VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 vrealize Operations Manager
VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 You can find the most up-to-date technical documentation on the VMware Web site at: https://docs.vmware.com/ The VMware Web site also provides the latest product updates. If you have comments about this documentation, submit your feedback to: docfeedback@vmware.com Copyright 2017 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright and trademark information. VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Ave. Palo Alto, CA 94304 www.vmware.com 2 VMware, Inc.
Contents VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 5 1 Introduction 7 2 Sizing and Collection Time Interval Considerations 9 3 Install vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 11 4 Configure vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 13 Configuration File in Federation MP 14 Locate Configuration File 14 Best Practices for Configuration File Management 15 5 Federation Management Pack Dashboards 17 Getting Started - Federation Dashboard 17 Infrastructure Capacity 20 Infrastructure Configuration 22 SDDC Health and Configuration 23 6 Customizing Icons in vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 25 Customize Icons 25 Index 27 VMware, Inc. 3
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VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack The vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack document provides information about the federation feature that is introduced in vrealize Operations Manager. Intended Audience This information is intended for anyone who wants to install the federation feature to manage distributed deployments of vrealize Operations Manager instances. VMware Technical Publications Glossary VMware Technical Publications provides a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to you. For definitions of terms as they are used in VMware technical documentation, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs. VMware, Inc. 5
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Introduction 1 With vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack you can unify your multi-site vrealize Operations Manager deployment into a single pane of glass. You can instantiate a deployment of vrealize Operations Manager with the capability of receiving key metrics for specified objects from other vrealize Operations Manager deployment in your environment. The management pack allows you to unlock the following use cases: Provide a summary of performance, capacity, and configuration to Senior Executives and Virtual Infrastructure Administrators across all your vsphere environments. Provide a unified view of events triggered across the virtual environments into a single pane for making it easier for NOC or Helpdesk to initiate action. Ability to create a data warehouse where user selected set of metrics can be stored for data archiving and report use cases. Ability to provide summarized views of health and configuration of your Software Defined data center stack. This includes core applications such as VMware vcenter Server, VMware NSX, and VMware vsan. The solution also covers the management applications such as vrealize Operations Manager, vrealize Log Insight, vrealize Automation, vrealize Business, and VMware Site Recovery Manager. Architecture Example: The vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack follows a simple server-client architecture. This management pack is installed on the vrealize Operations Manager instance, which you have identified as your unified single pane of glass instance. It is highly recommended that this instance is only used for federation. After you deploy vrealize Operations Manager, you can use the management pack configuration page to add your existing vrealize Operations Management instances to point to this federated instance. When configuring the management pack, enter the name of a configuration file that stores the information about the objects and metrics to be fetched from your existing vrealize Operations Manager instances into the newly deployed federated instance. You can plan your architecture to apply the capabilities of vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack. ACME Corp a Global Manufacturing company has virtual environments spanning across the globe to meet their regional business requirements. They are leveraging the VMware Software Defined data center to provide key IT services to line of business. They have an SDDC footprint in Singapore, London, Johannesburg, and San Jose. As a part of their Capacity Management and Performance Troubleshooting requirements they are leveraging vrealize Operations Manager to help their Operations and Procurement teams. They currently have an instance of vrealize Operations Manager deployed at each of these data VMware, Inc. 7
VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 center locations. ACME Corporation is looking to leverage the vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack to create a single pane of glass across all the data center locations. They want to leverage this single pane for their operations, capacity procurement, and senior executives to provide them with a unified view of their IT landscape. As their London data center has the largest footprint and low latency connectivity to other data centers, they want to host this unified instance in their London data center Based on the mentioned requirements, ACME Corp has deployed a new instance of vrealize Operations Manager with the Federation Management pack using the following deployment architecture: Logical Architecture of the vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack for ACME Corp. 8 VMware, Inc.
Sizing and Collection Time Interval Considerations 2 The vrealize Operations Manager instance hosting the federation management pack should be sized just like any other vrealize Operations Manager instances. For more information, see the KB article 2150421. The following are the best practices. Out-of-the-box, vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack collects data for objects such as ESXi hosts, clusters, datacenters, datastores, and so on. Virtual machine data is not collected. Based on this, most of the environments can be monitored with one Extra Large Node. The federation instance of vrealize Operations Manager should be used only for collecting data from the federation MP. No other MP on this vrealize Operations Manager instance should be configured to collect from any other data sources. If you add new objects and metrics to an existing deployment of your federation vrealize Operations Manager instance, ensure to run the sizing calculator to meet the sizing requirements. With vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack, you can either collect data directly from child vrealize Operations Manager instances or use a remote collector to optimize the collection process. The default collection cycle of vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack is 5 minutes. This time interval works accurately for a centralized vrealize Operations Manager collecting data from other child vrealize Operations Manager instances that are located within a short distance. You can also use a remote collector for data collection. Otherwise, when centralized vrealize Operations Manager collects data directly without a remote collector and latency is long, you can set the collection interval to 15 minutes. This ensures data collection without any gaps. As most of the federation use cases are met by collecting data for objects other than virtual machines from your environment, it is recommended to avoid the collection of virtual machine data as this drastically increases the sizing requirement for the federation instance in a large-scale environment. VMware, Inc. 9
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Install vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 3 The vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack requires a dedicated instance of vrealize Operations Manager on which this solution is installed. The dedicated instance applies the management pack to communicate to your other vrealize Operations Manager instances in your environment to collect key metrics. Prerequisites Download the vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack PAK file from VMware Marketplace. Verify that you have at least one vrealize Operations Manager node deployed to install the federation management pack. It is recommended to install the VMware SDDC Management Health Solution on the child vrealize Operations Manager instances, to get a federated view of the health of all the SDDC core and management applications installed across your environment. Procedure 1 Log in to the vrealize Operations Manager with administrator privileges. 2 In the menu, click Administrator, and then in the left pane, click Solutions. 3 On the Solutions, click the plus sign. 4 Browse to locate the temporary folder and select the PAK file. 5 Click Upload. The upload might take several minutes. 6 Read and accept the EULA, and click Next. 7 When the Federation Management pack is installed, click Finish. VMware, Inc. 11
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Configure vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 4 You can configure adapter instances and add the vrealize Operations Manager instances you want to monitor. Prerequisites Verify that you have installed vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack. Procedure 1 From the Solutions list, select vrops Federation Adapter. 2 Click the gear icon to edit an object. 3 Enter the display name of the adapter. 4 Enter the source vrealize Operations Manager host name or IP address. Note You can either use the host name of IP address of the master node of your child vrealize Operations Manager deployment or use the Load Balancer Virtual IP or DNS Name. Use a short name and do not use FQDN. 5 Enter the federation_config in the Configuration File Name. federation_config is the default configuration file shipped with the management pack. For more information, see Configuration File in Federation MP, on page 14. 6 Enter the Credential details. 7 Click Save Settings. 8 Repeat the steps from step 1 through step 7 for multiple instances of vrealize Operations Manager. 9 You can view the collection status of all the multiple instances of vrealize Operations Manager under the solution page. This chapter includes the following topics: Configuration File in Federation MP, on page 14 Locate Configuration File, on page 14 Best Practices for Configuration File Management, on page 15 VMware, Inc. 13
VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 Configuration File in Federation MP When you configure a federation adapter instance, you must specify a config file. The config file specifies what kind of information an adapter instance must collect. Out-of-the-box, the federation MP is shipped with config file named as federation_config. The config file retrieves the following information. Resources Metrics Properties For example, if you want the adapter to collect information like host system and CPU metrics of that object, then this information needs to be defined in the config file. When these parameters are added, then the adapter instance starts collecting information pertaining to the required specification. The changes are reflected in the config file only when the adapter instance is restarted. Types of config files used in the vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack Default Config File Heterogeneous Config File vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack contains a default config file. The vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack dashboards are based on these config files. The default config file contains information of vcenter to host level and not VM level. The config file also provides information of vcenter operation adapter objects, VMware SDDC Health Solution adapter, and VMware Site Recovery Manager adapter. You are not limited to using the same config file for all adapter instances when you are configuring multiple adapter instances for a separate child of vrealize Operations Manager instance. You can collect different data from different child vrealize Operations Manager instances. You can have different level of information in different config files. Locate Configuration File The default file has pre-defined objects and metrics, which are collected from the child vrealize Operations Manager instances. Prerequisites Verify that you have installed the Federation MP on your environment. Procedure 1 Login to vrealize Operations Manager as an Admin. 2 In the menu, click Administration, and in the left pane click Configuration > Metric Configurations. 3 Under Metric Configurations, expand ReskndMetric. You can see the newly installed federation_config file in the list. 4 You can view the content of this file by selecting this file from the list. 14 VMware, Inc.
Chapter 4 Configure vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack Best Practices for Configuration File Management Follow certain best practices to ensure optimal performance of the vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack. Do not modify the out-of-the-box shipped configuration file. Create a file, copy the content of the out of the box file and make additions to this new file. Do not remove objects or metrics included in the out-of-the-box configuration file as it impacts the content of the out-of-the-box dashboards. Once you have created a configuration file, it is required to stop the collection on the federation management pack, change the configuration file name field to reflect the newly created file and start the collection again. The federation adapter will now start collecting the additional objects and metrics. Version control the configuration files with proper naming conventions and version numbers. Avoid adding objects and metrics which are not required to be collected. Test your newly created configuration file with a test instance of child vrealize Operations Manager instance before applying it to your production systems. The collection of federated metrics from child vrealize Operations Manager monitored by federation management pack is not managed in policies. The addition and removal of metrics and properties is managed directly inside the configuration file. Only the metrics and properties configured in the federation config file are collected. The collection of configured metrics and properties can be disabled and re-enabled from policy. VMware, Inc. 15
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Federation Management Pack 5 Dashboards The vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack caters to certain out-of- the-box use cases, which are delivered through dashboards. After installation and configuration of the management pack, you can access these out-of- the-box dashboards. Prerequisites Verify that you have installed vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack solution. See Chapter 3, Install vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack, on page 11 for information on installing. Procedure 1 To access the dashboards, in the left pane of the VMware vrealize Operations Manager, click Dashboards. 2 Click Federation to view all dashboards. 3 From the dashboard list, select Getting Started- Federation dashboard in the list of all the dashboards and associated use cases. This chapter includes the following topics: Getting Started - Federation Dashboard, on page 17 Infrastructure Capacity, on page 20 Infrastructure Configuration, on page 22 SDDC Health and Configuration, on page 23 Getting Started - Federation Dashboard The Getting Started - Federation dashboard displays the catalog of federation dashboards and the federation deployment map. You can step through the multiple categories under federation page to cater to specific use cases. The deployment map on this page provides a topology of your Federation Deployment with colors depicting the current health and collection status. VMware, Inc. 17
VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 Figure 5 1. Getting Started - Federation Dashboard Infrastructure Operations The Getting Started page provides access to the following OOTB categories. The infrastructure category caters to Senior Executives and NOC users by providing them an operations summary and alerts. The dashboards under this category are. Operations Summary Alerts Overview 18 VMware, Inc.
Chapter 5 Federation Management Pack Dashboards Operations Summary Dashboard The Operations Overview dashboard provides a count of your infrastructure inventory objects across all the vrealize Operations Manager instances being monitored by the vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack. It provides you the overall alert volume in these environment, along with a summarized view of health and capacity of the vsphere clusters in your environment. Figure 5 2. Operations Summary Dashboard Alerts Overview The Alerts Overview dashboard provides the alerts page of vrealize Operations Manager. On this page, you can not only view the alerts triggered on your vrealize Operations Manager federation instance, but also view the alerts triggered in your child vrealize Operations Manager instances. The overview page includes all the alerts triggered on the vrealize Operations Manager instance and is not dependent on the objects you are monitoring from the child vrealize Operations Manager instance. This page can help your NOC teams to have a single pane for all the alerts across your environments. To view the details of a specific alert, click on that alert to get directed to the child vrealize Operations Manager instance where the alert was originally triggered for troubleshooting purposes. VMware, Inc. 19
VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 Figure 5 3. Alerts Overview Infrastructure Capacity The Infrastructure Capacity category caters to Senior Executives and NOC users by providing them an overview of overall capacity and reclamation opportunities. The following dashboards are under the Infrastructure Capacity: Capacity Summary Capacity Optimization 20 VMware, Inc.
Chapter 5 Federation Management Pack Dashboards Capacity Summary Dashboard The Capacity Summary Dashboard provides you with a summary of the total physical capacity available across all your environments being monitored by multiple instances of vrealize Operations Manager. The dashboard also provides you a list view of all your clusters across your environment with details around inventory, capacity and utilization of those clusters. You can export this list into a CSV file for reporting purposes. Figure 5 4. Capacity Summary Dashboard Capacity Optimization Dashboard The Capacity Optimization dashboard provides you a quick view of resource optimization opportunities within your virtual infrastructure. This dashboard is focused on improving the efficiency of your multiple instances of vrealize Operations Manager environment by reducing the wastage of resources. Figure 5 5. Capacity Optimization Dashboard VMware, Inc. 21
VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 Infrastructure Configuration Infrastructure Configuration category caters to Senior Executives and virtual infrastructure admin by providing them the summary of ESXi Host and cluster configurations. The dashboards under Infrastructure Configuration category are: vsphere Cluster Configuration vsphere Host Configuration vsphere Cluster Configuration Dashboard The vsphere Cluster Configuration dashboard provides a quick overview of your vsphere cluster configurations from various instances of vrealize Operations Manager. The dashboard highlights the areas that are important in delivering performance and availability to your virtual machines. Figure 5 6. vsphere Cluster Configuration Dashboard The dashboard also highlights if there are vsphere clusters which are not configured for DRS, High Availability (HA), or admission control to avoid any resource bottlenecks or availability issues when a host fails. The heat map in this dashboard helps you to identify if you have hosts where vmotion was not enabled as this may not allow the VMs to move from or to that host. This may cause potential performance issues for the VMs on that host if the host gets too busy. 22 VMware, Inc.
Chapter 5 Federation Management Pack Dashboards vsphere Host Configuration Dashboard The vsphere Host Configuration dashboard provides an overview of your ESXi host configurations, and displays inconsistencies so that you can take corrective action. Figure 5 7. vsphere Host Configuration Dashboard The dashboard also measures the ESXi hosts against the vsphere best practices and indicates deviations that can impact the performance or availability of your virtual infrastructure. Although you can view this type of data in other dashboards, in this dashboard you can export the ESXi configuration view and share it with other administrators. SDDC Health and Configuration This category caters to Senior Executives and virtual infrastructure admin by providing them the summary of health and configuration of the SDDC Management Stack. Health & Configuration dashboard is available under the SDDC Health and Configuration category. Health and Configuration Dashboard This dashboard provides health of all the SDDC components. The federation adapter monitors and displays the health of vcenter Server, vrealize Operations Manager health, vrealize Automation and other stack components. Note Verify to install and configure the SDDC health adapter installed on the child vrealize Operations Manager instances to display the health and configuration information in this dashboard. VMware, Inc. 23
VMware vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 1.0 Figure 5 8. Health and Configuration Dashboard This dashboard provides information of summary of the number of SDDC components, applications, deployments and its health status. The SDDC instances and Issue count widget in the dashboard displays detailed information of which object requires an immediate attention and from which instance the issue has occurred. When you click on the particular vrealize Operations Manager child instance, you can drill down to analyze the root cause of an issue. 24 VMware, Inc.
Customizing Icons in vrealize Operations Federation Management Pack 6 Every object or adapter in your environment has an icon representation. You can customize how the icon appears. You can customize the appearance of the icons for your federation objects. Customize Icons Every object or adapter in your environment has an icon representation. You can customize how the icon appears. You can use familiar or customized icons from vcenter Server, VMware vsan, vrealize Operations Management Pack for NSX for vsphere or VMware SDDC Management Health MP adapter for the federation objects. Prerequisites If you want to add new icons, then verify that you have an icon on your local machine. Procedure 1 In the menu, click Administration, and then in the left pane, click Configuration > Icons 2 Select the adapter type from the Adapter type drop-down. 3 Select the Object type and then click the Assign Default Icons 4 To assign default icons for a selected object type, click Yes. VMware, Inc. 25
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Index A accessing 17 alerts 19 B best practice 15 C capacity optimization 21 capacity summary 21 config file 14 configuration file 14 customize icons 25 G getting started 17 glossary 5 H health and configuration 23 I installing 11 intended audience 5 O operations summary 19 S server object 13 T time interval 9 V vsphere cluster configuration 22 vsphere host config 23 VMware, Inc. 27
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