
Dashboards are found under the Dashboard navigation view of vRealize Operations:
Getting Started
The Getting Started dashboard is a navigation dashboard that groups available dashboards
into "personas" or use cases. Click through the personas to view the associated dashboards:
1. Operations
2. Capacity Planning
3. Performance and Troubleshooting
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4. Optimize
5. Configuration and Compliance (not shown in screenshot)
We will look at specific dashboards in the next lesson, "Exploring vRealize Operations".
Widgets
Widgets are the panes on your dashboards. They show information about attributes,
resources, applications, or the overall processes in your environment.
You use widgets to build custom dashboards. Custom dashboards are outside of the scope of
this module, but the screenshot shows the widget list from a custom dashboard creation to
help illustrate the concept of widgets.
The available configuration options vary depending on the widget type. Many widgets can
provide data to or accept data from other widgets. You can use this feature to set the data
from one widget as filter and display related information on a single dashboard.
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Heat Maps
A heat map is a type of widget that contains rectangles of different sizes and colors, with
each rectangle representing an object in your virtual environment. The color of the rectangle
represents the value of one metric, while the size of the rectangle represents the value of
another metric.
For example, one heat map might show both the total memory and the percentage of memory
in use for each virtual machine. Larger rectangles would represent virtual machines with
more total memory, while the different colors would represent memory usage (green for low
and red for high).
Heat maps are used throughout vRealize Operations, as they are an effective way to visualize
data across a large number of objects.
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Views
Views are used within vRealize Operations to help interpret metrics, properties, symptoms
and so on, from a particular perspective:
Reports
Click to enlarge
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A report is a scheduled snapshot of views. Reports are accessed through the navigation pane
of the Dashboards view:
vRealize Operations Reports allow the user to capture details related to current or predicted
resource needs.
Reports can be customized to include your corporate logo (using customizable report
templates), then scheduled to run regularly and send output to a group email or FTP server.
Click to enlarge
Management packs for vRealize Operations extend the operational management capabilities
of the platform to provide operational visibility into additional, non-vSphere solutions.
Management packs can be created by VMware or by third parties. Management packs
contain:
Management packs for vRealize Operations can be downloaded through vRealize Suite
Lifecycle Manager, or directly from the VMware Solution Exchange
https://marketplace.vmware.com/
Blue Medora is a company that VMware has partnered with for the development of
management packs for third party integrations.
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Optimize Performance
The workload optimization feature of vRealize Operations is the control center of your self-
driving datacenter. You define business and operational intent, and then vRealize Operations
will take necessary actions to keep your workload resources optimized.
Workload Optimization works closely with DRS to ensure applications have the resources
they need. Workload optimization will evaluate resources required and in use across clusters,
allowing you to migrate workloads between clusters as needed.
Assess Performance
Define business or operational intent
Automate workload optimization and balancing
Report
Optimize Performance is covered in more detail in HOL 1901-02: Optimize Performance and
Assess vSphere Configuration and Compliance with vRealize Operations.
Click to enlarge
1. Click on the "Home" title bar icon (which will take you to the "Quick Start" page).
2. Find the "Optimize Performance" section in the content pane.
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Click to enlarge
The first piece of the performance optimization puzzle is to make sure that virtual machines
have the appropriate resources allocated to them. This means increasing resources assigned to
undersized virtual machines to ensure performance, and right-sizing oversized virtual
machines to reduce waste.
The widgets show the currently-configured vCPU and memory of the virtual machine, as well
as the recommended configuration based on historical and predictive utilization trends.
You can right-size a workload immediately or schedule a resize for a later time through this
dashboard. Let's take a look at how to do that.
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At first glance, it may not seem like a widget has associated options. However, this is just
because vRealize Operations hides icons and toolbars that are not in use to reduce screen
clutter. In order to show the toolbar, click on the eye icon in the Undersized Virtual Machine
widget.
1. Hover over the top right hand side of the widget until an eye icon is displayed, then click on
it.
Be aware that there are many small chevrons and icons within vRealize Operations that are
easily missed, but that expose all kinds of additional functionality. If the screen doesn't look
like you expect, look for a chevron that may indicate hidden panes, or eye icons to show
additional toolbars.
Actions
Note that these can be run immediately or scheduled at a later time (during a maintenance
window, for example).
If you cannot see the gear icon, go back to the previous step to review how to make the
toolbar visible.
We are not going to run an action at this time, as we are in historical view mode and not
connected to a live vCenter Server.
Workload Optimization
Once virtual machines are rightsized, the second piece of the performance optimization
puzzle is to make sure that hosts and clusters have the optimal combination of workloads
running on them. Navigate to the Workload Optimization dashboard:
1. Click on the "Home" title bar icon (which will take you to the "Quick Start" page).
2. Find the "Optimize Performance" section and select "Workload Optimization".
The Workload Optimization dashboard is a quick view into the state of your environment in
regard to workload placement. vRealize Operations will determine whether your environment
is optimized based on the intent that has been configured.
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1. Review the different ways you can view the information by selecting the different Sort by
options:
o Time Remaining
o Cost Savings
o Optimized
2. Click on msbu-east.
Optimization Details
Click to enlarge
Opening the dashboard for a datacenter will show the information for that datacenter. Note
the information presented here:
Custom datacenters are groupings of clusters that you can create for the purpose of
balancing workloads between them.
Click to enlarge
To review the available options for workload optimization policy, edit the placement settings:
Click to enlarge
Optimize Capacity
The capacity optimization components of vRealize Operations ensure efficient capacity
management of your environment, making sure that you are getting the most from your
infrastructure resources and are planning appropriately for growth.
Efficient Capacity Management - Run your infrastructure like a service provider by using
optimal densification, proactive planning and procurement
Optimize Capacity is covered in more detail in HOL 1901-03: Optimize Capacity and Cost
Savings with vRealize Operations.
Click to enlarge
1. Click on the "Home" title bar icon (which will take you to the "Quick Start" page).
2. Click on "Assess Capacity" (in the "Optimize Capacity" section).
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Click to enlarge
The Optimize Capacity - Overview dashboard is a quick view into the state of your
environment in regard to capacity. vRealize Operations will determine whether your
environment is at risk of running out of capacity, and when:
1. Review the different ways you can view the information by selecting the different Sort by
options:
o Time Remaining
o Cost Savings
o Optimized
2. Click on msbu-east
Note that the Capacity Optimization Overview dashboard looks very similar to the Workload
Optimization dashboard. This is intentional, to make navigation as simple as possible.
Although the information the dashboards display is slightly different, the navigation options
are the same.
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Capacity Details
Click to enlarge
Opening the dashboard for a datacenter will show the information for the selected datacenter.
Note the information presented here:
What-If Analysis
Click to enlarge
What-if Analysis is the capacity planning feature that allows you to plan ahead by simulating
the addition of additional applications and virtual machines into your environment, using
scenarios. Scenarios allow you to define a configuration for a workload or application, and
use the vRealize Operations analytics to determine if and where capacity exists to support
those additional workloads. It will also show you what it will cost to run those resources.
We are just viewing this section to show that this functionality is available, we are not going
to run a scenario at this time.
Troubleshoot
The intelligent remediation components of vRealize Operations ensures the ongoing, hands-
off health of your environment. It uses predictive analytics to predict potential issues,
intelligent analysis to determine smart thresholds and intelligent alerts for automated
responses to triggered alerts.
Intelligent Remediation - Predict, prevent and troubleshoot across SDDC and multiple
clouds
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Intelligent Remediation is covered in more detail in HOL 1901-04: Monitor and Troubleshoot
Your Infrastructure and Applications with vRealize Operations and Log Insight
Troubleshoot - Navigation
Click to enlarge
1. Click on the the "Home" title bar icon (which will take you to the "Quick Start" page).
2. Find the "Troubleshoot" section in the content pane.
Getting Started
Click to enlarge
The Getting Started dashboard is the best way to navigate through the out-of-the-box
dashboards. If you remember from the lesson "Navigating the User Interface" earlier in this
module, the Getting Started dashboard groups other dashboards into personas based on role
or task.
Troubleshooting Dashboards
Click to enlarge
These are guided troubleshooting dashboards designed to help you isolate issues within your
environment. We will pick one to review.
3. Click on the "Troubleshoot a VM" dashboard from the list of Performance Troubleshooting
dashboards.
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Troubleshooting Dashboards
Click to enlarge
These are guided troubleshooting dashboards designed to help you isolate issues within your
environment. We will pick one to review.
3. Click on the "Troubleshoot a VM" dashboard from the list of Performance Troubleshooting
dashboards.
Troubleshoot a VM
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Click to enlarge
Returning to our troublesome VM from earlier in this module, let's use the guided
troubleshooting dashboard to identify the issue and possible solutions.
We need to search for the VM in the first widget. Remember the VM name? It was
"weblogic-01". Move to the next step to see how to filter for this VM.
Click to enlarge
It may not be entirely clear at first how to search for a particular VM, but if you remember
from earlier in this lesson, vRealize Operations reduces screen clutter by hiding icons that are
not in use. To find the available options:
1. Hover over the top right hand side of the VM list widget - this will bring up several gray
icons.
2. Click on the eye icon, to show the toolbar.
Click to enlarge
Once the tool bar is visible, there are several options including Filter:
1. Enter the VM name (weblogic-01) into the Filter field, and hit Enter.
2. Select (highlight) the appropriate vm from the filtered list.
Once the VM is selected, the remaining widgets on the dashboards will change context to
reflect data for that particular VM. Let's review the information.
The VM Dashboard
Click to enlarge
Notice that the widgets are numbered. They are ordered in a flow that facilitates
troubleshooting:
If you cannot see data for one of the widgets, check to see if that pesky chevron is open or
closed.
If you have time, feel free to explore some of the other troubleshooting dashboards. The data
shown will be different for different object types, but the concepts are the same:
Review the widgets in the order displayed on the dashboard for a logical troubleshooting
flow.
Show or hide widget content by using the chevron icon to open or close.
Use the eye icon to show or hide the tool bar for each widget.
Permanently add your favorite dashboards to the navigation pane by selecting the check box
in the All Dashboards dropdown.
vRealize Operations Manager 6.6 was released on June 13th, 2017. Version 6.6.1 (a
maintenance release) was released on August 8th, 2017 and contained many minor bug fixes.
This lesson will update you on the feature enhancements to vRealize Operations Manager
that came with the 6.6 upgrade.
6.6 Updates
vRealize Operation Manager 6.6 focuses on enhancing product usability, accelerating time to
value, and improving troubleshooting capabilities. The information on the next few steps is
taken from the Release Notes for 6.6.
Simplified usability
Ensures performance across the datacenter's with fully automated workload balancing,
across clusters and across datastores.
Ensures DRS Configurations and provides the option to set DRS automation level for
individual objects.
Predictive DRS takes action to preempt resource contention.
Utilizes operations analytics to optimize initial placement of workloads through vRealize
Automation.
Compliance capabilities
Ability to tackle compliance problems through the new vSphere hardening dashboard
Extends compliance through PCI & HIPAA compliance for vSphere.
Ensures business configurations through new cluster, host, and VM configuration
dashboards
General Improvements
General improvements:
Adds support for Windows Server 2016 for End Point Operations agents
The End Point Operations Management agents collect metrics for NFS-mounted file systems.
New HTML5 UI
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Click to enlarge
The new HTML5 UI provides an easier and consistent experience across the VMware
product line. Like other VMware solutions, it is based on the Clarity Design System (a
VMware created and maintained, open source environment containing UX guidelines, an
HTML/CSS framework, and Angular components to create an exceptional user experience).
The overall result is a cleaner, fresher, faster, easier to navigate user interface.
The Clarity Design System has also been used to update the user interfaces for many other
VMware solutions, including vCenter, vRealize Orchestrator, vRealize Log Insight and
vRealize Business for Cloud. This gives a consistent, modern look and feel to our solutions.
Click to enlarge
The Getting Started dashboard, introduced in version 6.6, took the work we had done
creating dozens of out-of-the-box dashboards (based on customer use cases), and grouped
them into persona based groups. These groupings guide you to the information that you need,
when you need it. It is still available in version 6.7 and continues to be the preferred
navigation dashboard for many version 6.7 customers.
1. Click Dashboards.
2. Open menu for All Dashboards.
3. Select the Getting Started dashboard.
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Persona-Based Dashboards
Click to enlarge
vRealize Operations 6.6 introduced Persona-Based Dashboards that help you navigate the
vast amount of information available about your environment. The personas are based on
your role or the task you are trying to accomplish. Dashboards are grouped by persona for
easy navigation.
Review the personas and associated dashboards on the Getting Started dashboard by clicking
in the personas below:
Take some time now to review the dashboards associated with each category.
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Click to enlarge
Although the workload balance functionality was introduced in 6.6, it was improved in 6.7
and the navigation options changed:
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
DRS Settings
Click to enlarge
1. Review the widget "Are your clusters meeting your utilization objectives?"
2. View the information associated with each cluster in the datacenter.
There are links in the widget to access additional DRS-related information and settings:
View DRS Summary will show you the current settings for DRS on the cluster, vMotion
history, and VM "happiness".
Set DRS Automation will allow you to modify the cluster DRS settings directly from the
vRealize Operations Manager user interface.
Click to enlarge
Although the solution may look similar to the management packs from previous versions,
note that it no longer needs to be downloaded and added from the VMware Solutions
Exchange and cannot be deleted. Making it part of the core product means that it will be
updated with the core product, and all integration functionality will be fully tested.
vSAN Dashboards
vRealize Operations Manager 6.6 added all new vSAN dashboards. The vSAN dashboards
are embedded in the appropriate dashboard grouping, for example:
vSAN Capacity Overview (Dashboards, All Dashboards, Capacity and Utilization, vSAN
Capacity Overview)
vSAN Operations Overview (Dashboards, All Dashboards, Operations, vSAN Operations
Overview)
Troubleshoot vSAN (Dashboards, All Dashboards, Performance Troubleshooting, vSAN
Operations Overview)
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Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
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The vSAN Operations Overview dashboard is an overview of the health of your vSAN
environment, including summary information, alerts, latency, IOPs, and other operational
information.
Take a moment to review the information displayed here, before moving onto the next step.
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
The vSAN Capacity Overview dashboard provides an overview of storage capacity and
savings achieved by enabling de-duplication and compression across all vSAN clusters. You
can view total provisioned capacity, current and historical utilization trends, and future
procurement requirements from the dashboard.
Take a moment to review the information displayed here, before moving onto the next step.
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
The Troubleshoot vSAN dashboard is a guided dashboard to help you troubleshoot vSAN
issues. You can view the properties of your vSAN clusters, as well as active alerts on the
components, including hosts, disk groups and vSAN datastores.
Take a moment to review the information displayed here before moving onto the next step.
Note that this dashboard was updated further in vRealize Operations 6.7 by adding additional
metrics.
6.7 Updates
The enhancement categories listed below are taken from the Release Notes for version 6.7
which can be reviewed here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-
Manager/6.7/rn/vRealize-Operations-Manager-67.html
vRealize Operations Manager 6.7 includes a completely new, (near) real-time Capacity
Analysis engine. There are also new capacity overview, reclamation and planning UI
workflows powered by new real time capacity analytics, resulting in quick time to value:
Capacity updates are available immediately after changes occur in the environment.
Capacity forecasts now includes both an upper and a lower confidence band.
Time Remaining, Capacity Remaining, and Right-Sizing have improved accuracy.
Capacity "what-if" scenarios available for future projects and changes.
Costing integrated directly with capacity.
Capacity Remaining and Time Remaining calculations are now based on the demand capacity
model. This is how public cloud providers calculate metrics, so you will be able to do more
accurate planning across your hybrid resources. Here is a refresher on the concepts:
Demand-based models show actual resource usage and trending based on actual usage.
Allocation-based models show resources allocated (i.e. could be demanded) and trending
based on that information. While more conservative, it is also less accurate and less optimal
for capacity planning.
We know that customers may still want to use allocation metrics to report on things like over-
commit. We have provided a new Capacity Allocation Overview dashboard with 6.7, so that
customers can continue to report on overcommit ratios in their environments.
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Cost Engine
vRealize Operations Manager 6.7 added cost drivers directly into the solution. If you are
familiar with vRealize Business for Cloud, you will know about Cost Drivers and the cost
reference database. In previous versions of vRealize Operations Manager, integration with
vRealize Business for Cloud was required in order to see cost information. Now the cost
engine is included directly within vRealize Operations Manager!
vRealize Operations Manager 6.7 comes with a cost reference database out of the box. These
are infrastructure costs that VMware has analyzed over time and added to a database that gets
updated quarterly. This means that you get costing information immediately for your
environment. Of course, if you know your actual costs, you can add them directly to get an
even more accurate picture.
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Click to enlarge
The Assess Cost dashboard reports on the cost of your environment - the most and least
expensive clusters, total cost of ownership, and potential cost savings associated with
reducing waste.
Take a minute to review the dashboard. In the next step, we will look the administrative
settings available for the cost engine.
Cost Settings
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From here, you can review and update Cost Drivers, look at the derived cost of a particular
cluster, and initiate a Cost Calculation.
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From the Cost Drivers tab, you see configurable Cost Drivers within the engine. The
overview also lists the monthly expense and the cost comparison with the industry
benchmark (the reference database). Since we have not made any changes yet, there is no
variation from the industry benchmark.
To update one of the drivers, select it. For this lab, let's update the Server Hardware cost
driver:
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Under Server Hardware Cost, you see the total number of servers in the managed
environment, as well as the total associated monthly cost. You see that the hardware is
broken out into server groups of like hardware. Let's say our vendor just gave us a great end-
of-year special on BL460c G7s, so we are going update that cost:
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
1. Notice how the Monthly Expense for Server Hardware has decreased.
2. Notice the Industry Benchmark Comparison, reflecting the end of year deal.
The reference database is accurate enough for many use cases, but if you can update the tool
with your actual infrastructure costs, the information provided will be even more accurate and
useful!
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Main menus are in top and sub menus are in left end.
Select Object Type: VCSA6.0 UI A you can see alerts and health status.
vROPS Policies
A policy is a set of rules that you define for vRealize Operations Manager to use to analyze
and display information about the objects in your environment. You can create, modify, and
administer policies to determine how vRealize Operations Manager displays data in
dashboards, views, and reports.
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vROPS Dashboard: -
There are basically two types of dashboards that we can create, an interactive dashboard or
a static dashboard. An interactive dashboard is typically used for troubleshooting or similar
activities where you are expecting the user to interact with widgets to get the information
they are after. A static or display dashboard typically uses self-providing widgets such as
scoreboards and heatmaps that are designed for display monitors, or other situations where an
administrator is keeping an eye on environment changes.
Interactive dashboard - troubleshooting or similar activities where you are expecting the
user to interact with widgets to get the information.
Static dashboard - A static or display dashboard typically uses self-providing widgets such
as scoreboards.
Utilization Dashboard
You are now on the new dashboard creation canvas. Here you can easily drag and drop any of
the 44 widgets and 6 views that are available out-of-the-box with vRealize Operations 7.0.
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Let’s make a dashboard that shows a set of virtual machines that are used for nightly batch
processing. In this dashboard we will use a Heatmap widget, an Object Relationship widget,
and a Metric Chart widget.
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When you select a widget for editing you will be brought to the widget and views edit screen.
Herdfze you can edit all the widgets and views you have put on the canvas in one place.
First, we will configure the heatmap to show our batch system virtual machines sized by CPU
Usage (%) and also coloured by CPU Usage (%). Then we will filter to only show the virtual
machines that are in the Batch Systems folder we have in vCenter. Finally, we will name this
widget Batch Systems by CPU Usage.
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Now we will configure the metrics list widget to show a line graph for CPU Usage (%), Free
Memory (MB), and File System Utilization (%). Name this widget Batch System
Performance.
You will notice in the above image that you can now set SLA indicators in the metrics
widget. This is just one example of enhancements to the widgets and views available in
vRealize Operations 7.0. You can visit this blog to see all the enhancements made to widgets
and views in vRealize Operations 7. In this example I am setting the thresholds at
Yellow=60%, Orange=70%, and Red=80%.
Let’s set the second metric to show Guest | Free Memory (MB) over the given period of time.
Again, you will notice that we set the SLA threshold indicators for yellow, orange, and red as
yellow=20(MB), orange=10(MB), red=5(MB).
Let’s set the third metric to show Guest File System| Utilization (%).
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Finally, we set our last metric line chart for storage utilization including our SLA threshold to
yellow=70(%), orange=80(%), red=90(%).
For the tree view widget, we only need to change its name to “Batch System Relationship.”
Now that we have our three widgets on the canvas and configured, we need to make them
interact with each other so that when you select a virtual machine on the heatmap, it will
show you (1) the performance metrics in the metrics view, and (2) its relationships to other
components in the object relationship widget. Select Show Interactions.
On the interaction screen you will see your widgets now have a couple symbols on them.
These are the connector icons that allow you to create interactions between widgets and view
on the canvas. Below is a legend of the connector icons.
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As you can see from the above image, creating interactions between widgets and views is
simple – just drag and drop the connector icons from the heatmap widget to the metrics and
object relationship widgets. You can also drag the metric connector to the Metric Chart
widget to ensure the metric you used for the heatmap is also displayed. (We set that metric
when we configured the Metric Chart widget….but still very cool!!)
You can also create interactions to other dashboards easily by selecting the “Select Another
Dashboard” link and selecting the dashboard you want to interact with.
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In the above example we are going to have the out-of-the-box Troubleshoot a VM dashboard
display information about the virtual machine you selected in the heatmap widget in your
custom dashboard. This gives you the ability to create a workflow between dashboards to
help quickly troubleshoot the collective batch system and then drill into a specific virtual
machine for more in-depth troubleshooting.
Now that you have created your dashboard by dragging the widgets onto the canvas,
configured the widgets, and created interactions between the widgets and another dashboard,
it’s time to name and save our dashboard.
Above you can see we have named our new dashboard “Tier 1 Batch System.” Now click the
Save button in the upper center of the Dashboard Creation Canvas.
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Now you can see your new Batch System dashboard in the list of dashboards you have access
to within vRealize Operations.