VMWare vRealize Operations

Application Version and Upgrade Details

Introduction

VMware vRealize Operations is an all-encompassing operations management platform developed by VMware. It has been meticulously crafted to aid organizations in the efficient management and monitoring of their virtualized and cloud environments. VMware vRealize Operations offers cutting-edge analytics, automated workload balancing, capacity planning, performance optimization, and troubleshooting capabilities.

The platform gathers data from diverse sources, including virtual machines, physical infrastructure, applications, and storage systems. This data is subsequently analyzed to glean insights into the health, performance, and efficiency of the environment. These invaluable insights empower IT administrators and infrastructure teams to make well-informed decisions, proactively identify and resolve issues, optimize resource utilization, and ensure the overall performance and availability of their virtualized infrastructure.

Key features of VMware vRealize Operations include

• Performance Monitoring: Offering real-time monitoring and analysis of performance metrics, enabling the identification of bottlenecks, optimization of resource allocation, and assurance of seamless operations.
• Capacity Planning: Utilizing predictive analytics to forecast future resource requirements, pinpoint capacity shortfalls, and optimize resource allocation to meet evolving business demands.
• Automated Remediation: Proactively identifying and resolving performance issues through automated actions, including workload balancing and capacity adjustments.
• Intelligent Workload Placement: Providing recommendations for optimal workload placement based on resource utilization, performance requirements, and adherence to business policies.
• Customizable Dashboards and Reports: Enabling the creation of personalized dashboards and reports, facilitating visualization of key performance indicators and targeted infrastructure monitoring.
• Ecosystem Integration: Seamlessly integrating with both other VMware solutions and third-party tools and management systems, ensuring a unified operations management experience.

In summary, vRealize Operations simplifies the management of virtualized and cloud environments, enhances operational efficiency, and elevates the performance, availability, and capacity planning of IT infrastructure.

Prerequisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
• OpsRamp Nextgen Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
  Note: OpsRamp recommends using the latest Gateway version for full coverage of recent bug fixes, enhancements, etc..
• Should be able to connect to vRealize portal via SSH with the provided IpAddress/Hostname and the credentials.

Roles and Permissions

Users with read permissions are required to fetch service status related data.

Default monitoring configurations

VMware vRealize Operations have default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global metrics in OpsRamp. Users can customize these default monitoring configurations as per their business use cases by cloning respective Global Templates and Global Device Management Policies. OpsRamp recommends doing this activity before installing the application to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policies

   OpsRamp has a Global Device Management Policy for the Native Type of VMware vRealize Operations. You can find those Device Management Policies at Setup > Resources > Device Management Policies, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: vmware-vrealize-operations VMware vRealize Operations - 1(i.e, appName = vmware-vrealize-operations, nativeType = VMware vRealize Operations , version = 1)

2. Default Global Templates

   OpsRamp has a Global Template for the Native Type of VMware vRealize Operations. You can find those templates at Setup > Monitoring > Templates, search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: vmware-vrealize-operations VMware vRealize Operations Template - 1(i.e, appName = vmware-vrealize-operations, nativeType = VMware vRealize Operations, version = 1)

3. Default Global Monitors

   OpsRamp hase a Global Monitors for the Native Type which has monitoring support. You can find those monitors at Setup > Monitoring > Monitors, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: VMware vRealize Operations Monitor vmware-vrealize-operations VMware vRealize Operations 1 (i.e, monitorKey =VMware vRealize Operations Monitor, appName = vmware-vrealize-operations, nativeType = VMware vRealize Operations , version = 1)

Configure and Install the VMWare vRealize Operations Integration

1. From All Clients, select a client.
2. Go to Setup > Account.
3. Select the Integrations and Apps tab.
4. The Installed Integrations page, where all the installed applications are displayed.
   Note: If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the ADD APP page.
5. Click + ADD on the Installed Integrations page. The Available Integrations and Apps page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.

6. Click ADD in the VMware vRealize Operations application.
7. In the Configurations page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
8. Enter the below mentioned BASIC INFORMATION:

Notes:

• By default the Is Secure checkbox is selected.
• VMware vRealize Operations IP Address/Host Name and Port should be accessible from Gateway.
• Select the following:
  • App Failure Notifications: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure that is, Connectivity Exception, Authentication Exception.
  • API Timeouts: These are the maximum API Timeouts that the application can use to connect and get responses from the end device.
    • Connection Timeout in Secs: a time period in which a client should establish a connection with a server.
      Note: By default, 60 is selected.
    • Connection Request Timeout in Secs: a time period required to process an HTTP call: from sending a request to receiving a response.
      Note: By default, 10 is selected.
    • Socket Timeout in Secs: a maximum time of inactivity between two data packets when exchanging data with a server.
      Note: By default, 10 is selected.

9. Select the below mentioned Custom Attribute:

Note: The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the integration. You can add a maximum of five custom attributes (key and value pair).

10. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:
    • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
    • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.
11. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:
    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly
12. Click ADD.

Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it. From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration.

13. Click Next.

14. Below are the optional steps you can perform on the Installation page.

    • Under the ADVANCED SETTINGS, Select the Bypass Resource Reconciliation option, if you wish to bypass resource reconciliation when encountering the same resources discovered by multiple applications.

      Note: If two different applications provide identical discovery attributes, two separate resources will be generated with those respective attributes from the individual discoveries.

• Click +ADD to create a new collector by providing a name or use the pre-populated name.

15. Select an existing registered profile.

16. Click FINISH.

The integration is installed and displayed on the INSTALLED INTEGRATION page. Use the search field to find the installed integration.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select the VMware vRealize Operations application.

View the VMware vRealize Operations Details

The VMware vRealize Operations integration is displayed in the Infrastructure > Resources > Server. You can navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details and Metrics tab to view the metric details for VMware vRealize Operations.

View Resource Metrics

To confirm VMware vRealize Operations monitoring, review the following:

• Metric graphs: A graph is plotted for each metric that is enabled in the configuration.
• Alerts: Alerts are generated for metrics that are configured as defined for integration.

Resource Filter Input Keys

VMware vRealize Orchestrator application Resources are filtered and discovered based on below keys.

Supported Alert Custom Macros

Customize the alert subject and description with below macros then it will generate alerts based on customisation.
Supported macros keys:

Supported Metrics

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure alert notifications for below two cases when user enables Notification Alert in configuration
  • Connectivity Exception
  • Authentication Exception
• Application will not send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification until the already existed critical alert is recovered.
• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts. Metrics can be used to monitor Vmware vRealize Operations resources and can generate alerts based on the threshold values.
• OpsRamp has provided 22 as default SSH Port value for connecting to VROps end device via SSH. Users can modify this value from the application configuration page at any point of time if required.
• Specify the ports that require monitoring in the Ports to be Monitored section. By default, we are providing the following ports in this field: 1000, 123, 443, 4505, 4506, 5433, 5480, 6061, 7001, 8883, 8999, 9000, 9042.
• Component level thresholds can be configured on each resource level.
• No support of showing activity log and applied time.
• Latest snapshot metric support from Gateway 14.0.0.