Helping You Navigate The Technology Jungle! In Partnership With The Gorilla Guide to... ® VMWARE PRESENTS VMware vRealize Operations 8.1 and Cloud Brien M. Posey INSIDE THE GUIDE: • Support for Kubernetes • Better Alert Management • Powerful Troubleshooting
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Transcript
Helping You Navigate The Technology Jungle! In Partnership With
The Gorilla Guide to...
®
VMWARE PRESENTS
VMware vRealize Operations 8.1 and CloudBrien M. Posey
INSIDE THE GUIDE:
• Support for Kubernetes
• Better Alert Management
• Powerful Troubleshooting
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VMware vRealize Operations 8.1 and CloudBy Brien M. Posey
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America.
WITH SPECIAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROMBrandon Gordon, VMwareMatt Jones, VMware
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ENTERING THE JUNGLE
Introduction: Do You (v)Realize You Can Do More with Your Infrastructure? 8
Chapter 1: Overview of vRealize Operations 10
What Is vRealize Operations? 10
The Four Pillars 11
Maximum Operational Flexibility 12
Available On-Premises or SaaS 13
System Requirements 15
A Storied Past 17
Architecture, Scalability, and Fault Tolerance 21
Warning: Danger Ahead 24
Chapter 2: What’s New in vRealize Operations 26
Support for vSphere with Tanzu 26
Kubernetes to the Container Rescue 27
Native Support for VMware Cloud on AWS 28
vRealize Log Insight Integration 29
Smarter, More Powerful Troubleshooting 30
Support for Public Clouds 31
Alert Importance 31
Rate Card-Based Pricing 34
Licensing 36
Edition Comparison 38
Chapter 3: vRealize Operations Use Cases 41
Capacity Planning 41
Ongoing Capacity Management 44
Performance Management 46
Proactive Workload Optimization 48
Troubleshooting 51
Hitting the Workbench 52
Application Monitoring and Service Discovery 54
Configuration and Compliance 56
An Indispensable Tool for Every Admin 60
Don’t Wait Any Longer 61
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CALLOUTS USED IN THIS BOOK
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Takes you into the deep, dark depths of a particular topic.
Discusses items of strategic interest to business leaders.
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ICONS USED IN THIS BOOK
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INTRODUCTION
Do You (v)Realize You Can Do More with Your Infrastructure?
Welcome to The Gorilla Guide To…® VMware vRealize Operations 8.1!
Whether you’re brand-new to vRealize Operations, or a grizzled vet-
eran of the product, you’ll find valuable information in here to guide
you in your understanding of VMware’s latest update to its primary
tool for optimizing IT infrastructure so it works for you, rather than
you working for it.
IT staff has it tough these days. There’s simply more to track and
manage than ever before, especially with the rise of cloud computing.
Back in the “good ol’ days,” your data center was walled off from the
outside world, and much easier to manage and control.
Those days are long gone. Data and applications can live nearly
anywhere now, and operating environments can be created and de-
stroyed on a continual basis—in fact, that’s the idea behind the rise
of containers. All of this means that your environment is constantly
changing, and admins simply can’t keep up anymore.
Help is here, and its name is vRealize Operations 8.1. Its automation,
troubleshooting, and remediation features—infused with advanced
artificial intelligence (AI) to make it faster, more accurate and more
seamless—can turn those operational nightmares into a well-oiled
I NT R O D U CT I O N 9
machine that basically runs itself: VMware calls this “self-driving”
operations, and it’s the motivating force behind everything vRealize
Operations does for you.
This book provides an overview of vRealize Operations 8.1, and is
stuffed full of everything you need to know to get started with it and
make best use of it. We’ll detail where it fits into the larger world of
VMware products, the new features that set 8.1 apart from previous
versions, top use cases for it, and more.
vRealize Operations 8.1 has changed with the times, and now sup-
ports a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model for maximum efficiency
with minimum hands-on effort required. It’s also fully cloud-en-
abled and ready to help you navigate that complicated realm.
Once you’re done with this Guide, you’ll know what vRealize
Operations 8.1 can do, and why it’s a must-have tool for helping you
modernize your infrastructure.
So let’s get started with Chapter 1, introducing vRealize Operations.
In This Chapter:• What is vRealize Operations?
• Where vRealize Operations fits into the VMware product line
• How to make vRealize Operations scalable and fault tolerant
• vRealize Operations version release history
What Is vRealize Operations?vRealize Operations makes it easier for IT pros to manage VMware
and other environments—both on-premises and in the cloud—at
scale. It solves one of IT’s biggest problems: How to get a handle
on infrastructure that’s transforming massively, from an in-house
concern to a global estate with sprawling arms of software and hard-
ware everywhere.
This is due in large measure to the rise of cloud computing, and the
necessity to “do IT” on-premises, in public clouds, in remote and
branch offices, at the network edge—in other words, wherever work
is getting done.
And despite this huge increase in complexity, customers and end us-
ers expect everything to work as it did in the days when everything
was in the building—servers, storage, networking, and so on. With
the same speed (or faster), and without downtime. No problem, eh?
Overview of vRealize Operations
CHAPTER 1
O V E R V I E W O F V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 1 1
Although that’s a joke, the reality is that it doesn’t have to be.
VMware, which basically inaugurated virtualization, has kept raising
the bar for what can be done, while never forgetting those core re-
quirements of reliability, efficiency, and ease-of-use.
Which leads us to the latest version of its primary tool for optimizing
infrastructure to achieve those lofty goals: vRealize Operations 8.1. It
provides a unified operations platform that automates management
of both on-premises and cloud environments, eliminating the la-
bor-intensive, slow, and error-prone manual processes that inhibit
your organization’s ability to compete.
The Four PillarsVMware’s ultimate goal with vRealize Operations is to deliver
self-driving IT operations. Self-driving IT is a concept in which AI
and automation are used to smoothly manage the organization’s IT
resources, while also resolving issues. There are four pillars:
• Continuous performance optimization
• Efficient capacity and cost management
• App-aware intelligent remediation
• Integrated compliance and configuration
vRealize Operations is not solely geared toward monitoring an organization’s VMware infrastructure. Instead, it provides holistic IT monitoring, capacity management, and troubleshooting capabilities. vRealize Operations is extensible through management packs, and can be integrated with other applications in the vRealize Suite.
O V E R V I E W O F V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 1 2
vRealize Operations includes features and capabilities that ad-
dress each of these four pillars. Additionally, the Troubleshooting
Workbench, which will be discussed in detail later on, greatly sim-
plifies root cause analysis in troubleshooting.
Maximum Operational FlexibilityvRealize Operations is flexible, in that it can work as a standalone
product or as part of a larger solution. It is a part of VMware’s
vRealize Suite, but is also included within the cloud starter platform
(vCloud Suite), and incorporated into VMware’s vSAN HCI solution
(the Enterprise Plus Edition).
You can also get vRealize Operations with the full VMware Hybrid
Cloud Stack (VMware Cloud Foundation Starter, Advanced, and
Enterprise Editions). VMware also offers a SaaS version of vRealize
Operations (vRealize Operations Cloud) for those who prefer the
efficiency and convenience of a managed cloud service.
As mentioned before, vRealize Operations is also a key component
of VMware’s vRealize suite. vRealize consists of several individual
products, each designed to help administrators build, manage, and
maintain their virtualization infrastructure and hybrid cloud envi-
ronments. The components included in the suite vary by edition:
• vRealize Operations. vRealize Operations is designed to monitor
each individual component of an organization’s virtual envi-
ronment, to keep things running smoothly. vRealize Operations
8.1 can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud as part of the
vRealize Operations Cloud SaaS option.
• vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. vRealize Suite Lifecycle
Manager helps businesses accelerate their deployments and
upgrades, while also improving the overall stability of their en-
vironments and enhancing end-user productivity.
O V E R V I E W O F V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 1 3
If you deploy vRealize Operations cluster nodes on ESX/ESXi 6.5, those hosts must be patched with Update 1 or higher. The build number must be higher than 5869303.
O V E R V I E W O F V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 1 6
Table 1: Cluster node configurations for vRealize Operations
Extra Small Small Medium Large Extra
Large
vCPU 2 4 8 16 24
Default Memory (GB)
8 16 32 48 128
Maximum Memory Configuration (GB)
N/A 32 64 96 N/A
Ratio of vCPUs to physical cores at scale maximums
1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1
Single node maximum objects
350 5000 15,000 20,000 45,000
Single node maximum collected metrics
70,000 800,000 2,500,000 4,000,000 10,000,000
Multi-node maximum objects per node
N/A 3000 8500 16,500 40,000
Multi-node maximum collected objects per node
N/A 700,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 7,500,000
Maximum number of nodes per cluster
1 2 8 16 8
O V E R V I E W O F V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 1 7
a Cloud Proxy Node. Cloud Proxy Nodes can be deployed in either a
small or standard configuration. The system requirements for Cloud
Proxy Nodes are shown in Table 2.
A Storied PastEven though vRealize Operations 8.1 is relatively new, the product
itself actually has a history dating back several years. vRealize
Operations was originally known as VMware vCenter Operations
Manager. VMware changed the name to VMware vRealize Operations
starting with version 6.0.0.
It’s worth noting that extra small nodes are intended only for use in lab deployments and are not suitable for production use. Extra small nodes are also incapable of being used in multi-node clusters.
Table 2: vRealize Operations Cloud requirements
Small Standard
vCPU 2 4
Memory (GB) 8 32
Maximum Memory Configuration (GB)
32 64
Ratio of vCPUs to physical cores at scale maximums
1:1 1:1
Maximum objects 8000 40,000
Maximum collected metrics 1,200,000 6,000,000
Multi-node maximum objects per node
3000 8500
O V E R V I E W O F V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 1 8
Each version has added new features, enhancing the product’s
capabilities from one version to the next. The current version of
vRealize Operations is more capable and easier to use than previous
iterations. Increasing ease of use, in fact, is a priority in every update
of vRealize Operations.
Table 3 lists some of the previous versions of the software, along
with their release dates and build numbers.
vRealize Operations has evolved considerably throughout its history,
with the continual goal of making operations more streamlined,
easier to use, and more automated. In the version 6.x era, for exam-
ple, VMware added an enhanced, AI-powered Distributed Resource
Scheduler (“Predictive DRS”) integration, which predictively balanc-
es VMs based on their anticipated workloads.
Version 6.x also introduced features like a new workload utilization
dashboard, the ability to import single sign-on users, and portable
licensing.
One of the most significant new features updated during this time
frame was a new AI-powered capacity analytics engine that was
introduced in version 6.7. This feature allowed for predictive, re-
al-time analytics so that workloads could be continuously optimized
based on their projected workloads.
vRealize Operations supported AI long before the introduction of the Distributed Resource Scheduler. The Dynamic Thresholds feature, for example, dates back to before version 6.0. This feature serves as an alternative to fixed thresholds, and is based on historical and incoming data. It gives vRealize Operations a way of distinguishing between a normal situation and an abnormal condition.
O V E R V I E W O F V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 1 9
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 2 8
vSphere with Tanzu creates a Kubernetes control plane directly on
the hypervisor layer. It allows you to run Kubernetes workloads di-
rectly on ESXi hosts, and provision them as you would normal VMs.
vRealize Operations gives admins access to the complete Kubernetes
topology of namespaces, clusters, replica sets, nodes, pods, and con-
tainers for monitoring. It provides monitoring and troubleshooting
capabilities that are critical to proper administration of containers,
which are typically much more numerous, portable, and dispersed
than are most VMs. They usually have shorter lifecycles, as well,
being created and destroyed on a regular basis, which makes them
harder to monitor. In these scenarios, vRealize Operation’s manage-
ment abilities become even more crucial.
Native Support for VMware Cloud on AWSVersion 8.1 of vRealize Operations introduces the ability to natively
manage and monitor cloud-based infrastructure within a VMware
Cloud on AWS software-defined data center (SDDC). This is im-
portant, because few organizations today are operating exclusively
on-premises, or solely in the cloud. Having native cloud support
allows vRealize Operations to monitor your resources regardless of
where those resources physically reside.
To do so, an organization must simply add a VMware Cloud on AWS
account, which collects data from vCenter, vSAN, and NSX-T. Doing
so provides the same capabilities as vRealize Operations normally
delivers on-premises. VMware Cloud on AWS integration gives
organizations the ability to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize
vRealize Operations still allows for the monitoring of traditional Kubernetes clusters through the vRealize Operations Management Pack for Kubernetes.
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 2 9
resources across their hybrid environment, and to perform remedi-
ation if necessary.
In addition, some form of bidirectional connectivity must exist be-
tween the VMware Cloud on AWS and the on-premises environment.
This can be achieved by deploying a remote collector in the VMware
Cloud so that vRealize Operations can collect data from vCenter.
This on-premises architecture requires the use of a VPN. If an orga-
nization is using vRealize Operations Cloud, they’ll need to deploy a
cloud proxy in the VMware Cloud rather than using a remote collec-
tor. In either case, firewall rules will need to be configured to allow
vRealize Operations to collect data over the Internet.
Additionally, if vRealize Operations is being used on-premises, the
vRealize Operations 8.1 cluster will need to be scaled to accommodate
the monitoring of the cloud-based resources. Since connecting a
vRealize Operations cluster to resources within the VMware Cloud
increases the number of objects that must be monitored, the cluster
must be scaled to the point that it can adequately monitor those
resources. Scaling is discussed in detail in the next chapter.
vRealize Log Insight IntegrationA powerful feature of vRealize Operations is the ability to interop-
erate with vRealize Log Insight. vRealize Log Insight is designed to
provide intelligent log file management across an organization’s
You can find detailed information about linking vRealize Operations to the VMware cloud on the Installing vRealize Operations on VMware Cloud on AWS documentation page.1
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 0
entire environment. It provides log file analytics for both applica-
tions and infrastructure, and conveys logging data through a series
of actionable dashboards.
vRealize Log Insight provides the ability to search and filter log
events via the Log Insight page. The software allows you to query
the log files and extract events based on text, the event source, the
event time stamp, or the contents of various other fields within the
event logs.
Integrating vRealize Log Insight with vRealize Operations allows
you to view a selected object’s logs alongside the object’s metrics.
Correlating the metrics with the logs makes it much easier to deter-
mine a problem’s root cause.
Smarter, More Powerful TroubleshootingvRealize Operations can be extremely useful in troubleshooting com-
plex problems. In an effort to further expand on vRealize Operations’
troubleshooting capabilities, VMware has enabled integration with
vRealize Network Insight. This integration allows vRealize Operations
to be network-aware and to use its knowledge of the network to aid
in troubleshooting.
Troubleshooting is further enhanced with the integration of vRealize
Operations into the Troubleshooting Workbench, making it easier
than ever to do in-context troubleshooting, view logs as metrics
alongside other vRealize Operations metrics, and so on.
You can find instructions for integrating vRealize Log Insights and vRealize operations on the Configuring vRealize Log Insight with vRealize Operations documenta-tion page.1
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 1
Support for Public CloudsAlthough VMC on AWS (Figure 3) is undoubtedly VMware’s
most seamless option for extending to the public cloud,
vRealize Operations supports a variety of hyperscale public clouds.
VMware has previously provided monitoring capabilities for AWS and
Azure, and recently added monitoring for GCP. These management
packs allow vRealize Operations to monitor and troubleshoot multi-
cloud environments.
Alert ImportanceOne of the big problems that has always plagued systems monitoring
solutions is that of “alert fatigue.” Simply put, some monitoring
solutions can be overzealous when it comes to generating admin-
istrative alerts. A monitoring solution may in fact, produce so many
alerts that the administrative staff begins to perceive the alerts as
nothing more than meaningless noise, and may even go so far as to
Management
CustomerData Center AWS Global Infrastructure
vCenter
VMware Cloud™ on AWSPowered by VMware Cloud Foundation
vCenter
vSphere vSAN NSX
Figure 3: An overview of VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (VMC on AWS)
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 2
stop paying attention to them. This, of course, undermines the entire
purpose of deploying a monitoring solution.
vRealize Operations 8.1 seeks to eliminate the problem of alert fa-
tigue. In pursuit of that goal, VMware created a system by which
IT pros receive the alerts that they really needed, and in a timely
manner, without all of the needless noise alerts.
The solution was to create a system in which an AI engine assigns
an “importance” score to alerts, thereby helping administrators to
figure out which alerts represent real issues that should be addressed
right away, versus those alerts that are likely to just be noise.
This AI engine gives higher priority to alerts that are relatively rare
(as opposed to noise alerts that happen all the time), and to alerts on
frequently accessed objects. Other criteria is also considered, such as
whether an alert represents an immediate problem, or an issue that
needs to be addressed but isn’t immediately critical (Figure 4).
VMware has also completely revamped the alert definition workflow,
to make it far more intuitive. IT pros who wish to create a new alert
definition (or edit an existing one) are now able to work their way
through a step-by-step guide, which allows them to define symp-
toms, recommendations, and notification rules.
Figure 4: Alerts are now categorized by their importance, or “Criticality”
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 3
VMware has also introduced the ability to add multiple alert defini-
tions to a single notification rule. This greatly simplifies the process
of setting up notifications, because it means that an organization can
set up a relatively small number of notification rules, and then attach
alert definitions to those rules on an as-needed basis, ensuring that
the right group of people are notified of various conditions.
Let’s Learn Something! Alert AssignmentvRealize Operations has long included
a feature that allows an IT pro to take
ownership of an alert. Taking ownership
is an easy way for an IT pro to indicate to
others that they’re working on the issue.
That way, situations can be avoided in which multiple technicians are
working on the same alert, potentially undoing each other’s efforts.
vRealize Operations 8.1 still includes the option to take ownership of an
alert, but it also introduces a new feature that allows IT pros to assign
an alert to someone else.
To learn more about the improvements that VMware has made to notifications, check out the VMware blog post “Fight Alert Fatigue with vRealize Operations 8.1.”1
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 4
Rate Card-Based PricingIt’s becoming increasingly common for organizations to adopt an IT
service provider model, in which IT plays a role that’s much like that
of a cloud service provider. In doing so, the IT department provides
hardware and support infrastructure, while the organization’s indi-
vidual departments essentially become subscribers. Authorized users
within the departments, for instance, are able to deploy their own
VMs on an as-needed basis, and without IT intervention.
vRealize Operations 8.1 includes a new “rate card pricing” feature
designed to help make users aware of the price associated with their
decision to deploy a new VM. This feature is available when vRealize
Automation is integrated with vRealize Operations 8.1 or vRealize
Operations Cloud.
Having this capability is critical for organizations that issue IT
chargebacks, but it can be just as useful for IT departments that
simply want to reduce costs (and excessive resource consumption)
by curbing the frivolous creation of new VMs.
vRealize Operations allows administrators to define two primary
financial quantities—price and cost. Cost is defined as the amount
of money that’s actually required to run a VM. The overall cost is the
culmination of several individual components such as hardware re-
source consumption, power and cooling, and software licensing fees.
To use rate cards, an organization must deploy vRealize Automation 8.1 and vRealize Operations 8.1, or subscribe to vRealize Automation Cloud and vRealize Operations Cloud. Additionally, these two products must be configured to work with one another, and both applica-tions must be set to the same time zone.
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 5
Price, on the other hand, is the amount of money that the IT depart-
ment charges the individual departments for the privilege of running
the VM (assuming that the organization uses chargebacks).
Price and cost can be the same amount, but in many cases the price
that’s shown to end users is substantially higher than the actual cost
of running the VM. An IT department might, for instance, include a
support fee in a VM’s price. This is similar to the way that cloud ser-
vice providers build a profit margin into their VM instance pricing.
A VM’s price can be based on either a cost factor, or on a specific
price or rate allocation. When the cost factor model is used, the IT
department sets a basic charge for the VM. It then establishes addi-
tional prices that are based on the basic charge.
These additional prices are individually configurable for CPU, memo-
ry, and storage resources, and are entered as a percentage of the basic
charges. If, for example, an administrator wanted to charge a 20%
premium for CPU resources, the CPU price would be set to 1.2, which
would mark a 20% increase over the basic price.
The other option is to use allocation-based pricing, which is sim-
ilar to what some public cloud providers use. This pricing model
allows the IT department to bill its customers on an hourly, daily,
or monthly basis for the hardware resources their VMs consume. For
instance, an organization might choose to price VM memory at 10
cents per gigabyte per hour, whenever a VM is powered on.
If you want to know more about pricing cards, then be sure to check out the VMware blog article: “VM Pricing with vRealize Automation 8.1 and vRealize Operations 8.1.”1
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 8
Edition Comparison
VMware offers three different editions of its vRealize Operations
software. The Standard Edition is VMware’s entry-level offering. The
Advanced Edition is the midgrade offering, while Enterprise Edition
is the most capable version. These three editions vary in terms of
both their licensing and use case. Table 4 illustrates the differences
between the three editions.
Standard Advanced Enterprise
Standalone Licensing
Per VM (VM)/Per Processor (CPU)
Per Operating System Instance (OSI)/Per Processor (CPU)
Per Operating System Instance (OSI)/Per Processor (CPU)
Available in Suite
N/A
VMware vRealize Suite/vCloud Suite Standard, Advanced (PLU)
VMware vRealize Suite/vCloud Suite Enterprise (PLU)
There are three different editions of vRealize Operations.
• Standard Edition is used primarily for monitoring vSphere environments.
• The Advanced Edition allows for monitoring and optimizing beyond vSphere, into multiple datacenter and hybrid infrastructure elements.
• The Enterprise Edition is used for monitoring and optimizing with full infrastructure-to-app visibility, and across multiple clouds
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 3 9
Standard Advanced Enterprise
Performance Monitoring and Analytics
vSphere Only
The entire SDDC, VMware Cloud on AWS, and VCPP based hybrid clouds
The entire SDDC, VMware Cloud on AWS, hybrid clouds, and multi-cloud
Capacity Management and Planning
vSphere only with planning to add more workloads
Integrated capacity and costing for entire SDDC and VMware Cloud on AWS; multiple what-if scenarios for HCI planning, adding and removing workloads, procurement and multi-cloud migration
Integrated capacity and costing for entire SDDC and VMware Cloud on AWS; multiple what-if scenarios for HCI planning, adding and removing workloads, procurement and multi-cloud migration
SDDC and VMware Cloud on AWS Security and Compliance
vSphereSDDC and VMware Cloud on AWS
SDDC and VMware Cloud on AWS
Remediation and Troubleshooting
vSphere only
The entire SDDC, VMware Cloud on AWS, and VCPP based hybrid clouds
The entire SDDC, VMware Cloud on AWS, hybrid clouds, Azure, AWS, GCP, containers and applications
Workload Balancing Based on Business/Operational Intent
ManualAutomated and scheduled
Automated and scheduled
W H AT’S N E W I N V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S 4 0
Standard Advanced Enterprise
Dashboards and Reporting
Out of the box dashboards, reports and views
Out of the box and customizable/sharable dashboards, reports, and views
Out of the box and customizable/sharable dashboards, reports, and views
Log Integration
Available Available Available
Standard Costing
N/AAllows for the customization of cost drivers
Allows for the customization of cost drivers
Private Cloud Costing
IncludedCost drivers can be customized
Cost drivers can be customized
OS Monitoring N/A Included Included
Application, Middleware, and Database Monitoring
N/A N/A Included
Third-Party Management Packs Available
15+ for compute and storage
50+ for compute, storage, networking, hyperconvergence, and other hypervisors
75+ for compute, networking, converged, hyperconverged, other hypervisors, containers, public clouds, connectors, databases, big data, and applications
Table 4: Comparing the three editions of vRealize Operations
Next UpNow we dive into some of ways vRealize Operations can boost your
day-to-day productivity. You’ll find that it can do more than you
may have suspected!
In This Chapter:• Capacity planning
• 360-degree troubleshooting
• Performance optimization
• Compliance
The previous chapter discussed many of the newer features of vRe-
alize Operations. Even so, the included features and capabilities of
vRealize Operations go well beyond those that have been discussed
thus far.
In fact, vRealize Operations is an extremely feature-rich product
that lends itself to any number of potential use cases. This chapter
discusses some of the more useful things that organizations can do
with vRealize Operations beyond simply monitoring the resources
that exist within their VMware deployments.
Capacity PlanningCapacity planning is easily one of the most critical skills for IT pro-
fessionals to master. Consider, for example, what would happen if
an administrator were to make an incorrect projection as a result of
their capacity planning efforts. If the administrator were to underes-
timate the organization’s capacity needs, it could ultimately result in
a failure to keep the business running.
vRealize Operations Use Cases
CHAPTER 3
V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S U S E C A S E S 4 2
Imagine, for instance, what would happen to an eCommerce busi-
ness if its IT staff underestimated the organization’s capacity needs.
A new advertising campaign causes an unanticipated sales spike
(normally a good thing), and all three tiers of the infrastructure are
overwhelmed. If there are too few resources ready to spring into
action, the system chokes and crashes.
There go your sales, your customers, your company’s reputation. Your
expensive eCommerce platform is dead in the water, and you may be
closing up shop for good. It’s time to start searching LinkedIn for
job opportunities. All because you didn’t properly estimate resource
requirements.
The flip side of that scenario is ugly, too. If the organization overes-
timated its resource requirements, it would end up purchasing more
hardware and software licenses than it actually needs. If you’re like
most businesses, you don’t have lots of spare IT budget to throw
at unused servers and storage. The money spent on those excess
resources could have been spent on projects that help the organiza-
tion compete more effectively in the market, instead of sitting idle
in a rack.
As you can see, there are direct financial consequences associated
with an organization’s capacity planning efforts. That being the case,
IT professionals are often under an enormous amount of pressure to
accurately project their future capacity needs. This is especially true
now, given the current state of the world.
vRealize Operations can help an organization maximize its capacity
planning. The software provides a series of capacity and utilization
dashboards designed to provide IT professionals with information
regarding the organization’s total resources, the resources that are
still available, and the rate of resource consumption.
The first of these dashboards is the Capacity Overview page. As its
name implies, the Capacity Overview dashboard provides informa-
tion about the managed environment’s total capacity including the
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total hosts, CPU cores, CPU capacity, memory capacity, data stores,
and storage capacity.
This dashboard also outlines CPU and memory capacity utilization
trends, as well as the storage utilization trends. Additionally, the
dashboard provides information about the resources that could po-
tentially be reclaimed.
vRealize Operations also includes a Capacity Reclaim page that helps
IT pros to determine the resources that might potentially be available
for reclamation. The Capacity Reclaimable dashboard bases some of
its recommendations on VMs that have been idle for seven days or
more. This page also helps to identify other potentially reclaimable
resources tied to powered-off VMs, idle VMs, VM snapshots, and
orphaned disks.
Another useful dashboard in this area is the vSAN Capacity Overview
dashboard. This provides useful statistics tied to an organization’s
vSAN utilization. Perhaps more importantly, the dashboard shows
the savings that an organization could realize by taking advantage
of storage deduplication and compression within its vSAN clusters.
This dashboard also tracks storage utilization over time, and proj-
ects the amount of time remaining before the persisting storage is
depleted. This information can be displayed at the individual cluster
level, or as an aggregate of all of the organization’s vSAN storage
resources.
Additionally, the dashboard allows IT pros to experiment with various
what-if scenarios in a way that allows them to visualize the potential
impact various administrative actions. Some of those hypotheticals
could include adding new workloads, adding or decommissioning
hardware, moving workloads to the cloud, and so on.
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Ongoing Capacity Management
vRealize Operations can also help organizations with ongoing ca-
pacity management. Although capacity management has similarities
with capacity planning, there are differences between the two.
Capacity planning is about assessing future resource needs, while
capacity management is more about making the best possible use of
the organization’s existing resources.
Administrators can access the vRealize Operations capacity man-
agement tools by going to the home screen and clicking the Assess
Capacity button (Figure 6). This displays a list of the organization’s
data centers, sorted by their available resources.
Figure 6: Determining when resources will run out via the Assess Capacity function
V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S U S E C A S E S 4 5
As an alternative, the console can sort the list of data centers based
on the time remaining before the data center’s resources are deplet-
ed, or based on cost savings or optimization state. Regardless of how
the output is sorted, data centers are color-coded, with optimized,
healthy data centers shown in green, and data centers with issues
that need to be addressed shown in red.
The most important thing to understand about the capacity man-
agement process is that vRealize Operations acts as more than just a
reporting tool. If, for example, the software detects that a particular
data center isn’t optimized, it will provide optimization recom-
mendations. In many cases, these recommendations can be applied
automatically.
Similarly, if the capacity management tool determines that a partic-
ular data center is low on resources, it can help you figure out why.
The tool allows administrators to drill down into individual clusters
within the data center to see which clusters are resource-constrained,
and which resource within the cluster is in short supply. The soft-
ware can even project when that resource is likely to be depleted.
One of the greatest benefits to using the vRealize Operations capacity
management tools is its ability to identify potential cost savings.
These savings may stem from resource reclamation or a variety of
Starting with vRealize Operations 7.0, VMware began using an exponential decay model for making capacity utilization projections. This is a weighted model in which the most recent data is considered to be the most relevant. This helps vRealize Operations make ca-pacity usage projections based on recent resource usage trends, rather than overweighting resource consumption statistics from long ago.
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other factors. In any case, the dashboard displays an actual dollar
amount, reflecting the amount of money the organization could
potentially save by following the tool’s recommendations.
Performance ManagementvRealize Operations also features a Datastore Utilization dashboard
that, as the name suggests, allows admins to track datastore uti-
lization trends (Figure 7). This dashboard displays a color-coded
map of every datastore being tracked, showing the degree to which
each datastore is being used. Selecting an individual datastore causes
the dashboard to display its historical utilization, as well as its pro-
jected future use. You can also see which VMs reside within a given
datastore.
The VMware Cloud Management blog provides an excellent deep dive into vRealize Operations’ capacity management capabilities.1
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The Cluster Utilization dashboard helps organizations to track
vSphere cluster use. This makes it easy to differentiate between
clusters that are being heavily used, and those clusters that have
plenty of free resources available.
If an administrator identifies a cluster that’s using excessive CPU,
memory, storage, or network resources, they have the ability to drill
down into the cluster and see how the individual hosts are being
used. It may be that the resource demand issues can be addressed by
simply moving a high-demand VM to a host within the cluster that’s
not being as heavily used.
Of course, if all of the hosts within the cluster are being heavily
used, it may be an indication that the organization needs to increase
capacity, or move some VMs to a different cluster.
Just as the Cluster Utilization dashboard helps administrators to
identify heavily used clusters, the Host Utilization dashboard can
help to identify vSphere hosts that are being overworked. If an ad-
ministrator identifies such a host, they have the ability to determine
which VMs are placing the greatest load on the host, and to identify
usage patterns over a period of time.
Similarly, the VM Utilization dashboard gives administrators a way
to track resource utilization at the VM level. This dashboard could
help administrators to locate VMs that have been over- or un-
der-provisioned. Additionally, the VM Utilization dashboard gives
administrators the ability to examine VM utilization at a specific
time. That way, administrators can help to gauge the impact that
scheduled processes have on the VM and determine whether or not
the VM has been allocated sufficient resources to accommodate those
scheduled processes.
One more dashboard worth examining is the Heavy Hitter VMs dash-
board (Figure 8). This dashboard identifies the VMs that consistently
consume the most virtual CPU, storage, and network resources. In
some cases, an administrator may be able to make configuration
V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S U S E C A S E S 4 8
changes within these VMs to help them run more efficiently, thereby
consuming fewer resources. In other cases, the high degree of re-
source consumption is unavoidable, but administrators can use the
resource consumption information to make sure that high-demand
VMs are never placed on a common host, helping to prevent a per-
formance bottleneck.
Proactive Workload OptimizationWhen it comes to the subject of automated workload balancing, the
first thing most VMware administrators probably think of is the
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). DRS monitors VMs to make
sure that they’re getting the hardware resources that they need from
the host server. If a host is unable to provide a particular VM with
the required hardware resources, that VM is automatically moved to
another host in a better position to provide the required resources.
Figure 8: It’s easy to spot which VMs are sucking up the most resources with the Heavy Hitter VMs dashboard
V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S U S E C A S E S 4 9
As helpful as DRS may be for in-cluster workload balancing, vRe-
alize Operations provides far more extensive workload-balancing
capabilities.
For instance, vRealize Operations monitors an organization’s data
centers to determine if they’re out of balance. A data center is consid-
ered to be out of balance if some of the clusters within the data center
are heavily loaded, while other clusters are carrying a much lighter
workload. If any out of balance data centers are detected, they’re
listed within the vRealize Operations Alerts dashboard.
Clicking on an out of balance data center causes the management
console to display a screen indicating that a data center rebalance
may be required. The console also displays a detailed description of
the condition alongside a Run Action button that administrators can
click to initiate the rebalancing.
This is extremely useful, but can also be a time-consuming manual
process. The administrator must, for example, take the initiative to
look at the alerts, click on a data center rebalancing alert, and then
click the Run Action button. However, it is possible to automate this
entire sequence.
Figure 9: You can rebalance operations automatically, during maintenance peri-ods, with vRealize Operations Workload Optimization
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The vRealize Operations Workload Optimization page (Figure 9)
includes a link that you can use to schedule or automate workload
balance operations (Figure 10). This option allows an organization to
create a schedule so that rebalancing operations happen automatical-
ly during your allotted maintenance period, ensuring that workloads
remain balanced according to the policies that the organization has
established.
The key difference between the way that the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and the vRealize Operations perform load balancing is that while DRS moves VMs among the hosts within a cluster, vRealize Operations is able to move workloads between clusters, so long as those clusters reside in a common data center.
Figure 10: vRealize Operations makes suggestions for optimizing workloads
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TroubleshootingAs mentioned previously, VMware offers a “better together” solu-
tion by allowing the integration of vRealize Operations and vRealize
Log Insight. vRealize Log Insight augments the already impressive
troubleshooting capabilities of vRealize Operations. When an organi-
zation installs and integrates these two products with one another,
it’s able to easily find the relevant problems and their root causes,
then take corrective action.
Integrating intelligent log analytics into the overall troubleshooting
story can have tremendous benefits. Let’s look at an example.
Suppose that the vRealize Operations console displays an alert indi-
cating that additional CPU capacity needs to be added to a particular
VM because that VM is receiving continuous high CPU usage. Not
only has vRealize Operations detected the issue before it impacts
your environment, but it will even provide a recommendation for
the number of additional virtual CPUs that need to be allocated to
the VM. And you can then make the change from directly within the
console—quick and easy, the way it should be.
But that’s only half the story. The missing link is information as to
why the condition occurred in the first place—why is the VM sud-
denly gobbling up CPU? This is where vRealize Log Insight integra-
tion comes into play. Because vRealize Operations has access to the
logging data provided by vRealize Log Insight, it can correlate alerts
and recommendations to logging data from the affected resource.
In this example, the web server is the culprit. vRealize Operations
has determined that an increase in HTTP traffic is the cause of the
CPU spike. Correlating logging data with actionable insights makes it
much easier to determine the root cause of the issues. Having access
to logging data may help an organization understand what’s really
going on with their IT resources, as opposed to simply treating the
symptoms and never really understanding why those symptoms
occurred in the first place.
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Hitting the WorkbenchThe Troubleshooting Workbench, introduced in vRealize Operations
8.0, has quickly become the new paradigm for rapid, holistic trou-
bleshooting (Figure 11). The Troubleshooting Workbench adds full
stack monitoring to the already impressive collection of trouble-
shooting tools.
The idea behind full stack monitoring is that although it’s better to
address the root cause of a problem than to simply treat the prob-
lem’s symptoms, doing so is often tough. That’s because when an
VMware has a YouTube video demonstrating how 360-degree troubleshooting works.1
1 https://youtu.be/lQmnKgJhUJs
Figure 11: The Troubleshooting Workbench adds full stack monitoring to your environment
V R E A L I z E O P E R AT I O N S U S E C A S E S 5 3
issue occurs, the symptoms may not always align with the actual
source of the problem. This is especially true for workloads that have
multiple external dependencies.
To illustrate this point, imagine that an organization has a web appli-
cation that has recently started performing poorly. It’s possible that
the web application has begun to receive a higher volume of HTTP
requests, and that the web server’s CPU has become overwhelmed
with trying to service all those requests.
But it may be that the root cause of the problem has nothing to do
with the web server itself. Modern web applications typically leverage
load balancers, multiple front-end web servers, back-end databases,
and other components.
It could be, then, that the performance problem stems from a
database flooding the storage subsystem with more IOPS requests
than it’s able to handle. If this were indeed the root cause of the
web application’s performance problems, no amount of web server
troubleshooting would fix the problem, because the problem exists
elsewhere. This is where the Troubleshooting Workbench comes
into play.
The Troubleshooting Workbench can search for any object vRealize
Operations is aware of. Upon locating and selecting the object, ad-
ministrators have the option of specifying the scope of the operation.
The scope determines how many steps beyond the object itself will
be analyzed.
By default, the Troubleshooting Workbench only examines items
directly connected to the object being analyzed (the default scope is
set to “one”). However, the scope can be set to examine items that
are up to five steps away from the selected object.
Once the scope has been configured, vRealize Operations will return
a list of all of the objects that fall within the scope, plus affiliated
events, property changes, and anomalous metrics. There is even an
Advanced Object Relationship view that displays a graphical map of
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the objects within the scope and their relationship to one another.
The interesting thing about this view is that each object on the map
includes a small, color-coded health indicator icon. This makes it
easy to determine which of the objects within the scope are healthy
and which are not, ultimately making it far easier to track down the
root cause of the problem.
Application Monitoring and Service DiscoveryWith infrastructure no longer confined to the data center—hybrid
and multi-cloud environments are now becoming the rule rather
than the exception—full-stack visibility is a necessity more than
ever. That visibility must include applications, which, like data, can
be widely distributed. Without knowing what’s happening with your
applications, troubleshooting and efficient management of your
operations become orders of magnitude harder.
vRealize Operations has support for application monitoring. It en-
ables automatic discovery for supported applications running within
monitored VMs so that organizations can ensure that their applica-
tions are running optimally.
Additionally, the vRealize Operations application monitoring capa-
bilities help organizations balance workloads automatically in a way
that helps to avoid resource contention, for a more smooth-running
environment.
VMware has a blog detailing how the Troubleshooting Workbench is being used in a real-world environment to improve operations. It’s worth checking out.1
Risk Profile 1 is always used by default. Organizations must make a conscious decision to reduce their operational security by using Risk Profile 2 or 3.