vCenter Operations Manager 5.8 (vCOPS)

Firstly what is vCenter Operations Manager, also known as vCOPS? VMware describe it as follows..

"vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS) automates operations management using patented analytics and an

integrated approach to performance, capacity and configuration management."

I'm my words.. vCOPS provides integrated, intelligent monitoring of the entire virtual (or cloud) environment.

This could be simply vSphere (vCenter and ESXi) and it's virtual machines, or it could extend to capacity,

networking devices, storage. Perhaps you would like to monitor physical servers and the operating system within

both virtual and physical machines including checking for compliance. vCOPS can do all of this.

vCOPS is quite a varied product and by that I mean it comes in many different editions (Foundation, Standard,

Advanced and Enterprise), which take it from a vary basic monitoring system for vSphere to a full suite to

manage a cloud platform for compliance.

vCOPS has improved a lot since it originally was released. I remember going to Las Vegas before PEX for a

weekend VMware training bootcamp on the product with a bunch of other VMware partners. Back then if I'm

honest I wasn't convinced it was all that great but it got me to Vegas and PEX! However now my opinion is

changing and I can see the uses for all the editions, including enterprise (quite costly) but for a service provider

it's brilliant!

The great thing about vCOPS the foundation edition is included with every vCenter. "There is no license required

for foundation edition".

I'm going to take you through the steps of deploying and configuring vCOPS Foundation but I will also later in

this series of blogs show you how to change this to vCOPS Standard edition withing doing very much at all.

To go to Advanced/Enterprise requires these steps plus a number of other components installed on Windows

Servers as those editions include Configuration manager and other products, but this will give you a base to start

with. I will cover the more complex editions in later posts (and link them here when done).

The vCOPS virtual appliance is actually a vApp containing 2 VMs; an Analytics VM and a UI VM.

The analytics VM gathers the data from vCenter, hosts etc and stores the data in local embedded database. The

UI VM presents the data from the analytics VM via a web interface, in a similar style to the vSphere web client.

There is also some integration of high level metrics of health in the vSphere web client , but for the detail you will

be going to the separate vCOPS website.

1. You might have already noticed the "vCenter Operation Manager" icon within the vSphere Web Client.

This icon is shown regardless whether vCOPS is deployed or not.

2. If you click on it you cannot do much apart from read about what vCOPS is and a link to deploy from VMware

(which never works).

3. So first we are going to download and deploy the VCOPS OVF template.

The vCOPS OVF is the same file for every edition, the license file changes it functionality and also for

advanced/enterprise it requires additional Windows Server(s).

4. Navigate to your Cluster within the vSphere Web Client and Right click, Select Deploy OVF Template

5. Browse to the local VCOPS-xxxxxxxxxx.ova file you downloaded from VMware and Click Next.

6. Review the version of the appliance. I'm using vCOPS 5.8.1 here with vCenter 5.5 U1.

7. Accept the EULA

8. Give the vApp a name and select a cluster/folder to deploy to.

9. vCOPS is not a small vApp if you have a modest sized environment. The smallest deployment size aptly

named "small" weighs in at 4 vCPUs and 16GB vRAM and is for deployments upto 1,500 VMs.

10. Select a datastore to deploy to and if you wish to thick or thin provision.

11. Select the network to deploy to.

12. Select static IP allocation.

13. Enter the DNS servers, network mask and gateway.

14. Set the timezone

15. Enter an IP for the UI VM

16. Enter an IP for the Analytics VM

17. Verify the deployment settings and click Finish to start the vApp deployment.

18. Monitor the OVF deployment task

19. Power on the vApp.

You will notice the analytics VM powers on first, then the UI VM after several minutes.

Note: Do not interrupt the power on process of the vApp for the first run, otherwise it may not run the init scripts

and pair the analytics and UI VMs correctly. If you do experience a problem due to disturbing the boot process I

would advise redeploying the vApp again.

20. Open the console window to the analytics VM and check it boots correctly to the login screen.

You do not need to login.

Check you can ping the IP address of analytics VM.

21. Open the console window to the UI VM and check it boots correctly to the login screen.

You do not need to login.

Check you can ping the IP address of UI VM.

22. Open a web browser to the UI VM IP

https://UI-VM-IP/

23. Login as user "admin" and with password "vmware"

In Part 2 we will configure vCOPS and I will give you an introduction to vCOPS Foundation edition including the

monitoring and notifications it can provide.

vCenter Operations Manager 5.8 (vCOPS) Configuring vCOPs and Introduction to vCOPS Foundation

In Part 1 we deployed the vCOPS vApp which contains our 2 VMs; the Analytics VM and the UI VM.

vCenter Operations Manager 5.8 (vCOPS) - Deploying the Operations Manager vApp

Now that the 2 VMs within the vApp are powered on, we are ready to configure vCOPS.

1. Browse to the IP of your UI VM

It will redirect you to https://UI-VM-IP/admin

2. Login with "admin" and "vmware"

3. The Initial Setup Wizard will run.

Enter your vCenter server FQDN (e.g. vcenter1.vmadmin.co.uk) which hosts your vCOPS virtual appliance

(vApp).

Enter the IP address of the Analytics VM (which you provided during the deployment of the virtual appliance).

4. Accept the certificate for the vCenter by Clicking Yes.

5. Set a new secure password for the "admin" account (it was "vmware")

6. Set a new secure password for the "root" account

7. Register a vCenter Server to monitor.

Enter the FQDN of the vCenter server

Enter a user account to register vCOPS with vCenter (Must have permissions to register an extension -

Administrator role of course includes this)

Optionally enter a collector user account (This account must have Global: Health and Storage Views: View OR

you could allow give it the Read-Only role propagated from the top of vCenter)

8. The wizard will try to detect if you were using a previous version of vCOPS (via an existing plug-in) to import

the data from it.

If you haven't got one, none will be detected! Click Next.

9. The wizard will then try to detect any linked vCenters.

If you haven't got any then it won't find any linked vCenters! Click Finish,

10. With the initial configuration done, you will notice that the "License Mode" is "Foundation" and the "License

Status" is "Licenced"

11. Click the SMTP/SNMP tab

12. Tick the "Enable report email service" box

13. Enter your SMTP server details (e.g. Exchange server) and sender email address you want alerts to appear

from.

14. Click Update.

15. Now login to the vSphere Web Client. Go to Home --> vCenter Operations Manager

16. Under "Related Objects" you will now see your vCenter Operations Manager vApp, confirming it has been

registered to the vCenter successfully.

17. If you click on the little icon (highlighted in red) it will take you to the vCOPS login page on the UI VM.

17. Now that the link has opened the vCOPS UI login as the same user you login to vCenter with (via Single

Sign On).

18. Now you can see your environment from various different perspectives within vCOPS foundation.

Note: At this point we are still running in "Foundation" license mode so have limited functionality available. One

obvious indicator is the tabs along the top, with Foundation you get the following which is expanded with many

more options with Standard.

Environment

Operations

Alerts

19. Here we are looking at the "Environment" Overview tab at the top level of "World" which includes our

vCenter, Datacenter, Clusters, ESXi hosts, VMs and datastores.

There are 3 different ways to view the environment this way; Health, Workload and Faults.

Each object is scored and colour coding makes it easier to see which objects are good and which have

problems.

You can click on them to find out more details, but this is one way of getting quick overview of everything!

Note: One thing I will point out is this.. it takes time for vCOPS to gather it's data initially after installation.

20. If you click the "Operations" tab with the world object still in context, you can see all the sub objects and an

over time view of their health, workload or faults.

Again at this point it's still building up a history as can be seen in the partial graph since I deployed vCOPS.

From here you can of course click on any of the objects to go to them directly and see more details.

21. Click on the "Alerts" tab takes you to a list of active alerts.

Here I have one relating to my vCenter, which it is stating as critical.

22. Lets click on it and take a look..

23. As you can see to the right of the vCenter object now is the information on the alert.

It relates to the vCenter database not running performance status rollups for the month and week.

This is because my home lab gets turned off when I'm not using it (to save the polar bears and the wife

complaining of the noise), so they haven't been running.

24. You can choose to clear the Alert by clicking the little button (highlighted in red).

25. If we go back to the "Operations" tab and look at the health of the world! (I love that! It should have

indicators such as Economy = screwed and Global Warming = increasing)

On a serious note, take notice the "NORMAL: Not calculated yet" comment, which you will see on all your

objects.

vCOPS will monitor what is "normal" and if the object steps out of it's normal behaviour it will alert. Now this

takes several days to build up a true picture and more importantly to note, this is not in the Foundation edition!

Only Standard edition and upwards. So it will never change from "NORMAL: Not calculated yet".

26. Click on the "Notification" link at the top of the page next to Log Out.

27. Add a Notification rule to send an email when the criteria of the rule is met.

Give the rule a name.

Enter an email address.

Tick the alert type(s) and Criticality Level(s) desired.

Type the object name (it auto populates) such as "World" and tick include children.

Select the children object types in include. Click Ok and Ok.

28. Finally Click on "About" next to Help at the top.

29. This confirms you are running in "Foundation" licensed edition mode and as I mentioned a license key is not

required.

I hope you have found the first 2 parts of this vCOPS series informative. Everyone that has vCenter can use

vCOPS foundation as we have done so here, and have the ability to get this level basic monitoring, insight and

notifications into their vSphere environment.

In the next blog post I will cover changing the vCOPS license to "Standard" edition and showing you the extra

functionality you can compared to Foundation.

Solution Note: vRealize Operations Manager (formerly known as vCenter Operations Manager) passwords must contain at

least one upper case, one lower case, one digit, and one special character. When setting your new password, ensure

that you escape the special characters by adding a leading backslash and also add the backslash when you log in. For

example: P\@ssw0rd

Note: Before resetting the Administrator password, ensure the account is not locked out by running this command:

pam_tally2 --user admin

If the account is locked out, unlock it by running this command:

pam_tally2 --user admin --reset

To reset the Administrator password in the vRealize Operations Manager 5.x vApp (formerly known as vCenter

Operations Manager vApp):

1. In the vSphere Client Inventory view, select the vRealize Operations vApp and navigate to the appliance console.

2. Log in to UI VM as the root user. 3. In the localhost directory, type cd /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/conf/install and press Enter.

4. In the install directory, run the./resetadminpwd.sh new_password command and press Enter. For example: ./resetadminpwd.sh "P\@ssw0rd"

5. Type logout and press Enter to return to the main menu. 6. Steps 1-5 will also reset the same password on Analytic virtual machines automatically.

To reset the Administrator password in the vRealize Operations Manager 6.x (vApp):

For vApp/Linux:

1. Log in to the master node command line console as root. 2. Run this command and follow the prompts:

$VMWARE_PYTHON_BIN $VCOPS_BASE/../vmware-

vcopssuite/utilities/sliceConfiguration/bin/vcopsSetAdminPassword.py --

reset

For Windows:

1. Open the command prompt using the Run as Administrator option. 2. Run this command and follow the prompts:

%VMWARE_PYTHON_BIN% %VCOPS_BASE%\..\vmware-

vcopssuite\utilities\sliceConfiguration\bin\vcopsSetAdminPassword.py --

reset