vmware vrealize operations 8.1 and cloud

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

i i

VMware vRealize Operations 8.1 and CloudBy Brien M. Posey

THE GORILLA GUIDE TO...

Copyright © 2020 by ActualTech Media

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.

ACTUALTECH MEDIA

6650 Rivers Ave Ste 105 #22489North Charleston, SC 29406-4829www.actualtechmedia.com

PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

EDITORKeith Ward, ActualTech Media

PROJECT MANAGERWendy Hernandez, ActualTech Media

EXECUTIVE EDITORJames Green, ActualTech Media

LAYOUT AND DESIGNOlivia Thomson, ActualTech Media

WITH SPECIAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROMBrandon Gordon, VMwareMatt Jones, VMware

i i i

iv

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

vi

CALLOUTS USED IN THIS BOOK

The Gorilla is the professorial sort that enjoys helping people learn. In the School House callout, you’ll gain insight into topics that may be outside the main subject but are still important.

This is a special place where you can learn a bit more about ancillary topics presented in the book.

When we have a great thought, we express them through a series of grunts in the Bright Idea section.

Takes you into the deep, dark depths of a particular topic.

Discusses items of strategic interest to business leaders.

vi i

ICONS USED IN THIS BOOK

DEFINITIONDefines a word, phrase, or concept.

PAY AT TENTIONWe want to make sure you see this!

WATCH OUT! Make sure you read this so you don’t make a critical error!

TIP A helpful piece of advice based on what you’ve read.

KNOWLEDGE CHECKTests your knowledge of what you’ve read.

GPSWe’ll help you navigate your knowledge to the right place.

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.


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.


• vRealize Log Insight. vRealize Log Insight collects logging

data from vSphere and other VMware software, in an effort to

provide administrators with near real-time insight into their

environments.

• vRealize Automation. vRealize Automation deploys and provi-

sions services across both private and public clouds. This tool,

available in the Advanced and Enterprise editions, also provides

automated deployment services for hypervisors, and physical

infrastructure.

Available On-Premises or SaaSAlthough vRealize Operations has traditionally been an on-premises

product, VMware also provides a SaaS option called the vRealize

Operations Cloud (Figure 1). While there are still compelling use

cases for running vRealize Operations on-premises, there are many

benefits to taking a SaaS-based approach.

The first such benefit is that by running vRealize Operations in the

cloud, the organization is freed from performing maintenance-re-

lated tasks. VMware handles all of the hardware and software

Figure 1: vRealize Operations Cloud


maintenance related to vRealize Operations, freeing IT pros to focus

on more important things.

A second benefit is simplified scalability. When an organization

runs vRealize Operations on-premises, it must scale its cluster

as the organization’s IT footprint grows. Even though the cluster

nodes can be run as virtual appliances, the organization may have

to purchase additional hardware resources to make up for those that

are now being consumed by the additional nodes. Note also that the

organization will be responsible for purchasing additional software

licenses.

Conversely, running vRealize Operations in the cloud as a SaaS makes

scalability far easier. Clusters can be scaled on demand, without the

organization having to worry about procuring additional hardware.

A third benefit to running vRealize Operations as a SaaS is “anywhere

access.” Because the vRealize Operations software is running in the

cloud, it’s accessible over the Internet from anywhere on the planet.

This is growing in importance, as current and future conditions are

likely to lead to more remote work, rather than less.

Finally, running vRealize Operations as a SaaS gives organizations

the assurance that the software is configured correctly. VMware han-

dles the deployment process, as well as the low-level configuration

process. This means that organizations who choose the SaaS option

never have to wonder if vRealize Operations is configured according

to VMware’s best practices.

VMware makes sure that its SaaS offerings are deployed in a way

that is consistent with all of the various security and compliance

mandates, and that vRealize Operations is fully resilient.


System Requirements

The system requirements for deploying VMware vRealize Operations

8.1 on-premises vary based on the number and types of objects that

exist in your environment, and on the data that’s collected.

A vRealize Operations 8.1 cluster typically consists of one or more

VMware virtual appliances. These virtual appliances must run on

ESX/ESXi or higher, and must be managed by VMware vCenter Server

6.0 or later.

VMware defines five different cluster node configurations (not

counting remote collector nodes), ranging in size from extra small to

extra large. These sizes determine the node hardware requirements,

the number of objects that can be monitored, and the maximum

number of nodes within a cluster. Table 1 illustrates the capabilities

and limitations of each node size.

You can find the full list of requirements and limitations on the

vRealize Operations 8.1 Sizing Guidelines (78495) page.1 VMware

also provides a sizing worksheet that you can use when planning a

VMware Operations Manager deployment.2

Since vRealize Operations Cloud is offered as a SaaS, its system re-

quirements differ significantly from the on-premises solution. The

only node type that organizations will need to deploy on-premises is

1 https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/78495

2 https://kb.vmware.com/sfc/servlet.shepherd/version/download/068f400000HqWs3AAF

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.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/78495

https://kb.vmware.com/sfc/servlet.shepherd/version/download/068f400000HqWs3AAF


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


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


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.


Product Release Date

Build Number

VMware vRealize Operations 8.1.0 4/14/2020 15972145






VMware vRealize Operations 6.6.1 8/8/20176163035, 6163041

VMware vRealize Operations 6.5.0 3/2/20175097674, 5097678, 5041485




VMware vRealize Operations 6.2.0a 2/10/20163528905, 3528904






VMware vCenter Operations Manager 5.8.5 3/12/2015 2532416



Version 7.0 added many more new features. One of the most sig-

nificant new capabilities was fully automated workload balancing

across clusters, down to the host level. This allows workloads to be

seamlessly migrated from an overworked cluster to a less-burdened

cluster. Migrations are no longer limited to hosts within a cluster.

Version 7 also brought us enhanced capacity reclamation workflows,

and the ability to work through various what-if scenarios prior to

adding new workloads and other resources.

These what-if scenarios are useful for things like capacity planning

and cloud migration planning. This was also the version that in-

troduced multi-cloud support and regulatory compliance templates

designed to help organizations to more easily adhere to regulations

such as HIPAA, FISMA, and PCI.

As you’ve seen, vRealize Operations was a pioneer in the integration

of AI—and in 8.1, it’s taken that integration further, with enhanced

troubleshooting capabilities in the Troubleshooting Workbench that

helps IT pros to easily identify and resolve issues. More about that is

coming in Chapter 3.

Table 3: Previous versions of vRealize Operations

Product Release Date

Build Number






Architecture, Scalability, and Fault TolerancevRealize Operations 8.1 on-premises deployments are based around

the use of cluster nodes. It is critically important to be familiar

with the various node types before attempting to deploy vRealize

Operations—the types of nodes used within a deployment signifi-

cantly impact scalability and fault tolerance.

In addition to being familiar with the various node types, you also

need to be familiar with the concepts of management packs and

cloud accounts. A management pack is a collection of elements that

collectively allow you to monitor a particular type of resource. Some

of the components included in a management pack might include

things like dashboards, alerts, and reports. Some management packs

are included with vRealize Operations, while others can be added on

through management packs.

A cloud account is an interface between vRealize Operations and a

monitored endpoint device, such as a vCenter Server. It allows vRe-

alize Operations to communicate with the monitored resource.

As previously noted, vRealize Operations deployments are based

around the use of one or more “cluster nodes.” These cluster nodes

can be classified as either “analytics nodes” or “remote collec-

tor nodes.”

An analytics node is a vRealize Operations cluster node that gathers

or analyzes data. There are three different types of analytics nodes:

master nodes, replica nodes, and data nodes, as depicted in Figure 2.

Master nodes form the foundation of the cluster. Every cluster re-

quires a master node, and the first node that you create in a cluster

is automatically designated as the master node. All of the cluster’s

other nodes are managed by the master node.


It is possible to create clusters consisting of only a single node. In

a single-node cluster, the cluster’s only node is its master node.

Single-node clusters rely on vSphere HA to provide high availability.

The second type of node is the data node. Data nodes are generally

used in larger deployments. Their job is to use adapters to connect to

monitored endpoints, and to perform data collection and analytics.

The third type of analytic node is the replica node. Replica nodes

exist purely for the sake of high availability. As the name implies,

replica nodes are replicas of the master node—they allow the cluster

to survive the loss of an analytics node.

In addition to analytics nodes, vRealize Operations also supports the

use of remote collector nodes. Remote collector nodes are used in

large deployments that span multiple data centers.

User Application RemoteCollector arc-1

Collector Group 1Endpoint

Collector Group 1Endpoint

LB analytics

ANALYTICS CLUSTER

COLLECTORS GROUP 1

Analytic Nodeanalytic-1






Remote Collectorremote-1

A


B

COLLECTORS GROUP 2


C


D


E



Figure 2: The three different types of vRealize Operations analytics nodes: mas-ter, replica, and data, plus the support of a remote collector node


A remote collector node doesn’t store any data, nor does it perform

analytical functions. Instead, the remote collector node is deployed in

the remote data center, and its job is to collect data in that location,

and then send the data back to the analytics cluster.

Additionally, there is a witness node, which is used for continuous

availability. It allows vRealize Operations to survive the loss of all

nodes in a fault domain, whether it’s a data center, cluster, site,

and so on.

Since analytics nodes are intended for use within a data center,

whereas remote collector nodes are used outside of the data center,

there are some basic requirements pertaining to the way that these

nodes should be used.

One of the most important things to know about analytics nodes

is that they must be matched to one another. VMware defines five

different node sizes (which will be discussed in the next section),

and all of the nodes within an analytics cluster must be of the same

size. If you make a change to one of the nodes, you’ll have to update

the other nodes within the cluster to match.

When continuous availability is being used, all the nodes within a

fault domain must reside within a common vCenter cluster, and

must also be a part of the same VLAN. Additionally, this VLAN must

not span multiple data centers.

Using Agents Data nodes and remote collector nodes

leverage the use of agents to facilitate

the data collection process. vRealize

Operations includes endpoint operations

agents, which can be installed within

a VM, allowing Windows or Linux to be

monitored.


The requirements for remote collector nodes are not quite as rigid

as those pertaining to analytics nodes. Unlike analytics nodes, re-

mote collector nodes do not have to be size matched. You can deploy

remote collector nodes in a variety of sizes based on your data col-

lection needs.

Because remote collector nodes are designed to be installed in remote

data centers, it’s assumed that those nodes will be behind a firewall.

It’s important to note, however, that the use of Network Address

Translation (NAT) is not supported for remote collector nodes.

Warning: Danger AheadAll of this helps vRealize Operations with one of its core functions:

its impressive alerting abilities. vRealize Operations collects a variety

of performance metrics from the objects it monitors, then compares

those performance metrics to a series of predetermined performance

thresholds. If an object’s performance causes any of the correspond-

ing threshold values to be exceeded, vRealize Operations generates

an administrative alert.

Of course, this explanation is over-simplified. If vRealize Operations

were to notify an administrator every time that a threshold value

was exceeded, the administrator would be flooded with non-stop

alerts. As such, VMware has developed a sophisticated system for

differentiating between conditions that truly warrant an administra-

tive notification, and those that are benign.

All nodes, regardless of type, require a static IP address. In addition, their fully qualified domain name (FQDN) must be DNS resolvable.


When vRealize Operations does produce an alert, it provides the

administrator with actionable insight. The software clearly conveys

the nature of the problem, and tells the administrator what needs to

be done to correct the issue. For example, vRealize Operations might

indicate that a particular VM needs additional CPU resources, and

that the problem is best solved by moving the VM to another cluster.

vRealize Operations’ health monitoring goes well beyond looking for

conditions that might impact the monitored resource’s performance

or functionality. A big part of keeping system resources healthy is to

ensure that they remain secure.

As such, vRealize Operations doesn’t solely monitor object perfor-

mance metrics. It also looks for conditions that could undermine the

organization’s security or cause the organization to violate its regu-

latory compliance requirements. In fact, VMware provides a variety

of compliance related management packs specifically designed for

this purpose.

Essential to its usefulness is vRealize Operations’ ability to notify

an administrator when something needs their attention. However,

an administrator can also assess the organization’s health at any

time by examining one of the built-in dashboards. They convey the

overall health of monitored resources, but also give administrators

the ability to drill down into the dashboard reports to access more

granular information about specific resources.

Up NextvRealize Operations 8.1 may have only gotten a point upgrade name,

but it’s a much beefier update than the name would imply. But we’re

not going to add spoilers here—you’ll have to read on to find out all

the new goodies it has.

In This Chapter:• Kubernetes support

• VMC on AWS

• Alert importance

Like any new VMware product release, vRealize Operations 8.1 and

vRealize Operations Cloud are loaded with new features and capa-

bilities. This new version introduces support for Kubernetes, GCP,

and more. This chapter explores some of vRealize Operation’s most

compelling new features.

Support for vSphere with TanzuOne of the single most important new capabilities found in vRealize

Operations is its extended support for Kubernetes. For those who

might not be familiar with Kubernetes, it has become the de facto

tool for managing containers.

Over the last several years, containers have become enormously pop-

ular. Containers are especially well suited to running microservices,

stateless applications (such as web front-ends), and certain other

workloads.

What’s New in vRealize Operations

CHAPTER 2

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 7

One reason containers have become so popular is that they’re com-

pact and portable. A developer can build a containerized application

without having to worry about where the application will eventually

be hosted. The application can be moved directly from the develop-

ment environment to an organization’s data center or to the cloud.

The containerized application will run in exactly the same way it did

in the development environment.

One of the negatives with containers is that they can be difficult to

manage. Early on, container management could only be done from

the command line, using commands that were often completely

foreign to Windows administrators.

Kubernetes to the Container RescueThat led to the creation of Kubernetes, developed by Google as a tool

to make container management easier. In addition to basic container

management tasks, Kubernetes allows admins to scale workloads

and to make containers highly available. It’s used and supported by

all the major cloud providers and has become the standard manage-

ment tool for containerized environments.

vRealize Operations has long included the ability to discover and

monitor Kubernetes clusters. Prior to this release, however, doing

so required the use of the vRealize Operations Management Pack

for Kubernetes.3 This add-on management pack gave vRealize

Operations the ability to recognize Kubernetes topology objects such

as name spaces, clusters, replicas, nodes, pods, and containers.

The vRealize Operations Management Pack for Kubernetes is great for

monitoring non-vSphere Kubernetes environments, like OpenShift,

AWS, Azure, GCP, and so on. The latest version has native support for

vSphere 7 with Tanzu.

3 https://marketplace.vmware.com/vsx/solutions/vrealize-operations-management-pack-for-

container-monitoring?ref=search

https://marketplace.vmware.com/vsx/solutions/vrealize-operations-management-pack-for-container-monitoring?ref=search

https://marketplace.vmware.com/vsx/solutions/vrealize-operations-management-pack-for-container-monitoring?ref=search


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.


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

1 https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/8.1/com.vmware.

vcom.vapp.doc/GUID-5964C8B1-738D-4949-B9E9-CECF34D372E6.html

https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/8.1/com.vmware.vcom.vapp.doc/GUID-5964C8B1-738D-4949-B9E9-CECF34D372E6.html

https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/8.1/com.vmware.vcom.vapp.doc/GUID-5964C8B1-738D-4949-B9E9-CECF34D372E6.html


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

1 https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/8.1/com.vmware.

vcom.config.doc/GUID-33DAA688-CED8-4D24-8359-1FC1CEDD1191.html

https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/8.1/com.vmware.vcom.config.doc/GUID-33DAA688-CED8-4D24-8359-1FC1CEDD1191.html

https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/8.1/com.vmware.vcom.config.doc/GUID-33DAA688-CED8-4D24-8359-1FC1CEDD1191.html


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)


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”


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

1 https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/05/fight-alert-fatigue-with-

vrealize-operations-8-1.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/05/fight-alert-fatigue-with-vrealize-operations-8-1.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/05/fight-alert-fatigue-with-vrealize-operations-8-1.html


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.


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

1 https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/04/vm-pricing-with-vrealize-

automation-8-1-and-vrealize-operations-8-1.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/04/vm-pricing-with-vrealize-automation-8-1-and-vrealize-operations-8-1.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/04/vm-pricing-with-vrealize-automation-8-1-and-vrealize-operations-8-1.html


Administrators are able to configure rates individually for virtual

CPU, memory, and storage resources. In addition, it’s possible to fac-

tor the price of guest operating system licenses into the cost of a VM.

LicensingOrganizations wishing to use vRealize Operations can license it as

a standalone product, or as a part of a VMware software bundle. As

discussed, it’s also available as a service. Since every organization’s

needs are unique, VMware provides four different licensing models.

The first of these licensing models involves the use of Portable

Licensing Units (PLUs). PLUs are used for licensing vRealize

Operations as a part of vCloud Suite or vRealize Suite.

The big advantage of PLUs is the flexibility they offer for managing

workloads. No matter where the workloads are—on-premises or in

the cloud—PLUs automatically change the metric to fit the current

environment (Figure 5). In the types of fluid situations that charac-

terize today’s workloads, this is an important feature. And no license

conversions or additional costs are required.

PORTABLE LICENSE UNIT

PrivateCloud

PublicCloud

One License Unit

OR

vSphere Hosts

1 CPU/License Unit 15 OSIs/License Unit

Physical

Third-partyHypervisor

VMC on AWS

Other PublicClouds

Non-vSphere Hosts

Figure 5: Portable License Unit options


A PLU allows vRealize Operations to manage an unlimited number

of VMs or operating system instances, as long as they reside on one

on-premises vSphere CPU or on a single VMware Cloud on AWS CPU.

As previously noted, a PLU can also be used to run VMware software

on other supported public clouds, physical servers, or on third-party

hypervisors. In those cases, the PLU covers up to 15 operating system

instances.

The second way in which vRealize Operations can be licensed is to

use per-processor licensing. You can use per-processor licensing to

license the Standard, Advanced, or Enterprise Editions, as long as

you are licensing it as a standalone product rather than as a part of a

software suite. As its name implies, per-processor licensing is billed

on a per-CPU basis.

The third option for licensing vRealize Operations is to use per-VM

(or per-operating system instance) licensing. This licensing model

can be used when licensing vRealize Operations as a standalone

product, and is supported for use with the Standard, Advanced, and

Enterprise Editions. The license cost is based on the number of VMs

or operating system instances that vRealize Operations is monitoring.

The fourth option is to acquire vRealize Operations through a

SaaS subscription. You can find more information on the vRealize

Operations Cloud website.4

4 https://cloud.vmware.com/vrealize-operations-cloud

VMware provides a whitepaper on licensing issues for the vRealize Suite and vCloud Suite. It covers the licensing process in granular detail.1

1 https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/

products/vrealize/vmware-vrealize-suite-vcloud-suite-licensing-packaging-

whitepaper.pdf

https://cloud.vmware.com/vrealize-operations-cloud

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vrealize/vmware-vrealize-suite-vcloud-suite-licensing-packaging-whitepaper.pdf




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



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



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


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.


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


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.


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

1 https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2018/11/deep-dive-into-the-vrealize-

operations-capacity-management.html

Figure 7: Track your datastore usage with the Datastore Utilization dashboard

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2018/11/deep-dive-into-the-vrealize-operations-capacity-management.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2018/11/deep-dive-into-the-vrealize-operations-capacity-management.html


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


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


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


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


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.


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

https://youtu.be/lQmnKgJhUJs


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


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

1 https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/03/vrealize-operations-

troubleshooting-workbench.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/03/vrealize-operations-troubleshooting-workbench.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/03/vrealize-operations-troubleshooting-workbench.html


Once applications have been identified, vRealize Operations begins

to collect application-level runtime metrics from the VM. These

metrics can be used as a tool for monitoring application performance

and health.

To monitor applications using an on-premises vRealize Operations

deployment, the vRealize Application Remote Collector must be de-

ployed. This collector must be deployed as a VM running on a vSphere

server. (VMware provides the collector as a Photon OS OVA file.)

The vRealize Operations Cloud is also capable of monitoring ap-

plications running on-premises, but doesn’t leverage the vRealize

Application Remote Collector. Instead, organizations simply need to

deploy a cloud proxy.

Applications supported for monitoring include:

• Active Directory

• Active MQ

• Apache HTTPD

• Java

• JBoss

• Mongo DB

• Microsoft Exchange Server

• Microsoft Internet Information Services

• Microsoft SQL Server

• MySQL

• NTPD

• Nginx

• Pivotal Server


• Postgres

• Rabbit MQ

• Riak

• Microsoft SharePoint

• Tomcat

• Web Logic

• WebSphere

Configuration and ComplianceMany larger organizations are subject to various regulatory re-

quirements, and go to great lengths to ensure compliance. vRealize

Operations includes a number of features designed to make com-

plying with regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, FISMA, DISA, ISO, and

CIS easier. And while VMware provides templates designed to assist

in complying with some of the more common regulatory standards,

organizations also have the option of defining their own custom

compliance standards.

vRealize Operations makes it easy for an organization to assess its

state of compliance. The built-in Compliance Dashboard provides

statistics related to the number and types of objects that are cur-

rently out of compliance. These statistics are provided for both the

on-premises SDDC, and the SDDC within the VMware Cloud.

Administrators can click on any of the various metrics to access

more detailed information. However, the dashboard also provides a

Compliance Alerts List (Figure 12). This list identifies compliance is-

sues, while also providing additional information such as the alert’s

criticality and which object triggered the alert. This allows adminis-

trators to focus on the highest priority compliance alerts first.


vRealize Operations is designed to assess the compliance state of

vSphere hosts, VMs, vCenter Servers, distributed port groups, and

distributed switches. In order for vRealize Operations to determine

which objects are out of compliance, it must have some mechanism

for determining what it means for a particular object to be compliant.

VMware provides management packs that define the compliance

requirements associated with a number of different regulatory stan-

dards. Available management packs include:

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) com-

pliance standards

• CIS Security Standards

• Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Security Standards

• The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)

Security Standards

Figure 12: Compliance Alerts serve as a warning—pay attention to them


• International Organization for Standardization

Security Standards

• The vSphere Security Configuration Guide

Note also that the various vSphere Security Configuration Guide5

provides general guidance on hardening your environment, and is a

solid starting point toward overall compliance.

Once an organization has imported a compliance management pack,

the next thing that must be done is to apply a “risk profile” to the

VMs being monitored for compliance. The risk profiles determine

how strictly the compliance rules will be enforced.

The risk profiles, defined in the vSphere Security Configuration

Guide, determines which of these rules, if broken, is a symptom of

non-compliance.

• Risk Profile 1 is the most strict, with all compliance rules being

treated as symptoms.

• Risk Profile 2 is designed for those environments that require a

medium level of security, and therefore doesn’t define as many

symptoms as Risk Profile 1.

• Risk Profile 3 is designed for use in low security environments

and defines comparatively few symptoms.

In addition to the various compliance management packs, vRe-

alize Operations allows organizations to create their own custom

5 https://www.vmware.com/security/hardening-guides.html

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.

https://www.vmware.com/security/hardening-guides.html


compliance templates. These custom templates are useful in a vari-

ety of situations.

Suppose for instance that an organization is not subject to one of

the previously mentioned compliance mandates, but defines its own

internal security standards. A custom template would allow such an

organization to use vRealize Operations to ensure that it’s complying

with its own security guidelines.

Similarly, most healthcare providers accept credit card payments,

meaning that those organizations are subject to both the HIPAA

regulations and the PCI regulations. Such an organization could use a

custom template to include rules from both sets of regulations.

VMware has made the process of creating a custom compliance

template surprisingly easy. From the Compliance dashboard, an ad-

ministrator needs only to choose the Create option from the Actions

menu. This launches the Add Custom Compliance wizard, which

prompts the administrator to provide a name and a description

for the new template, and to then select the compliance alerts that

should be included in the template.

Although compliance alerts can be manually resolved, it’s also possi-

ble to automatically address certain compliance issues, such as com-

pliance configuration drift. Compliance configuration drift refers to a

situation in which resources must adhere to a specific configuration

in order to remain compliant, but configuration changes gradually

occur over time, causing those resources to fall into a non-com-

pliant state.

vRealize Operations allows organizations to create up to six separate compliance templates.


If an organization has deployed vRealize Orchestrator and installed

the vRealize Orchestrator Management Pack, vRealize Operations can

automatically detect and remediate configuration drift. This helps

not only keep your environment running butter smooth, but helps

greatly with compliance issues.

An Indispensable Tool for Every AdminThroughout its history, vRealize Operations has continuously evolved

to keep pace with the latest data center and cloud trends. For in-

stance, version 8.1, as you’ve seen, provides full support for vSphere

with Tanzu monitoring.

It’s also designed to support all the latest multi-cloud initiatives,

with native support for GCP, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon AWS.

VMware has put an incredible amount of effort into building a tool

that aligns with the way that IT pros work, even going so far as to

add support for Slack channels.

Additionally, VMware has made it far easier to create alerts, and has

revised the user interface to make navigating it a more consistent

experience.

VMware has also gone to great lengths to help admins quickly and

easily resolve any problems that might occur. vRealize Operations

integrates directly with vRealize Log Insight, and the new

Troubleshooting Workbench can be used as a tool for determining

the true root cause of any issues that are detected.

The bottom line is that whether an organization chooses to run vRe-

alize Operations on-premises or as a SaaS service, it’s an extremely

helpful tool for managing an organization’s VMware infrastructure.

You can download a free trial version from the VMware website.6

After downloading the trial, run the vSphere Optimization Assessment

(VOA) from within the product. The VOA provides comprehensive

6 https://www.vmware.com/go/vrealize-ops-dl-en

https://www.vmware.com/go/vrealize-ops-dl-en


reports covering areas such as configuration, performance, capacity,

cost, and events. It outlines all of the things that an organization

should be doing to optimize its environment.

For those who would like to try out all of the vRealize Operations

features before downloading a trial, VMware provides a Hands-On

Lab7 that can be used to take vRealize Operations for a test-drive.

Finally, you can access the vRealize Operations Release Notes and

product Documentation.8

Don’t Wait Any LongerWe hope you enjoyed this Gorilla Guide To…® vRealize Operations

8.1. On this journey, you’ve learned about the many ways the latest

version of vRealize Operations helps you manage your environment

easier and more efficiently.

That’s never been more important, given the changing nature of IT:

The cloud, containers, AI, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are just

some of the disruptive technologies that have made it more compli-

cated to optimize operations.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Using vRealize Operations takes

the pain out these management headaches—it’s aspirin for IT ad-

mins, C-level executives, and anyone who has to ensure that the

infrastructure that undergirds your organization will function as

friction-free as possible.

Without such a comprehensive tool, things like planning for capacity

needs across distributed infrastructure, keeping costs under control,

proper troubleshooting, squeezing maximum performance out of

the environment, and making sure your hardware and software is in

7 https://www.vmware.com/go/try-vrops-hol

8 https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/8.1/rn/vRealize-Operations-

Manager-81.html#intro

https://www.vmware.com/go/try-vrops-hol


compliance is an impossible task. Not to mention one that doesn’t

scale at all.

This book can serve as a great starting point on the solution to all

these challenges. vRealize Operations 8.1 is ready to serve your

needs—what are you waiting for?

ABOUT VMWARE

VMware vRealize Operations delivers self-driving IT operations

management for private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments in

a unified, AI-powered platform. Offering full-stack visibility from

physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure—including VMs and con-

tainers—to the applications they support, vRealize Operations pro-

vides continuous performance optimization, efficient capacity and

cost planning and management, app-aware intelligent remediation,

and integrated compliance. vRealize Operations is available as an

on-premises or SaaS offering.

63

https://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-operations.html

https://cloud.vmware.com/vrealize-operations-cloud

ABOUT ACTUALTECH MEDIA

ActualTech Media is a B2B tech marketing company that connects en-

terprise IT vendors with IT buyers through innovative lead generation

programs and compelling custom content services.

ActualTech Media’s team speaks to the enterprise IT audience be-

cause we’ve been the enterprise IT audience.

Our leadership team is stacked with former CIOs, IT managers,

architects, subject matter experts and marketing professionals that

help our clients spend less time explaining what their technology

does and more time creating strategies that drive results.

For more information, visit www.actualtechmedia.com

64

vmware vrealize operations 8.1 and cloud

Documents