Hol-Sdc-1601 PDF en

HOL-SDC-1601
Table of Contents
Lab Overview - HOL-SDC-1601 - Cloud Management with vRealize Suite Standard� ...... 3
Lab Guidance .......................................................................................................... 4
Module 1 - Capacity Planning and Workload Placement with vRealize Operations (45
Minutes) ............................................................................................................................ 9
Workload Balancing and Placement ...................................................................... 10
Module 2 - Building Dashboards, Views, and Reports in vRealize Operations Manager -
(30 Minutes).................................................................................................................... 44
Creating Dashboards, Reports, and Views in vRealize Operations Manager ......... 45
Creating Custom Views ......................................................................................... 48
Creating Custom Reports ...................................................................................... 60
Creating a Custom Dashboard .............................................................................. 67
Additional Dashboard Features ............................................................................. 76
Conclusion............................................................................................................. 86
Module 3 - OS and Applications Management with vRealize Operations Manager - (45
Minutes) .......................................................................................................................... 87
Operating System and Application Management .................................................. 88
Getting Started and Logging in ............................................................................. 89
Creating Custom Groups and Modeling Applications............................................. 93
Creating an Application-Centric Dashboard .......................................................... 99
Deploying The Endpoint Operations Management Agent.................................... 107
Collecting Operating System level metrics ......................................................... 113
Reviewing and Using Operating System Metrics ................................................. 123
Module 4 - SDDC VMware and Infrastructure Management Packs - (30 Minutes) ......... 133
Module Overview ................................................................................................ 134
Management Pack Installation/Configuration ...................................................... 138
Viewing 3rd Party Storage Data in vRealize Operations Manager ....................... 146
EMC Storage Analytics Management Pack .......................................................... 150
NetApp Storage Management Pack by Blue Medora ........................................... 159
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 170
Module 5 - Log Management with vRealize Log Insight - (60 Minutes).......................... 171
Overview of vRealize Log Insight ........................................................................ 172
Video Overview of Log Insight............................................................................. 179
Dashboards and Interactive Analytics ................................................................. 180
Working with Log Insight ..................................................................................... 186
Log Insight Agents .............................................................................................. 200
Integrating Log Insight with vRealize Operations ................................................ 203
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 204
Module 6 - Hybrid Cloud and Heterogeneous Management with vRealize Operations
Manager - (30 Minutes)................................................................................................. 205
Introduction......................................................................................................... 206
Logging In and Getting Started ........................................................................... 207
Hyper-V and AWS ................................................................................................ 211
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 1
HOL-SDC-1601
vCloud Air............................................................................................................ 218

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 225
Module 7 - Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping With vRealize Infrastructure
Navigator - (30 Minutes) ............................................................................................... 226
Introduction to vRealize Infrastructure Navigator ............................................... 227
Exploring vRealize Infrastructure Navigator ........................................................ 229
Defining a new Application Service & Custom Application .................................. 239
Integration with vRealize Operations Manager ................................................... 257
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 262
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 2
HOL-SDC-1601
Lab Overview - HOL-

SDC-1601 - Cloud
Management with
vRealize Suite Standard�
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 3
HOL-SDC-1601
Lab Guidance
This lab focuses on Cloud Management with vRealize Suite Standard, which includes
VMware® vRealize™ Operations Manager™, VMware vRealize Log Insight and vRealize
Infrastructure Navigator.
A Readme.txt file is included on the desktop with authentication information.
The vRealize Log Insight module will investigate how to configure Log Insight, uncover
performance problems and install content packs. Creating Dashboards, Views, and
Reports are a focus topic with vRealize Operations Manager. Additionally the lab walks
through collecting Application and Operating System metrics with the new native OS
and Application Performance Monitoring functionality in vRealize Operations Manager
called “Endpoint Operations". With vRealize Configuration Manager we investigate
vSphere hardening scenarios plus how to remediate compliance drift, patch OSes, and
roll back OS changes. Additionally, we explore how to view and manage third party
storage, Amazon Web Services, and Hyper-V metrics. Finally in the vRealize
Infrastructure Navigator module we will examine how Infrastructure Navigator can
provide greater insights into the way applications depend on each other through
network services. Also define your own custom application in Infrastructure Navigator
and then use that application as a basis for monitoring within vRealize Operations
Manager.
This lab consists of 8 modules. You will not be able to finish all eight Modules in
one sitting. The labs can be taken in any order. If you are interested in the vSphere
with Operations Management track, please focus on HOL-SDC-1610 - vSphere with
Operation Management 6: Virtualization 101 and HOL-SDC-1602 - vSphere with
operations Management 6: Advanced Topics.
The complete listing of all twelve modules are:
Module 1 - Capacity Planning and Workload Placement with vRealize Operations (45
Minutes)
Module 2 - Building Dashboards, Views, and Reports in vRealize Operations Manager -

(30 Minutes)
Module 3 - OS and Applications Management with vRealize Operations Manager - (45

Minutes)
Module 4 - SDDC VMware and Infrastructure Management Packs - (30 Minutes)
Module 5 - Log Management with vRealize Log Insight - (60 Minutes)
Module 6 - Hybrid Cloud and Heterogeneous Management with vRealize Operations

Manager - (30 Minutes)
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 4
HOL-SDC-1601
Module 7 - Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping With vRealize Infrastructure

Navigator - (30 Minutes)
An average time to complete each module is listed. Depending on your experience with
the products and your skill level, more or less time may be needed.
Lab Captains:
• Module 1 - John Dias

• Module 2 - Mike Eisenberg
• Module 3 - Chris Bush, Mike Eisenberg
• Module 4 - Chris Bush
• Module 7 - Daniel Wofford
This lab manual can be downloaded from the Hands-on Labs Document site found here:
http://docs.hol.pub/catalog/
This lab may be available in other languages. To set your language preference and have
a localized manual deployed with your lab, you may utilize this document to help guide
you through the process:
http://docs.hol.vmware.com/announcements/nee-default-language.pdf
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 5
HOL-SDC-1601
Activation Prompt or Watermark
When first starting the lab, you may notice a watermark on the desktop indicating that
Windows is not activated.
One of the major benefits of virtualization is that virtual machines can be moved and
run on any platform. The Hands-on Labs utilizes this benefit and we are able to run the
labs out of multiple datacenters. However, these datacenters may not have identical
processors, which triggers a Microsoft activation check through the Internet.
Rest assured, VMware and the Hands-on Labs are in full compliance with Microsoft
licensing requirements. The lab that you are using is a self-contained pod and does not
have full access to the Internet, which is required for Windows to verify the activation.
Without full access to the Internet, this automated process fails and you see this
watermark.
This cosmetic issue has no effect on your lab. If you have any questions or concerns,
please feel free to use the support made available to you either at VMworld in the
Hands-on Labs area, in your Expert-led Workshop, or online via the survey comments as
we are always looking for ways to improve your hands on lab experience.
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 6
HOL-SDC-1601
Disable Remember Passwords in Firefox
1. Open the Firefox menu.

2. Click Options
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 7
HOL-SDC-1601
Disable Remember Passwords continued
1. Click to uncheck Remember passwords for sites.

2. Click OK
Disclaimer
This session may contain product features that are  currently under
development.
This session/overview of the new technology represents  no commitment from

VMware to deliver these features in  any generally available product.
Features are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts,

purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind.
Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.
Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features discussed or

presented have not been determined.
• “These features are representative of feature areas under development. Feature

commitments are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts,
purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind. Technical feasibility and market
demand will affect final delivery.”
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 8
HOL-SDC-1601
Module 1 - Capacity
Planning and Workload
Placement with vRealize
Operations (45 Minutes)
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 9
HOL-SDC-1601
Workload Balancing and Placement

vRealize Operations Manager provides administrators with simple and powerful
information they need to make sure virtual machines have the optimal amount of
resources allocated. A virtual machine may have been provisioned with far more
resources than are required to support an application. This leads to waste and
inefficiencies that drive up costs and create artificial constraints on an otherwise well
designed virtual infrastructure.
On the other hand, virtual machines can also be unintentionally starved for resources
due to under-sized allocation of resources. In a highly efficient virtual infrastructure it is
important to identify and correct these imbalances and tune virtual machine allocations
to the level appropriate for each individual application.
Fortunately, vRealize Operations Manager provides views and reports to help identify
these imbalances and even makes recommendations on appropriate resource allocation.
This is known as "Right-Sizing" and this module will show you how.
Start Firefox and Adjust Zoom Level
Launch the Firefox browser by clicking the Firefox icon on the desktop.
Adjust the zoom settings in the browser:
1. Click the menu icon on the top right corner of the browser window.
2. Click the "-" symbol twice to decrease the zoom to 80%.
3. Press the "ESC" key on your keyboard.
Select the vRealize Operations Manager HVM Bookmark
The browser will automatically start with the login page for vrops-01a.corp.local,
however in this module we will use another vRealize Operations Manager instance that
has much more data collected and is looping in historical mode.
1. Click the "vRealize Operations" folder on the bookmarks toolbar.

2. Click on the bookmark for "vRealize Operations Manager HVM"
HOL-SDC-1601 Page 10
HOL-SDC-1601
HVM stands for "Historical View Mode" and allows us to show much more
comprehensive data in this lab than we could with a live instance of vRealize Operations
Manager. However, we will not be able to make permanent changes to the HVM
environment (such as resizing virtual machines).
Log In to vRealize Operations Manager
1. Enter "admin" for the user name.

2. Enter "VMware1!" for the password.
3. Click the "Login" button.
HOL-SDC-1601
Identify a Resource Constraint
In the following steps, you will identify a resource constraint of a virtual machine and
learn how to remediate that issue using the recommended action. While that's good
enough to get the problem fixed, it may indicate that there are other things going on in
the infrastructure that need attention.
Next, you will explore the host system and cluster to determine why this virtual machine
my be experiencing resource constraints and using Workload Placement and Capacity
Planning as methods to address this issue more efficiently. This is the best way to
address resource contention and prevents problems in the future with this and other
virtual machines.
Observe Alerts
Alerts are broken into three major categories, Health, Risk and Efficiency. Health alerts
indicate immediate issues that need your attention (such as loss of network connectivity
or a virtual machine with abnormally high workload). On the other hand, Risk alerts
give you an advanced notice that there may be trouble if you don't address a problem
soon. This is where you will focus, by proactively checking for Risk issues in the
environment.
1. Click the Alerts icon.

2. Click the Risk icon to filter on Risk alerts only.
Notice that you have a virtual machine, bna-mgmt, that has continuous high memory
usage causing stress. What does this mean?
3. Click on the alert text to find out!
HOL-SDC-1601
Get Alert Details
vRealize Operations Manager provides you with more detail on the alert, what it means
and recommends actions to take to correct the issue. Take time to review the alert
summary information. In particular, you can see that further details will be found on the
"Analysis Stress" tab and in the following steps you will do that. But for now, let's see
what happens when you accept the recommendation to add more memory for the
virtual machine.
1. Click the button "Set Memory for VM"
Remediate Memory Stress
That button launches an "action" to add more memory to the virtual machine. Instead
of opening the vSphere client to perform this task, you can handle this from the vRealize
Operations Manager user interface.
Not only has vRealize Operations Manager identified that this virutal machine needs
more memory, it also provides a recommended amount of memory to add. As you can
see in the wizard, the memory currently allocated to the virtual machine is around 6GB.
vRealize Operations pre-fills the "New (MB)" input for you with a recommended amount.
You can, of course, change this amount as desired.
HOL-SDC-1601
Also note that you have options to allow or disallow power off as part of the action, and
to take a snapshot before the action adds memory. If your virtual machine is capable of
memory "hot add" then now power action is needed.
Normally, you would click "Begin Action" to have vRealize Operations Manager work
with vCenter to update the virtual machine memory settings.
1. Click the "Cancel" button.
HOL-SDC-1601
Switch to the Virtual Machine Object
Currently, you are viewing the alert summary information. Let's go look at the virtual
machine as suggested in the alert summary.
• Click on the virtual machine "bna-mgmt" under Impacted Object in the navigation
panel.
Review Stress
As suggested, let's review the Stress tab for this virtual machine.
1. Click on the "Analysis" tab.

2. Click on the "Stress" tab.
The Stress tab indicates represents how vRealize Operations Manager calculates how
much an object demands over a period of time. This analysis compares an object's
workload against its capacity. The Stress score helps you identify hosts and virtual
machines that do not have enough resources allocated, or hosts that are running too
many virtual machines.
Note that the Stress tab tells you where the virtual machine is most stressed. Memory
stress is critical. You can see from the "Stress Breakdown" that although memory stress
is high, you are not having CPU stress as well. This allows you to focus on the problem
area and not have to guess where to go to address the issue.
In the chart "Business Week Workload" you will find stress levels for each hour of the
day for each day of the week, averaged of the last six weeks. This is an easy way to
find stress "hot spots" for an object. For example, this machine seems to be stressed
HOL-SDC-1601
most of the time, but is experiencing more stress on Thursdays between midnight and
5am. It may be worthwhile to investigate the "hot spots" for more details.
Review Stress (Continued)
Scroll down further on the Stress tab and notice the relationship chart, titled "Stress in
Related Objects." Here you can do some quick analysis to understand if this problem is
isolated to a particular object or is part of a more widespread resource constraint.
1. Hover over the icon for Parent "w2-mgmtpm-2.mgmt.local" host system.
When you hover your mouse over an object icon, an information panel will pop up to
show you overall status for that object. The object we selected is the "parent" for our
virtual machine (host system w2-mgmtpm-2.mgmt.local).
Notice that the host system has a green icon for Stress, which is great! However, we
can also see that the Time Remaining and Capacity Remaining icons are red, indicating
trouble in the future.
2. Click on the icon for Parent "w2-mgmtpm-2.mgmt.local" host system.
When you click the icon for an object, all non-related objects in the relationship chart
are obscured so you can easily evaluate the parents, peers and children for that object.
For example, with the host system selected, the chart is filtered to show only those
peer virtual machines that share the same host system.
HOL-SDC-1601
With this filter applied, it is easy to determine if the stress issue is isolated to the virtual
machine or is impacting other systems as well. Additionally, the child objects (such as
storage and networking) may be contributing to the stress, so this confirms that there
are no stress problems in those areas that could be contributing to the problem.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Capacity Remaining
Since the Capacity Remaining icon for the host system was red, let's explore that next.
1. Click the Capacity Remaining tab.
In this tab, we can see that memory capacity has been exhausted. That's not a
surprise, but we can also confirm that there are no constraints for CPU or Disk Space.
This helps narrow the focus for troubleshooting and remediation.
The host system icon is still selected in the relationship chart. As expected, the icon for
the host system is red, but it is also red for other virtual machine objects running on the
host - this needs to be addressed before it becomes a problem!
2. Double click on the host icon.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review the Parent Host System Capacity
When you double click on an object in the relationship view, vRealize Operations
Manager will navigate to the Analysis tab for that object. Note that we're now looking at
Capacity Remaining for w2-mgmtpm-2.mgmt.local.
As you can see, the host is constrained by memory, with no more available memory
remaining. All other resource areas are OK.
Review the Parent Host System Capacity (Continued)
Scroll down in the Capacity Remaining tab and find the "Capacity Remaining in Related
Objects" relationship chart. As with the virtual machine's relationship chart you can
focus the chart on a subset of related objects.
1. Click the icon for the parent object, the cluster "mgmt-mgmt"
HOL-SDC-1601
With this focus filter we can see that there are two other host "peer" objects in the
cluster with this host. Note that one of them has a red Capacity Remaining icon and the
other a green icon.
This indicates an imbalance in the cluster. There are resources available but they aren't
being used efficiently. Let's see how to fix that.
2. Double click the icon for the parent object, the cluster "mgmt-mgmt"
HOL-SDC-1601
Start "Rebalance Container" Action
We are now viewing the Capacity Remaining tab for the cluster, "mgmt-mgmt."
vRealize Operations Manager can address cluster imbalance through the Workload
Placement feature.
1. Click on the Actions pull down from the menu bar.

2. Click on Rebalance Container
HOL-SDC-1601
Review "Rebalance Container" Action
The Rebalance Container action overview provides detail on what systems will be
moved to restore balance to the cluster and what this action will address.
For example, we can see that by moving the virtual machine "li-node2" from the host
"w2-mgmtpm-2" to the host "w2-mgmtpm-1" this will reduce the memory demand
imbalance we observed earlier.
1. Click the Cancel button.
In the next step, you will watch a video that demonstrates Workload Placement.
Video - Workload Placement Demonstration (4:06)
HOL-SDC-1601
Identify Reclaimable Cluster Capacity
Another way to address resource constraints is to free up any unused resources. In

vRealize Operations Manager these can be found under the Reclaimable Capacity tab.
1. Click the Reclaimable Capacity tab.
In the "Reclaimable Capacity Breakdown" panel you can see that CPU, memory and disk
space resources are available to be reclaimed. These resources have already been
allocated to virtual machines, but vRealize Operations Manager has found that they
aren't being used efficiently. Inefficient usage occurs when:
• Virtual machines are allocated more resources than they need (Oversized).
• Virtual machines are powered on, but not being used (Idle).
• Virtual machines are powered off most of the time.
• Snapshots have been taken but are very old.
In this cluster, we can see that there is available memory from oversized and idle virtual
machines. We can reclaim this memory by resizing or removing these machines and
this frees up memory that can be provided to the stressed virtual machine we evaluated
at the start of this module.
So, where do we start?
2. Click on the "Virtual Machine Reclaimable Capacity" link under Further Analysis
HOL-SDC-1601
View Virtual Machine Reclaimable Capacity
You will be taken directly to the Details Views tab and the view "Virtual Machine
Reclaimable Capacity" will be displayed. This view provides more information about the
virtual machines that have reclaimable resources.
For example, the virtual machine "MGMTPM-SQL1" has around 7.5GB of memory that
could be reclaimed. Of course, you would probably want to view more detailed
information about the machine's memory usage and talk to the database team before
taking that action, but this is a great starting point for that conversation.
Let's gather a few more details for that converstation.
1. Click on the "MGMTPM-SQL1" virtual machine link.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Virtual Machine Reclaimable Capacity
1. Click on the Analysis tab

2. Click on the Reclaimable Capacity tab
Here we can see that not only is this virtual machine oversized for memory, but also
CPU.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Virtual Machine Workload
1. Click on the Workload tab.
Take note of the workload breakdown charts. In the key you can see that there are
"flags" to indicate memory reservations and memory limits (as well as CPU limits).
This virtual machine, although configured with over 8GB of RAM, has a limit set in
vSphere to only use 2GB! That's a strong justification for reclaiming some of the
memory, but let's just check one more thing to be sure. Let's look at the historical
memory usage for this virtual machine.
2. Click on the link to view "Virtual Machine Memory Diagnose"
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Historical Memory Usage
This view shows us that over the past day, this database server hasn't really had a lot of
demand for memory. Using the calendar icon, let's change this to a view for the past
week.
1. Click the Calendar icon.

2. Set the Relative Date Range to the Last 7 Days.
3. Click the Go button.
Conclude Virtual Machine Memory Review
Even over the past week, the memory demand has been flat.
This information can be very helpful in discussions with application owners about
reducing virtual machine allocations to a more efficient level. You can export the data
from this view to a CSV file so this information can be shared with the database
administrator, your manager or others who may need to approve the resizing. The
export icon on the view menu is highlighted above. We will not export data in this
lesson.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Related Objects
Since we're reviewing capacity, let's take a look at the datastore that holds this virtual
machine's data.
1. Click on the Environment tab.

2. Click on the List tab
This is a different way to view the objects related to the virtual machine. Here we can
see all of the status icons for the related objects in a single view so it is easier to spot
potential problem areas. For example, the datastore "ntp_mgmt_1000_sata_160" is
showing a red icon for Time Remaining. Let's explore this a little further.
3. Click on the link to ntp_mgmt_1000_sata_160.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Datastore Capacity Risk
1. Click on Analysis tab.

2. Click on Capacity Remaining tab.
Notice that capacity is most constrained by disk space allocation. In environments

where thin provisioning is used for virtual machines, administrators may be concerned
about over-allocation in the event that the virtual machine storage begins to expand.
vRealize Operations Manager considers both allocation and usage for storage
resources.
What we can see here is that the datastore is configured with 1TB of storage capacity
and through policy settings within vRealize Operations Manager, there is a buffer of 10%
built in, meaning that only 900GB of the storage is considered to be "usable" for virtual
machines.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Datastore Capacity (continued)
1. Scroll down on the Capacity Remaining page.

2. Expand the Disk Space row by clicking the small triangle icon.
3. Expand the Allocation row by clicking the small triangle icon.
Looking at the breakdown on the first row, we can see that we've actually allocated
around 1.6TB on this datastore through thin provisioned virtual machines. Based on
policy settings, which the administrator controls, vRealize Operations Manager is
recommending to increase the size of the datastore by another 300GB to stay within the
desired overcommit
Although the datastore is doing fine from the perspective of what is being used (thanks
to thin provisioning) we can be confident that we aren't going to have trouble with
storage by using vRealize Operations Manager to watch our allocation.
The chart below the allocation row gives detail about the trend for demand and how the
recommended size was calculated. You can see that there was a dramatic increase in
demand and the sizing recommendation was increased accordingly.
4. Expand the Capacity Containers to Consider and Capacity Rules For Analysis rows
by clicking the small triangle icons next to each.
Also note the policy settings on the right side of the Capacity Remaining page. This way
you can validate the effective policy for this datastore to see what rules and
considerations are being used to make the sizing recommendations.
HOL-SDC-1601
Planning Capacity Changes
vRealize Operations Manager not only alerts you potential resource constraints before
they become a problem, it also allows you to review any planned changes within the
environment and understand how those changes may impact capacity. Capacity
planning also provides a way to "lock in" planned project capacity so that it will be
considered in capacity analysis.
For this lesson, we will be using the live instance of vRealize Operations Manager.
1. Click the vRealize Operations bookmark folder on the bookmark toolbar.

2. Click the "vrops-01a" bookmark.
Log In to vRealize Operations Manager
1. Enter "admin" for the user name.

2. Enter "VMware1!" for the password.
3. Click the "Login" button.
HOL-SDC-1601
Search for Cluster Site A
1. In the vRealize Operations Manager user interface, type "Cluster" into the search
bar.
2. Click on the link for "Cluster Site A" in the search results.
Review the Projects Tab
1. Click on the Projects tab.
By default, the Projects tab will display the most constrained capacity container to help
you decide what types of projects you will need to create. In this case, Memory Demand
is most constrained by around 300%. How many new hosts should we add to deal with
this constraint? Let's create a project to add hosts and find out!
2. Click on the green plus icon to add a project.
HOL-SDC-1601
Create a Project
There are two different status types you can select for a project. A planned project can
be used to understand how changes will impact the capacity forecast. A committed
project will actually impact the capacity analysis and can be used to "lock in" resources
for a project until the changes are implemented. This way you can ensure that project
resources will be available.
1. Enter "Add Memory Capacity" for your project name.

2. Click the Scenarios tab.
Add a Scenario
You can create many scenarios within a project. In our case, we will only add one
scenario for adding hosts to the cluster.
HOL-SDC-1601
1. Click and drag the "add Host System" scenario to the scenario workspace.
We can now specify the project scenario details, such as name, description,
implementation time and date and the specifics of the changes.
2. Set the Implementation Date to some date in the future.
You can either define the host configuration yourself, or even better you can use an
existing host system as a model for your scenario.
3. Click on the "Populate metrics from..." button.
HOL-SDC-1601
Copy From an Existing Host System
1. Use the drop down to display the available host systems.

2. Double click on "esx-01a.corp.local"
3. Click the "OK" button (not shown).
HOL-SDC-1601
Save Changes
The values for the metrics for your new hosts are prefilled for you based on the host you
modeled. At this point, you are only adding a single host. How will this impact your
Memory Demand shortfall?
1. Click the "Save project and continue editing" button.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Change Impact
The scenario is now annotated on the trendline and you can see the impact on the
Memory Demand shortfall. One host won't quite get us out of trouble, so let's add
another to see if two will be enough.
1. Click on the up arrow to add another host.

2. Click on the "Save project and continue editing" button.
Repeat these steps to continue adding hosts until the shortfall is gone (3 hosts should
be enough). Once you are happy with the scenario save it.
3. Click on the "Save" button.
HOL-SDC-1601
Add Another Project
Back on the Projects tab, you can see a list of projects you've created and then visualize
them on the capacity trendline.
1. Click and drag the "Add Memory Capacity" project to the bar below the capacity
trendline.
We only have one project, to add memory. You've just been informed that a new
application is coming on line soon that will require three new virtual machines. Let's
create a project to see if we now have enough capacity after adding the new hosts to
support these new virtual machines.
2. Click the green plus icon to add a project.
HOL-SDC-1601
Name the Project
1. Enter "New Application" for the project name.

2. Click the Scenarios tab.
HOL-SDC-1601
Add a Scenario
1. Click and drag the "add Virtual Machine" scenario to the scenarios workspace.
2. Increase the number of virtual machines to add to 3.
As with the host systems, we can either enter the metric values for these virtual
machines or we can model them from existing virtual machines.
3. Click on the "Populate metrics from..." buttton.
HOL-SDC-1601
Copy From an Existing Virtual Machine
The application will need three more web servers. Since we already have a web server
in our environment supporting a similar application, we can use the metric data from
that web server as our model.
1. Click on the "Copy metric values from an existing object" radio button.
2. Double click on the "st-web" virtual machine.
3. Click the "OK" button (not shown).
HOL-SDC-1601
Review Impact
1. Change the implementation date to a week later.

2. Click the "Save project and continue editing" button.
The trend chart shows that there will be a slight increase in memory demand due to
adding the additional virtual machines.
3. Click on the "Save" button.
HOL-SDC-1601
Review the Impact of Both Projects
1. Click and drag the "New Application" project to the bar below the capacity trend
chart.
When you have multiple projects, it is possible to combine them all on the capacity
trend chart to get a better understanding of the total impact, as well as how the project
timing will influence resource availability. In this example, you are implementing the
additional capacity before you add the new virtual machines a week later. We still have
plenty of memory capacity, based on demand, even after adding the new web servers.
HOL-SDC-1601
Module 2 - Building
Dashboards, Views, and
Reports in vRealize
Operations Manager - (30
Minutes)
HOL-SDC-1601
Creating Dashboards, Reports, and

Views in vRealize Operations Manager
In this module we will walk through creating Dashboards, Reports, and Views. This
module assumes that you have a working knowledge of vRealize Operations Manager. If
you are new to vRealize Operations Manager, we recommend that you first go through
HOL-SDC-1610 - vSphere with Operations Management 6: Virtualization 101 and HOL-
SDC-1602 - vSphere with Operations Management 6: Advanced Topics.
Keyboard Shortcuts
To aid in typing some of the entries in the lab, we have added a README.txt file on the
ControlCenter desktop to help account for the variations in keyboard layouts. Where
applicable you can also use the README file to copy and paste commands included in
steps.
HOL-SDC-1601
Launching the vRealize Operations Manager UI
On the ControlCenter Desktop, launch Firefox.
Browser Zoom Setting
If you have trouble navigating through any of the wizards we will use in this module, use
Firefox zoom to adjust the UI screen
1. Click to open Firefox Menu

2. Use the '+' and '-' to zoom in or out as appropriate to fit the screen
HOL-SDC-1601
vCenter Operations Bookmark
Click the vRealize Operations Folder and select vrops-01a.corp.local.
Login as Admin
Use the following credentials to login to vRealize Operations Manager:
User name: admin

Password: VMware1!
Click Login.
HOL-SDC-1601
Creating Custom Views

Views are in important way to visualize metric data in vRealize Operations Manager.
Reports are comprised of one or more Views. You may also add Views to any dashboard
via the View widget. Please continue to learn more about how Views are used in
vRealize Operations Manager.
Views
1. In the navigational pane, click the content icon to navigate to the Views section
2. Click 'Views' in the left pane display all of the available views
3. Click the green plus sign (+) to add a view
Creating a View
Once the add button is selected, you are transitioned to the New View wizard. On the
right side of the screen, you are provided with the definition of a View, the logic behind
a view, and where Views are presented within vRealize Operations Manager.
Optional: Click the collapse link in the top right-corner to gain more space for View
creation.
HOL-SDC-1601
1. Start by naming the View and entering a description as shown in the

screenshot
2. Click Presentation
Presentation
Presentation determines the way collected information for an object is displayed. Each
type of view helps interpret metrics from a different perspective.
Views can be presented using the following methods:
• List - Provides tabular data about specific objects in the monitored environment.
• Summary - Provides tabular data about the use of resources in the monitored
environment.
• Trend - Uses historic data to generate trends and forecasts for resource use and
availability in the monitored environment.
• Distribution - Provides aggregated data about resource distribution in the
monitored environment.
• Text - Inserts the provided text. The text can be dynamic, include code, and
contain metrics and properties.
HOL-SDC-1601
• Image - Inserts a static image.
For this exercise, we will create a List View.
1. Click List
2. Click Subjects to choose the object associated with the View
HOL-SDC-1601
Finding Subjects
Our focus for this View will be Virtual Machines.
1. Begin by typing 'Vir' in the subject drop down menu field

2. Select Virtual Machine under the vCenter Adapter
Note: vRealize Operations Manager will attempt to match the typed string to an object
in the inventory. Object matches are presented with their associated adapter or
Management Pack.
HOL-SDC-1601
Subjects
The subject is the base object type for which the view shows information.
1. Click Data
With Virtual Machine selected, you can proceed to the next step.
HOL-SDC-1601
Choosing Data for the Subject
1. When selecting data you can select both Metric or Property data. To see
Property data click on the down arrow in the list box - No action needed on this
step - we are only going to use metric data in this exercise but its there if you
need it.
2. Expand the categories for CPU and Memory by clicking the plus sign next to
each metric category
Adding Data to a View
Selecting Virtual Machine as a Subject displays metrics relevant to that subject. We will
use CPU and memory metrics for this view.
1. Expand the memory section, double-click or drag the metrics to the center
window.
Below are the metrics and configured units we will use for this View:
• CPU Provisioned Capacity (MHz)
HOL-SDC-1601
• Provisioned vCPUs (Cores)

• CPU Demand (MHz)
• Guest Configured Memory (KB)
• Consumed (KB)
• Guest Demand (KB)
• Swapped (KB)
• Balloon (%)
2. Within the Configuration window, you can change the metric label that is used
on the View as well as the Units designation (For example, to switch between KB and
GB). By default, unit type is automatically chosen for many metrics
3. Data transformation can be the minimum, maximum, average, last value, etc.
Open the drop-down menu to see the possible selections. For this View we will use
the Transformation Last for each metric.
4. Clicking the "Show advanced settings" link will provide more options to
manipulate the data such as choosing a roll up interval
5. Click Time Settings and move to the next step
Setting a Time Range
vRealize Operations Manager 6.1 provides the ability to show data from specific or
relative date ranges. For instance, you have a requirement to view data from certain
HOL-SDC-1601
days in a quarter or specific dates on the calendar. This option provides a great deal of
flexibility for scenarios where discrete dates are required.
1. For the example View, we will leave the default, Last 7 days
2. Click Visibility and move to the next step
HOL-SDC-1601
Choosing Where Views Appear
Availability defines where a View will be visible in vRealize Operations Manager.
1. Verify the first three items are selected. These settings control where a is available
in the interface
Additionally we can choose to make the View available under the Analysis tab in the
Further Analysis section.
2. Select Workload
3. Click Save. The View will now be available under further analysis when the
Workload tab is selected
HOL-SDC-1601
Updated Views List
1. The newly created View will appear in the inventory

2. vRealize Operations Manager will filter visible Views in the inventory based on the
text you enter in the Quick Filter field. You can choose the filter type by selecting
All Filters. For instance, to show only Views with HOL in the name, simply type
HOL and press the Enter key.
HOL-SDC-1601
Confirm View Visibility
1. Type st-web in the search field. vRealize Operations Manager will present a
list of matching objects. Choose the Virtual Machine st-web from the list.
You will transition to a Summary screen with Health, Risk, and Efficiency
information about st-web.
2. Click the Analysis tab. You will see a screenshot similar to what is presented in
this step.
3. Select HOL Sample View from Further Analysis
HOL-SDC-1601
Examining the View
The screen will transition to the Details tab focused on HOL Sample View showing
results from the view we have created. One possible improvement could be to use a
transformation of maximum for the guest memory demand and CPU demand to
compare against the amount provisioned or configured for the virtual machine.
1. The export button allows you to export the selected View data to a CSV file
2. Provides the ability to set a different date range
In the next sections we will show how this View can be added to a Report and
Dashboard. Please proceed to the next step.
HOL-SDC-1601
Creating Custom Reports

In this section we will walk through the custom report creation process. The View we
created in the previous section will be used to create a report.
Create a new report
1. Navigate to the content area
2. Select Reports
3. For a new report, click the green plus sign (+)
HOL-SDC-1601
Name and Description
1. Enter a name and description for the report.

2. On the right panel, we are presented with an understanding of the contents of a
report. Select Collapse to hide the information panel and gain additional space
3. Click Views and Dashboards
HOL-SDC-1601
Adding a View
1. For this demonstration, we will use the View that was created in the previous
lesson. Enter the name HOL Sample View or the name you chose in the
search filter and press Enter
2. Once your view is shown, double-click or drag the View to the right side panel
- Views and Dashboards in the report.
3. In the views section, we can create a new View by selecting the green plus (+)
sign or edit an existing View by clicking the pencil symbol. This is helpful if you
need to create or adjust a View while in the report wizard. No action necessary
for this step.
4. With vRealize Operations Manager 6.2 you have the ability to create reports from
dashboards as well. You can can click the down arrow and select dashboard
content to add. We won't explore this feature in this lab. Feel free to experiment
with the new dashboard to report capabilities.
5. Click Formats and move to the next step
HOL-SDC-1601
Choosing Report Formats
Two format options are available for a report, PDF and/or CSV. For this exercise, leave
both selected.
1. Click Layout Options
HOL-SDC-1601
Layout Options
Reports provide the option to include a cover page, table of contents and/or footer.
1. For this step, select the cover page option
2. You also have the option to use a custom image, for example a corporate logo
3. Click Save
HOL-SDC-1601
Available reports updated
The new report is now available as a report template. Your report will also appear when
you select a virtual machine and click the Reports tab.
1. Type HOL in the search filter and press Enter to locate the report you just
created
2. Click the Run Template icon on the toolbar and proceed to the next step
Running the report
The Select an Object window will appear. Selected objects control the context of a
report. For this example report, selecting a Cluster will provide information on all
descendant Virtual Machines.
1. Click the down arrow and select vSphere Hosts and Clusters
2. Browse and select Cluster Site A
3. Click OK.
HOL-SDC-1601
Report Output Options
1. Select the Generated Reports tab
2. We won't view the report in this lab. You can open the report as a CSV or PDF by
clicking the respective icon
HOL-SDC-1601
Creating a Custom Dashboard

In this lesson you will create a dashboard and utilize the view that was created
previously. If you are starting a new lab, simply go through the View creation wizard
again or choose a pre-created View.
Add a new dashboard
1. Navigate to the Content section
2. Select Dashboards
3. Click the green plus sign (+)
Dashboard Configuration
When the New Dashboard wizard opens, you may see "What is a Dashboard?" and a
dashboard description on the right panel. This information panel can be collapsed to
gain additional room.
1. If applicable, Select Collapse to hide the right panel
HOL-SDC-1601
2. Add the name Sample HOL Dashboard
3. Click Widget List
HOL-SDC-1601
Widget List
Widget List
1. In the left panel, scroll down to find the Health Chart widget. Select and drag
the widget to the right panel
2. Select a View widget and drag that widget under the Health Chart widget as
shown in the screenshot
3. Click the edit icon on the upper right corner of the Health Chart to configure
the widget
Edit Health Chart Widget
1. Set Self Provider to On. If a widget is retrieving data on its own, (no
interaction from a providing widget, which we’ll configure on the View widget),
this value must be set. If you find that data is not presented on a widget, this is
often the first place you should look
2. Click the plus sign next to Object Types and select Cluster Compute Resource.
You may need to scroll down to find Cluster Compute Resource
3. Click Save
HOL-SDC-1601
HOL-SDC-1601
Health Chart Widget Configured
Notice the Health Chart now shows health information for Cluster Site A. The health
view shows the last 6 hours of health for the displayed cluster. Next you will configure
the View widget with the View we just created.
1. Click the edit icon on the View widget to continue
HOL-SDC-1601
Edit View
Edit Health Chart Widget
1. Change the Title to Virtual Machines

2. We will have the Health Chart provide data to this View widget. Keep the Self
Provider set to Off
3. Choose the HOL Sample View (or the name you used when the view was
created). You can also use the quick filter in the upper right to search for your
view
4. Once the view is selected, click Save
5. You will return to the New Dashboard Wizard - Click Widget Interactions on the
lower left
HOL-SDC-1601
Widget Interactions
If you create a dashboard with multiple widgets, widget interactions controls which
widget provides data to other widgets.
1. Click the Selected Object(s) down arrow and choose Health Chart. Notice
the View widget Virtual Machines is a target for the Health Chart interaction
2. Click Apply Interactions and on the right portion of the screen, select Cluster
Site Ain the Health Chart to test the interaction. You should see the View widget
- Virtual Machines populate with data about descendant Virtual Machines for
Cluster Site A
3. Click Save
HOL-SDC-1601
Updated Dashboard inventory
Once saved, you will see the dashboard listed under dashboards. Remember you can
always set the filter in the upper right corner to quickly find a dashboard.
1. Click the home icon
Selecting the dashboard
Selecting home transitions you back to the main vR Ops interface.
1. Click Dashboard List

2. Select HOL Sample Dashboard
Viewing the dashboard
We now have a dashboard with dynamic content that can be viewed and shared with
groups
HOL-SDC-1601
1. Select Cluster Site A

2. Notice only descendant VMs residing on the selected cluster now appear on the
View widget - Virtual Machines. A similar view could be created which includes
Hosts and datastores
HOL-SDC-1601
Additional Dashboard Features

The previous dashboard was a simple two widget dashboard. In this example, we will
create a dashboard with interactions between multiple widgets and display additional
widget control options.
Add a new dashboard
1. Select Content
2. Click Dashboards
3. Add a new dashboard with the + icon
HOL-SDC-1601
Dashboard Configuration
1. Add a name (i.e. Sample HOL Dashboard 2)

2. Click Widget List
HOL-SDC-1601
Widget List
1. Drag and drop the Object List, Metric Picker, and Metric Chart widgets from
the Widget List to the right window as shown in the screenshot
2. Once the widgets are added, click the gray bar at the top of each widget to
drag the widget and set the desired size or placement.
3. Alternatively, you have the option to shift the column between widgets on the
same line,or the entire dashboard, to resize widgets. Place the mouse
between widgets on the same line, left click (you will see the mouse
cursor change to an arrow pointing in two directions), and move your
mouse left or right to shift the column left or right
4. Click edit to configure Object List widget
Edit Object List
1. Rename the widget to Virtual Machines

2. Select Refresh Content On
3. Mode: Self (Reminder: self means this widget will retrieve data for the selected
resources)
4. Expand Object Types and scroll to Virtual Machine
HOL-SDC-1601
5. Select Virtual Machine

6. Click Save
Note: Clicking the x button removes all filter selections. This button is helpful when you
want to clear all selections or you have accidentally selected the wrong item to filter.
Configure Widget Interactions
Click Widget Interactions
1. Click the drop down menu to choose Virtual Machines

2. Click the drop down menu to choose Metric Picker
3. Click Apply Interactions
4. Test your interactions by clicking a VM in the Virtual Machines - Object List
widget. You will see metric categories appear in the Metric Picker
5. Click Save
Note: We are creating the interaction between the selected object (virtual machines)
and telling the dashboard to populate the Metric Picker with data for the selected VM
HOL-SDC-1601
object. We then configured the Metric Picker to send data to the Metric Chart. This
capability allows vR Ops to display relevant metric data for a Virtual Machine, which you
can then display on the Metric Chart. Notice that certain widgets types, in this case
Metric Chart, can interact with multiple widgets. For this step we will only configure one
interaction. Feel free to test an interaction with with the Object List - Virtual Machines
as well.
HOL-SDC-1601
View the dashboard
1. Click the Home icon

2. Click the Dashboard List. Select Sample HOL Dashboard 2
Adding Metrics
1. On the Virtual Machines list, select a VM. You will see the Metric Picker update
with relevant metrics for that selected resource
2. Click the arrow to expand the dashboard window if you need more room
HOL-SDC-1601
Add CPU - Demand Metric
1. On the Metric Picker, locate and click the plus sign next to CPU. Scroll down the
list.
2. Double-click Demand (%). Notice the metric is now displayed on the Metric Chart.
Note: You can also constrain the list of metrics by typing metric keywords in the filter
field.
Add Memory - Usage Metric
1. On the Metric Picker, locate and click the plus sign next to Memory. Scroll down
the list.
2. Double-click Usage (%). Notice the metric is now displayed on the Metric Chart.
HOL-SDC-1601
Two metrics are now added to the dashboard. Click the chevrons on the upper
right of the Object List - Virtual Machines and Metric Picker widgets. Clicking the
chevron will collapse the widgets upward.
Use the Date Controls
The Metric Chart displays the last 6 hours by default.
1. Click Date Control

2. You can modify the time frame by clicking the Range: down arrow and
selecting one of the options. You also have the ability to choose specific dates
and times. Select 24 hours
3. Click Go
Note: You can choose and display multiple periods by selecting additional time frames
or Previous Periods in the Range fields. This is a powerful way to compare metric data
time frames side-by-side in order to identity activity patterns or outlier behavior.
HOL-SDC-1601
Metric Chart Zoom
Metric data is now presented for the past 24 hours.
1. Zoom to a specific time frame, in the metric chart, by clicking the metric chart
and dragging the area to view more closely. Click and drag inside the area
marked in red. Both charts will zoom to the selected time frame.
Note: This a live lab environment. Your time frame and experience may differ from the
screenshot.
Zoom Detail
The screenshot now shows metric data for the specified time frame.
HOL-SDC-1601
1. Click and drag the zoom sliders to change the zoom time frame.
2. Alternatively, select Reset Zoom to change the time frame back to the originally
configured range
Note: This a live lab environment. Your experience may differ from the screenshot.
HOL-SDC-1601
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed taking this module and can see the value of building
Dashboards, Views, and Reports in vRealize Operations Manager! Be sure to take the
survey at the end.
For more information on vSphere with Operations Management, be sure to check out
these resources:
• vRealize Operations Management Packs - VMware Solution Exchange -

https://solutionexchange.vmware.com
• vRealize Suite™ - http://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-suite/
• Getting Started - vSphere with Operations Management (a collection of
videos to introduce you to all the great features of vRealize Operations Manager)
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL54D66774A16DCB6F
HOL-SDC-1601
Module 3 - OS and
Applications Management
with vRealize Operations
HOL-SDC-1601
Operating System and Application

Management
Overview
Applications are the lifeblood of a company and managing them within the Dataceter is
critical. In this Module you will explore how to model and manage Applications or
Services inside vRealize Operations Manager. We will create a model of a Sample
Application and then a Custom Dashboard to monitor it. In conclusion we will add OS
data from within the VM to the model using the Endpoint Operations Management
agent.
The Endpoint Management Operations agent allows vRealize Operations to collect data
directly frominside a guest or physical system. It can bring in metrics and/or properties
from the operating systems, services, or applications within a VM. This data is then
automatically correlated and related to the VM and Virtual Infrastructure already being
collected from vCenter and other Management Packs (Management Packs will be
covered in another lab section).
While in this lab we will only use a small number of VM's to make up our sample
application, vRealize Operations' Dynamic Groups and Applications groups can scale to
many thousands of objects and model large scale production environments.
HOL-SDC-1601
Getting Started and Logging in

This module assumes that you have a working knowledge of vRealize Operations
Manager. If you are new to vRealize Operations Manager, we recommend that you first
go through HOL-SDC-1610 - vSphere with Operations Management 6: Virtualization
101 and HOL-SDC-1602 - vSphere with Operations Management 6: Advanced Topics.
Keyboard Shortcuts
To aid in typing some of the entries in the lab, we have added a txt file on the
ControlCenter desktop to help account for the variations in keyboard layouts.
HOL-SDC-1601
vCenter Operations Tab
Click the vRealize Operations Folder and select vrops-01a.corp.local.
HOL-SDC-1601
Screen Navigation

HOL-SDC-1601
Login as Admin
User name: admin

Password: VMware1!
Click Login.
HOL-SDC-1601
Creating Custom Groups and Modeling

Applications
Within a larger infrastructure it is often desirable to have a more focused view on
specific applications or services to determine their service levels. Corporate applications
and services today can span a variety of resources including virtual, physical, storage,
network, multiple software layers, etc... vRealize Operations Manager can easily collect,
correlate and analyze data from these all of these types of data sources.
vRealize Operations Manager allows you model applications and services with Custom
Groups. In a group you can put like or interdependent components representing all or a
portion of an application/service. You can create a separate groups for each portion of
the application. Then create a master application group and put all the component
groups into it. This will create a dynamic model of the application containing; the parent
application group and the child groups containing the different components of the
application or service.
Data is collected and summarized by group for each of the components and can be
displayed in a summary dashboard, with a real-time analysis or drill down for any or all
of the components. If an application experiences a problem, you can see which
components are effected and determine where the problem started. You can also use
these groups for capacity planning purposes though Projects (not covered in this lab).
In this module we will create custom groups for each tier of a sample application and
also create a group for the entire application as a whole. We will then create a custom
dashboard where we can view the health of this application and it's components.
HOL-SDC-1601
Launching vRealize Operations Manager
After opening the Mozilla Firefox web browser, click on the folder in the bookmarks
toolbar named "vRealize Operations". Choose the "vrops-01a.corp.local" bookmark and
login with the following credentials:
User name: admin
Password: VMware1!
Creating a Custom Group
From the vRealize Operations Manager homepage choose the globe icon in the toolbar
to go to Environment Overview. Once there click the green "+" sign under the Groups
tab to create a new group.
Defining Membership Attributes in a Custom Group
In your lab are three components of a critical application for this organization's Accounts
Payable department. This application consists of a web tier, an application/middleware
HOL-SDC-1601
tier and a database tier. We will create a group for each tier. Complete the following
steps to create this custom group:
1. Enter the name of this custom group "Accounts Payable Application - Web Tier"
2. From the Group Type drop-down menu, select "Environment" Category or folder.
Group Type is an organizational construct within the Custom Grouping like a folder.
3. From the Policy drop-down menu, select "Default Policy". Policy can be defined now
or added later.
4. If the "Keep group membership updated" check box is selected, it makes this groups
dynamic. vRealize Operations will continually update the membership of this groups
based on new objects discovered and changes to existing objects to see if they meet or
no longer meet the criteria of the group. (nothing required for this step)
5. From the Object Type drop-down menu, expand the vCenter Adapter list and select
"Virtual Machine"
6. Expand the drop-menu to choose "Object name"
7. From the conditional value drop-down menu, select "is"
8. Type the name "st-web"
Repeat steps 1-7 for the "Accounts Payable Application - App Tier" with server
name "st-tcs-1" and again for "Accounts Payable Application - DB Tier" with
server name "st-db".
You should now have three custom groups defined, one for each tier of the Accounts
Payable application.
HOL-SDC-1601
HOL-SDC-1601
Create a Master Group for the Accounts Payable

Application
To create a master group that contains all three tiers (web, app, DB) of the Accounts
Payable application, you will create a fourth custom group that whose membership will
include the previously created three groups.
1. Create a new group and name this group "Accounts Payable Application"
2. From the Group Type drop-down menu, select "Environment"
3. From the Policy drop-down menu, select "Default Policy"
4. From the Object Type drop-down menu, choose the "Environment" type
5. Expand the drop-menu to choose "Object name"
6. From the conditional value drop-down menu, select "contains"
7. In the name field, type Accounts Payable to allow for this group to contain the three
custom groups you just created in the previous step.
Applying a Policy to Applications/Groups
In the previous step, you simply applied the Default Policy to the custom group you
created named Accounts Payable Application. While not in the scope of this lab
specifically, you can choose to apply a policy that best matches the business and
technical requirements for this application. This could be a new policy that you create
HOL-SDC-1601
and define just for this application or you might apply a policy for Production
applications that is different from your Test/Dev applications policy.
Administrators assign policies to object groups and applications to support Service Level
Agreements (SLAs) and business priorities. When you use policies with object groups,
you ensure that the rules defined in the policies are quickly put into effect for the
objects in your environment.
With policies, you can:
■ Enable and disable alerts along with controlling their activation thresholds.
■ Control data collections by persisting or not persisting metrics on the objects in your
environment.
■ Configure the product analytics and thresholds.
■ Monitor groups of objects and applications (or services) at different service levels.
■ Prioritize policies so that the most important rules override the defaults.
■ Set parameters for the rules that control the analytics and calculated metrics.
In the next section, you will use these custom groups to create a dashboard that is
focused on the Accounts Payable application and its individual tiers.
HOL-SDC-1601
Creating an Application-Centric
Dashboard
In this section you will create a custom dashboard to easily consume data and
relationships for the Accounts Payable application group that you just created.
Select the Accounts Payable App Dashboard
Since Module 2 focuses on creating and customizing dashboards, a dashboard for the
Accounts Payable application has already been started. Over the next several steps you
will customize this dashboard to display the correct data and reflect the proper
relationships. If you are interested in learning more about dashboard configuration and
creation, please make sure you follow the steps in Module 2.
To get started, please access this new dashboard:
1. Click on the home icon to return to the Home screen in vRealize Operations Manager.
2. Click on the "Dashboard List " menu to expand the options.
3. Select the "Accounts Payable App" dashboard .
HOL-SDC-1601
Edit the Accounts Payable App Dashboard
With the Accounts Payable App dashboard selected, click on the "Actions" menu to
expand the options and select "Edit Dashboard"
Edit Widget Settings
To edit the configuration of a widget, select the "pencil" icon in the title bar of the
widget to bring up the configuration options

HOL-SDC-1601
Accounts Payable App - Overview Settings
1. Change the Period Length from "Last 6 hours" to "Last 24 hours"
2. In the list of objects at the of the wizard, scroll down to the "Environment" category
and expand the options. You will see the custom groups you created in the previous
section. Select the custom group "Accounts Payable Application" that is comprised of
the three (3) additional custom groups.
Click Save at the bottom of the wizard.
Accounts Payable App - Tiers Settings
1. Change the Period Length from "Last 6 hours" to "Last 24 hours"
2. In the list of objects at the of the wizard, scroll down to the "Environment" category
and expand the options. You will see the custom groups you created in the previous
section. Select the custom group "Accounts Payable Application" that is comprised of
the three (3) additional custom groups.

HOL-SDC-1601
3. Change the Mode variable from "Self" to "Children". Because you selected the
custom group that contains each of the tiers, if you select the "Children" of this group,
you will view the data from the individual tiers themselves.
Click Save at the bottom of the wizard.

HOL-SDC-1601
Environment Overview Settings
Edit the settings of the Environment Overview widget.
1. Select the "Config" tab.
2. Choose the "Accounts Payable Application" object.
3. Once it is selected, the application should be populated in the "Selected Object" field
at the top of the widget.
Click Save to close the wizard.
Modifying Widget Interactions
Like you did in previous steps, choose "Edit Dashboard" from the "Actions" drop-down
menu at the top of the dashboard list.
At the bottom of the wizard that opens, click on "Widget Interactions". Your screen
should closely resemble the above image.
In Module 2, you created custom dashboards which leveraged interactions between the
widgets. By doing so here as well, you can choose an object in one widget and based
on your selection, the data will update in another widget reflecting that choice. Now,
instead of having a dashboard that is simply static and only displaying updated metrics
as they are received, you will create a dashboard that is interactive. Users of this
dashboard can select certain objects and see additional information about that selected
object appear in a few of the other widgets you are using here. Create the interactions
as follows:

HOL-SDC-1601
1. Choose "Accounts Payable App - Tiers" to interact directly with the "Object
Relationships" widget.
2. Choose "Object Relationships" to interact directly with the "Alert List" widget.
3. Also choose "Object Relationships" to interact directly with the "Metric Chart" widget.
4. Click the "Apply Interactions" button in the bottom left to apply those relationships
you just created and test them in the dashboard.
Finally, click Save to close this wizard and return to the dashboard.

HOL-SDC-1601
Using the Accounts Payable Application Dashboard
Take a few moments to test the usefulness of this dashboard you have just created.
1. By selecting an application from the "Accounts Payable App - Tiers" widget on the
left, you see that the "Object Relationships" widget updates to show parent/child
relationships.

HOL-SDC-1601
2. If you click on an object within that "Object Relationships" widget you will see the
associated data update in the "Metric Chart" and "Alert List" widgets accordingly.
Fortunately, this Accounts Payable Application has been designed correctly and is
running great in your environment since you can see plenty of green icons noting high
"Health" attributes. If, however, this were in a production envrionment, you might notice
various objects, application tiers, etc. with degraded health and would need to
investigate further to determine possible causes for this degradation. By utilizing
custom application groups and this custom application dashboard, you can see how
quickly you have access to the right metrics, alerts and relationships to remediate any
problems that might arise.

HOL-SDC-1601
Deploying The Endpoint Operations

Management Agent
New with vRealize Operations 6.1 is the ability for it to collect metrics and properties
directly from within an operating system, services, and applications. It does this via the
End Point Operations agent which will need to be installed into the Operating System of
the target system. In this module we will be install the End Point Operations Agent onto
a Linux system, point it to a vRealize Operations Virtual Appliance then ensure data is
coming in.
Start a Putty Session
1. Start a Putty Session from the Windows Desktop by opening the Start Menu and
selecting Putty or by clicking the Putty icon in the menu bar at the bottom of the
screen.

HOL-SDC-1601
Connect to the Server
1. In the Host Name (or IP address) field type st-tcs-1

2. Ensure the Port is set to 22
3. Ensure the Connection Type is set to SSH
4. Click Open
Login to the Server
1. When prompted with login as: type root

2. Enter the password VMware1!

HOL-SDC-1601
Start the Install
1. Once Logged in type 'cd /opt/epops-agent-1.0.0/bin' hit return on your

keyboard
2. If that is successful type in './ep.agent.sh start' and hit return on your
keyboard
For the purposes of this lab we have copied the instal files to a directory called opt, and
decompressed them. So they are ready to Configure

HOL-SDC-1601
Answering the Agent Configuration Questions
1. When the questions 'Enter the server hostname or IP address:' type in

vrops-01a.corp.local to point the agent the the vRealize Operations Server.
2. For the next questions 'Enter the server SSL port [default=443]:' hit the enter
key to accept the default.
3. Type in Yes and press return

HOL-SDC-1601
Entering Credentials
When Supplying credentials to connect the vRealize Operations server, you must have
an account configured with the Role of 'Manage Agents'. This is a new role for vRealize
Operations in 6.1. For time sake we have already created this account for you, before
we installed the other agents within this lab.
1. For the 'Enter the server username:' Type epo-agent

2. For the password Type in VMware1!

HOL-SDC-1601
Reviewing the data from the agent coming into vRealize

Operations
Re-open vRealize operations and if you need to log back in.
NOTE: it may take 5-10 minutes for the metric data to start to populate after the
discovery of the objects. You may go on to other portions of the lab and check back on
this later.
1. in the Search field start typing st-tcs-1.corp.local, as you start typing the
system name the search will auto-fill the results.
2. Click to on (Linux) st-tcs-1.corp.local
3. Click the Troubleshooting tab
4. Click the All Metrics button under the Troubleshooting tab.
5. Observe the agent has supplied the discovery information about the objects
related to the OS. The relationship tree shows the the Operating System category
(Linux in this case), st-tcs-1.corp.local (the OS object), and the Agent object now
installed in the OS. No Entry needed.
6. Click on the plus sign next to the UTILIZATION metric category to see the
metrics collected in for this category by the Agent.
7. Double Click Cpu Usage (%) to have the metric graph display in the left pane
8. Observe the metric data coming in to the chart,

HOL-SDC-1601
Collecting Operating System level

metrics
In this module we will walk though configuring what Metrics are going to be brought in
from the Guest or Physical Operating System. We will configure how often the metrics
are polled and then add the metrics to the data being collected for a group.
Operating System Metrics Collection Configuration
1. Click the World Icon

2. Click the arrow next to Operating System World to open the list
3. Click Operating System World from the list

HOL-SDC-1601
Opening Collection Settings for the OS
1. Click the EP Ops Agent

2. Click the EP Ops Agents - st-db.corp.local
3. Click the Actions Button
4. Select - Edit Object

HOL-SDC-1601
Viewing the Collection Settings
1. Click the arrow next to Advanced Settings to open.

2. Observe the ability to override the agent configuration
3. The Collection interval can be changes here, but remember if this is lowered the
agent will collect more data from the OS more often creating additional workload
for the OS. Additionally it will generate more data for vRealize Operations to
ingest and analyze causing more work for the vR Ops Cluster. No action is
required on this step.
4. This setting defines if dynamic threshold data will be generated for this metric.
5. Click Cancel
The default default setting for the entire adapter can be seen under Inventory Explorer
> Adapter Instances > EP Ops Adapter instance
Finding the Default Collection Interval for EP Operations
1. Click the Administration Icon

2. Click Inventory Explorer
3. Click the + next to EP Ops Adapter Instances to open the instance list

HOL-SDC-1601
4. Click the EP Ops Adapter instance (make sure nothing else is selected)
5. Find the EP Ops Adapter instance by looking for Object Type = EP Ops Adapter
Instance
6. Click the Edit Button, Open the Advanced Settings, there is nothing to set in
this step Click Cancel.
Select Metrics to bring in though a Policy
Open Policy Screens
Click the Administration button.

HOL-SDC-1601
Select New Policy

HOL-SDC-1601
New Policy Wizard - Add Monitoring Policy
Policies do a lot more in vRealize Operations 6.x in addition to controlling metrics. In this
section of the lab we are going to focus on selecting the Metrics we want from the OS.
These will be brought into vRealize Operations by End Point Operations Agent. All the
other settings will be inherited from the Parent Policy, in this case the Default Policy. In
the Policy wizard;
1. Enter a name Accounts Payable Policy in the Name field.

2. Enter a Description - Best Practice: enter a description what settings were
changed in the policy.
3. Select the Parent Policy from the drop down, select Default Policy.
4. Click on Option 5: Collect Metrics and Properties

HOL-SDC-1601
Set Attribute Type
1. Click to get the Attribute Type drop down menu

2. De-Select Property
3. De-Select Supermetric
Select Object Type
1. Select the Down Arrow Next to the Object Type:

2. Click EP Ops Adapter, and click the Arrow to the left of it to open the list of
adapters.
3. Use the scroll bar to scroll down till you see Lunix
4. Click on Linux

HOL-SDC-1601
Adjust Page Size
1. Click the drop down arrow next to Page Size

2. Click 100
Adjust Name Column size
1. Grab the line in the column heading between the Name and Type columns
2. Drag the line to the right to expand the name column

HOL-SDC-1601
Select Metric and Change State
1. Select CPU|UTILIZATION|Cpu Idle (%)

2. Click the down arrow next to Inherited in the State column
3. Click Local to make the Local the State.
Repete these 3 steps for these Metrics. Note You can use the Search field in the upper
right to further narrow down the choices.
• CPU|UTILIZATION|Cpu Usage (%)

• CPU|UTILIZATION|Cpu Wait Time (ms)
• UTILIZATION|Percent Used Memory (%)

HOL-SDC-1601
Apply the Policy to Groups
1. Click the Apply Policy to Groups tab in the Policy Wizard

2. Select the Accounts Payable Application - Web Tier
3. Check the Box to Apply the policy
4. Repeat Steps 1-3 for all the Accounts Payable Application groups
5. Click Save on the Bottom Right

HOL-SDC-1601
Reviewing and Using Operating

System Metrics
In this module we will use the default OS metrics and those configured in the previous
module in Groups and Dashboards
Finding and Verifying Operating System Metrics being

Collected
1. Click on the Environment Icon

2. Click on Custom Groups
3. Click on Accounts Payable Application - Web Tier group

HOL-SDC-1601
Select a Virtual Machine from the Group
1. Click on Virtual Machine

2. Click on the st-web VM
3. Note the focus of the left hand panel has changed to st-web, no action required.
4. Note the Policy in effect for this VM, no action required
We have quickly drilled down into a specific VM in this group and identified the Policy
under which the VM is operating.

HOL-SDC-1601
Navigate to the Troubleshooting Tab
1. Click the Troubleshooting tab

2. Click on the All Metrics sub-tab
3. Initially we came into this screen from Custom Groups, so only the Custom Group
relationship tree for the VM is displayed, no action required.
4. The metrics categories available for the VM are displayed, no action required.

HOL-SDC-1601
Change focus to a Single VM
1. Click on st-web
Change the View
1. Click on All Objects

HOL-SDC-1601
Complete Relationship Tree
1. The Focus has Stayed on the VM st-web, no action needed.

2. The all the relationships are now visible in the Relationship Tree, no action
needed.
3. Double Click on the st-web.corp.local OS Icon

HOL-SDC-1601
Operating System Metrics
1. The focus has changes to the Operating System within the VM

2. The End Point Operations agent is shown as related to the OS
3. The VM is shown as a higher level relationship to the OS
4. OS Metrics collected by default and added though policy though the EP
Operations agent are available, Double Click Cpu Usage %
5. The Metric Graph for that metric is shown.
6. Badge Metrics and other metrics generated by vRealize Operation are available
just as with any other object within vRealize Operations.

HOL-SDC-1601
Adding OS Metrics to Groups - Select a Group
1. Click the Environment Icon

2. Select the Accounts Payable Application - Web Tier, Note: do not to click directly
on the name otherwise you will go to the wrong screen.
3. Click the Edit button
Add Another Criteria Set
1. Click Add another criteria set

HOL-SDC-1601
Select an Object Type
1. Start typing Linux

2. Once the drop down appears select Linux
This identifies the Linux OS objects brought in though the EP Ops Adapter as the type of
objects we are looking for
Select Object Name
1. Select Object name
Complete Condition
1. Select the down arrow to open the operator drop down

2. Click on contains
3. Type in st-web

HOL-SDC-1601
Preview the results
1. Click Preview
Reviewing Preview Results
1. The result set from Preview now contains 2 objects, 1 each from the results of the
2 criteria in the Group definition. One that you set up in this section of the lab and
one created in an earlier section.
2. Click Close
3. Click OK to save the change when the Preview pane closes.

HOL-SDC-1601
At this point the Group contains both a VM and a Operating System Object. Now the
metrics and properties from the two different object types can be used or considered
when determining Group Health.

HOL-SDC-1601
Module 4 - SDDC VMware

and Infrastructure
Management Packs - (30
Minutes)

HOL-SDC-1601
Module Overview
VMware vRealize Operations delivers intelligent operations management from
applications to storage and across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures – using
predictive analytics and policy-based automation.

HOL-SDC-1601
vRealize Operations Manager
By implementing vRealize Operations Manager you receive the following benefits:
Intelligent Operations
Proactively identify and solve emerging issues with predictive analytics and smart
alerts, ensuring optimum performance and availability of applications and
infrastructures across vSphere, Hyper-V, Amazon and physical hardware.
Policy Based Automation
Increase efficiency by streamlining key IT processes with out-of-the-box and

customizable policies, guided remediation and automated enforcement of standards.
Optimize performance, capacity and compliance while retaining full control.
Unified IT Management
Gain complete visibility in one place, across applications, storage and network devices,
with an open and extensible platform supported by third-party management packs for
Microsoft, SAP and more.
Introducing data from additional sources is a powerful way to add additional insight to
the already robust native features of vRealize Operations.
For the purpose of this lab, you will be focusing on the highlighted capabilities in the
image above. You will explore the data provided by the following 3rd Party Management
Packs:
• EMC Storage Analytics

• NetApp Storage Management Pack by Blue Medora
Both of these management packs are considered Advanced Management

Packsmeaning they require the Advanced version of vRealize Operations Manager in
order to consume the data provided by these management packs.

HOL-SDC-1601
Introduction
Target Audience
This lab is intended for Storage Administrators and VMware administrators responsible
for managing the operations of storage and troubleshooting as it relates to the vSphere
platform.
Purpose
The content in this document is intended to provide guidance to administrators. It does

not present strict design requirements, because enterprise requirements can vary from
one implementation to another.
This module will introduce the 3rd Party Storage Management Packs for EMC and
NetApp Storage Platforms.
Why do we need 3rd Party Management Packs for

Storage?
While the metrics available in vRealize Operations Manager are robust, the default
storage data is gathered from the ESXi hosts themselves. That means we have plenty
of information about storage in terms of latency, queue depth, etc. at the ESXi host

HOL-SDC-1601
level, but little visibility into the storage data path between the ESXi host and the
storage platform itself. In this module you will use 3rd Party Management Packs to gain
insight into the storage platform itself as well as the relationships between the storage
platform, ESXi hosts and Virtual Machines.
A note about Historical View Mode
In order to show you information about hardware and software that is not part of this
virtual lab we have used the Historical View Mode (HVM) in vRealize Operations
Manager. A live instance of vRealize Operations Manager was setup in our full lab
environment and data was captured that can now be "played back" for you during this
lab.
HVM is not intended for production use and as such, certain quirks may appear as we go
through this lab. The first thing of note is that the conditions we see captured by
vRealize Operations (such as alerts, badge settings, etc...) will never change or
recalculate badges. Another change when in HVM mode is that no Remediation Actions
can be executed because vRealize Operations Manager is no longer connected to the
physical environment.
Rest assured these artifacts are only because we are in HVM mode - when connected to
a live environment everything works as it should.

HOL-SDC-1601
Management Pack Installation/

Configuration
VMware and our partners develop Management Packs to provide a consistent view of
information that spans both data collected natively by vRealize Operations for the
VMware vSphere environment as well as the data collected by the Management Pack.
By doing so, administrators can analyze data from the point of view of each domain
(storage platform, vSphere host, Virtual Machine, etc.) in order to quickly and accurately
gain insight.
From the ControlCenter desktop, launch Firefox
Login to vRealize Operations Manager
From the browser, open the vRealize Operations folder on the bookmarks toolbar and
make sure you select "vRealize Operations Manager HVM"

HOL-SDC-1601
Screen Navigation


HOL-SDC-1601
Login as Admin
Use the following credentials to login to vRealize Operations:
User name: Admin
Password: VMware1!
Click Login.
Open the Administration tab
Click on the "Administration" icon in the toolbar

HOL-SDC-1601
Solutions
You should now be viewing the Solutions section of the Administration tab
Verify Management Pack Installation
Here you can see the management packs that are installed and configured for this
instance of vRealize Operations Manager. In this module we are only using the EMC
Adapter and the NetAppAdapter. Because this module leverages Historical View Mode,
these Management Packs have already been installed and configured. We will view the
configuration of these Management Packs to better understand how administrators
would configure the Management Pack within vRealize Operations. Please refer to the
vendor's Management Pack documentation for a more comprehensive overview of the
installation and configuration process

HOL-SDC-1601
View EMC Adapter Configuration
Click on the EMC Adapter to highlight it and then select the "gears" icon to Configure
Verify VNX Details
As you can see the EMC Storage Analytics Management Pack has already been installed
and configured. If this were a new configuration, an administrator would click the green
"+" sign to add a new instance, provide a Display name and the specific details for the
Management IP, type of EMC storage array, license key and proper credentials to
establish a connection. Once configured, the Management Pack will automatically begin
collecting data from the configured instance and data will begin to appear in vRealize
Operations. Click the "Close" button at the bottom of this window to return.

HOL-SDC-1601
View NetApp Adapter Configuration
Click on the NetApp Adapter to highlight it and then select the "gears" icon to Configure

HOL-SDC-1601
Verify NetApp Environment Configuration
In this environment the NetApp Management Pack is already installed. An administrator

could add a new instance by clicking the "+" sign, providing a Display name, a target for
NetApp API Services or DFM Host and provide appropriate credentials to connect. Once
configured, the Management Pack will automatically begin collecting data from the
configured instance and data will begin to appear in vRealize Operations. Click the
"Close" button at the bottom of this window to return.

HOL-SDC-1601
Return to the vRealize Operations Manager Home Screen
Now that we are finished viewing the configuration details for the EMC and NetApp
Storage Adapters, please click the "home" icon in the toolbar to return to the vRealize
Operations Manager home screen.

HOL-SDC-1601
Viewing 3rd Party Storage Data in

vRealize Operations Manager
By adding additional data from Management Packs, administrators can see
alerts, anomalies, etc. from multiple data sources in vRealize Operations
Manager. This allows for more complete visibility into the health and
performance of a hardware and/or software environment. Vendors have
created Management Packs to collect data for operating systems,
applications like SQL/Oracle/SAP/etc., storage platforms, network devices,
and more. In this section you will see how data from 3rd Party Management
Packs is populated in vRealize Operations Manager alongside traditional
vSphere environment data.

HOL-SDC-1601
Viewing Alerts from Multiple Data Sources
In the "Recommendations" tab, you can see an overview of the entire environment
aggregated in one dashboard with Top Alerts for Health, Risk and Efficiency. As you can
see there are alerts from multiple data sources. In this example we can see alerts
generated from the vCenter, NSX and 3rd Party Storage adapters. By having this
information aggregated in one view, an administrator can quickly identify needed
actions across a variety of infrastructure and application resources. In the case of
storage, you can see that there is an alert under "Top Efficiency Alerts for Descendants",
labeled "Storage Processor Dirty Cache Pages (%) is high." This is an alert that is
generated from the EMC Storage Analytics Adapter. This alert indicates that "Dirty
Cache Pages %" metric has exceeded the set threshold. This could indicate an issue on
the storage system that might impact performance for components of the virtual
infrastructure. By digging deeper into this alert you can provide detailed information to
the storage administrator. Click on that alert.

HOL-SDC-1601
Efficiency Issues
Upon clicking the previous alert (Storage Processor Dirty Cache Pages (%) is high.), you
can see more specific information regarding that alert. Note that there are two objects
that exhibit this alert, "SP A" and "SP B". Click on "View Details" for the alert triggered
on SP B.
Verify and Clear the Alert
Click on the arrow next to the alert description to see the detailed chart showing the
Dirty Cache Pages %. Here you can see the metrics collected at the various points in
time and can provide detailed information to the storage administrator regarding this
data. This would also allow you to further correlate this data against other metrics
collected by vRealize Operations at those same points in time to determine if they might
be related. By using the data found in this alert you can provide specific timeframes
when collaborating with other members of an IT organization while troubleshooting in
order to quickly and accurately determine root cause or remediation steps. For the
purpose of this exercise, let's assume you have contacted the storage administrator and
have been informed that the storage team is aware of the condition and in the process
of remediation. Since there is nothing more needed from you in this matter, let's clear
the alert to remove it from the dashboard so you can be ready to focus on other data
presented in vRealize Operations Manager.
Click on the icon in the top left of this screen that says "Cancel Alert"
Click "Yes" to confirm canceling this alert.
NOTE: Remember that for this module we are using vRealize Operations Manager in
Historical View Mode (HVM) which replays a previously captured environment and is not
live. Because of this, sometimes alerts are not properly cleared and might continue to
appear on the "Recommendations" tab or in other areas of the UI despite being

HOL-SDC-1601
canceled by you in this exercise. If this were a live, production environment, these
alerts would be cleared properly and dashboards would be updated accordingly.

HOL-SDC-1601
EMC Storage Analytics Management

Pack
EMC Storage Analytics links vRealize Operations Manager with an EMC adapter to collect
performance metrics from supported EMC storage platforms. The adapter is installed
with the vRealize Operations Manager user interface and uses the power of existing
vRealize Operations Manager features to aggregate data from multiple sources and
process the data with proprietary analytic algorithms. By combining information from
the vSphere environment (ESXi Hosts, Virtual Machines, etc.) and EMC storage platforms
(VNX, VMAX, XtremIO, etc.), administrators can quickly and accurately assess the health
and performance of the overall environment.
Please note: this management pack requires a separate license that is sold
by EMC. Please contact EMC or an authorized EMC reseller for licensing and
pricing information specific for your environment.

HOL-SDC-1601
Discovering EMC Storage Analytics Dashboards
Several default dashboards are included with EMC Storage Analytics. To add those to
the tabs at the top of vRealize Operations Manager, choose the drop-down menu named
"Dashboard List" on the home page. As you select EMC, that menu will expand and
reveal additional selections. As you can see, there are several different storage
technologies that are supported by the EMC Storage Analytics management pack.
As a reminder, this module leverages an instance of vRealize Operations Manager that

is in Historical View Mode (HVM). This allows us to capture a full environment comprised
of many different types of infrastructure, applications, etc. and allow users of this lab to
interact with that data via HVM playback. For this lab specifically, EMC VNX data was
populated by EMC Storage Analytics and we will use the VNX dashboards for this
section. Data for the other EMC storage technologies is not available in this lab.
Check the box next to VNX to add those dashboards to the Home screen of vRealize
Operations Manager
Viewing VNX Information in the VNX Overview Dashboard
Choose the VNX Overview dashboard and you should see a similar image as above.
This VNX-specific data is only available because the EMC Storage Analytics
management pack is collecting data directly from the VNX itself. Without this
management pack, no data from the VNX storage platform would be available for
consumption in vRealize Operations Manager. Leveraging this data an administrator
could determine if the health/performance of this VNX storage platform itself is
impacting application performance. In many organizations, the storage and
virtualization administrators work closely together and sometimes are the same person
depending on how roles are defined. By including this storage data directly in vRealize
Operations, an organization avoids the need to constantly switch tools to view data

HOL-SDC-1601
about different technologies in the environment as well as ensure the timelines are the
same when correlating data from multiple sources.
Understanding the Storage Topology
Because EMC Storage Analytics is a management pack, as opposed to a separate tool

entirely, you can navigate the data collected and the relationships created by default
just like you would natively in vRealize Operations Manager. Click on the VNX Topology
dashboard at the top of the screen and you'll see another familiar looking view.
Automatically, the management pack creates all of the relationships between the
different VNX components and you can browse those relationships by clicking on a
component.
Scroll down to where you see the label "Storage Pool" and click on the object that,
when you hover the mouse over, is named "SP_0_Tiered". Immediately the display
refreshes to highlight only those components directly related to this Storage Pool and all
other components are dimmed. Scroll down and you will see that even the specific hard
drives in the VNX that are part of this storage pool, are highlighted.
You probably also noticed that the Health Tree widget to the right of the screen
refreshed as well. This widget now references the parent/child relationships and
resources for the SP_1_SAS storage pool. While this widget is reporting all resources as
healthy (green), if any of those parent/child objects were to have their performance
degraded, the objects that would be directly affected by that degradation would become
immediately evident by a color change to orange/yellow/red. This allows for simple

HOL-SDC-1601
troubleshooting as well as quickly understanding the overall impact each component

might have on other objects that are directly related. Remember that this is not data
that is gathered from vCenter or vSphere hosts, but rather metrics collected directly
from the VNX.
When you are finished exploring these relationships, double-click on the "SP_0_Tiered"
storage pool in the health tree (see step 2 in the image above).
Clearing the Alerts Filter for SP_0_Tiered
Once the display has updated to display SP_0_Tiered, select the Alerts tab.
Next, click on the "Status: Active" button labeled by step 2 in the image above to
remove the default filter.

HOL-SDC-1601
Viewing FAST VP Events
Once that filter is removed, you can see the events generated by the array when FAST
VP (VNX auto-tiering operations) relocation starts and finishes. Again, this is information
sent directly from the array that vCenter and vRealize Operations Manager have no
visibility into these events without EMC Storage Analytics.
Next, let's take a look at the FAST VP metrics associated with these events to get a
better understanding about how much data is being relocated by FAST VP.
Viewing FAST VP Metrics
Click on the Troubleshooting tab and let's look at the metrics associated with Auto-
Tiering with FAST VP that are provided.
1. Select the All Metrics sub-tab to allow you to choose a custom set of metrics that you
are interested in viewing.
2. Expand the Auto-Tiering category and select the following three metrics (double-click
each):
• Data Movement Completed (GB)

• Data to Move Down (GB)
• Data to Move Up (GB)
3. Select the calendar icon (next to step 3 in the image above) and change the date
range to "Last 30 days", then choose Go at the bottom of that dialog box.
The displays should refresh and you should notice spikes in the resulting graphs that
detail how much data was actually moved during FAST VP operations. Remember, you
previously looked at the Alerts tab to view when the operations started and completed.
With this view, you can now see the quantity of data moved when the FAST VP
operations are complete. If you look at the graphs for "Data to Move Up" and "Data
to Move Down", you can see that in between FAST VP scheduled tasks, the volume of

HOL-SDC-1601
data increases as the VNX identifies more data that should be moved to a different tier
of storage within the array. When the scheduled task completes, those graphs
immediately change as "Data to Move Down", for example will reset to zero.
Close these graphs by clicking on the grey "X" icon to the right of each graph.
Select a Thin Provisioned LUN
Now let's take a look at how we can monitor array-based thin provisioning metrics for
this VNX.
1. In the search bar in the top right of the screen, type "fc_56".
2. Select the LUN "vnx53_vs62_1000THIN_fc_56"

HOL-SDC-1601
Viewing Thin Provisioning Metrics
With the LUN "vnx53_vs62_1000THIN_fc_56" selected, expand the Capacity category

to see the available metrics.
Double-click on "Consumed Capacity (GB)" and "User Capacity (GB)"
In the Consumed Capacity graph, you will notice that over time the consumed capacity
of this LUN has increased from around 533 GB to 600 GB. However, when you look at
the metrics for User Capacity you will notice that there is 1 TB (1,024 GB) of capacity
provisioned for consumption. Why are these numbers different?
The VNX administrator created a Thin Provisioned LUN that appears to the consumers of
this LUN as though it contains 1 TB of storage. In reality, however, this LUN only
consumes data on the array when data is actually written to it by those same
consumers. By looking at this data, you can understand any trends in consumption for
this thin provisioned LUN. This could be especially useful if the VNX administrator has
oversubscribed storage in this storage pool via thin provisioning.
Generate a VNX Report
Finally, let's use the built-in reports that EMC provides to generate a VNX Block Report
for this VNX instance in the lab.
1. In the top right hand corner of the vRealize Operations Manager page, type "esa"
into the search bar and you'll see "esa 53 block" enumerate in the list below. Click
that link and it will open the Summary page for this VNX instance.
2. Select the Reports tab on the right

HOL-SDC-1601
3. Click on the row named "VNX Block Report" and that row should turn blue like in
the image above.
4. While that row is highlighted, click the icon with the green arrow to run that report
template
5. Click on the link that says "Generated reports" and the display will refresh to list
the reports that have been generated

HOL-SDC-1601
Open the Generated Report
After a 10-15 seconds the VNX Block Report should be processed and the status of the
report should show as "Completed". If it does not, click the refresh button as noted by
the image above to refresh the vRealize Operations Manager display and the status
should now show as "Completed" with the option to download the report in either PDF or
CSV format. Click on the PDF link and open the report in Adobe Acrobat. Review the
report to understand what data is presented and become familiar with the overall
format.
Once you are finished, you will have completed this section on the EMC Storage
Analytics Management Pack for vRealize Operations Manager.

HOL-SDC-1601
NetApp Storage Management Pack by

Blue Medora
This management pack provides end-to-end visibility, analytics, and capacity planning
for workloads running on NetApp storage. The management pack utilizes the vRealize
Operations analytics engine to unveil deep insights into NetApp storage capacity and
performance issues. Automated analysis exposes early indications of impending
performance and capacity issues before they can negatively impact the business.
The NetApp Storage Management Pack extends vRealize Operations Manager by adding
NetApp specific metrics and analytical views for storage systems running in 7-mode or
cluster-mode and enables the creation of dashboards and reports for visualizing the
performance and capacity of NetApp storage environments and associated applications.
Please note: this management pack requires a separate license that is sold
by Blue Medora. Please contact Blue Medora for licensing and pricing
information specific for your environment.

HOL-SDC-1601
Discovering the NetApp Storage Dashboards
While you can create custom dashboards (see Module 2 and Module 3 for more
information) that include metrics and resources collected by the NetApp Storage
Management Pack, there are several dashboards included by default. Let's explore
some of these dashboards to learn more!
1. Click on the Home icon in the toolbar to return to view the Dashboards available in
2. Click on "Dashboard List" and the available dashboards will enumerate below.
3. Since you are interested in the NetApp Storage Management dashboards, select
"NetApp" and you will see a checkbox appear. The resulting NetApp dashboards will
now be accessible from the tabs above.
Exploring the NetApp IOPS Dashboard
1. Click on the dashboard labeled "NetApp IOPS" at the top of your screen and you will
see a number of widgets appear as part of this dashboard. The first dashboard shows a
heatmap that helps you visualize Total IOPS and Datastore Size. The remaining widgets
are interactive and this is where you can quickly correlate data from the NetApp storage
system with objects from your virtual infrastructure like virtual machines (VM's).
2. Click on the volume highlighted by #2 in the image above.

HOL-SDC-1601
3. The widget in the top right refreshes to show NetApp Storage Adapter metrics for the
specified NetApp Volume. This data is collected by this 3rd party adapter and we will
now see how to combine different adapter metrics for better visibility.
4. Click on the datastore (see #4 in the image above) named

"ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81".
5. Immediately, you will notice that the widget to the right labeled "Datastore IOPS"
refreshes to show specific details like Read/Write IOPS, Throughput and Latency. Very
quickly you can gain visibility into the overall performance of this datastore and if there
were problems, they would be easy to view.
Remember that this is a lab environment and in this case, this datastore is performing
well. Let's assume however, that further investigation was necessary and you wanted
to know what underlying objects were contributing to the datastore metrics we can see
in the "Datastore IOPS" widget.
6. Notice that when you selected the "ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81" datastore in

step 2, that the widget on the bottom left, refreshed to list the Virtual Machines that
reside on that datastore. You can see that this default dashboard is combining data
collected from the vCenter Adapter (Virtual Machine and Datastore metrics) with the
NetApp Storage Adapter (NetApp Volume metrics) providing powerful visibility from end
to end. Select the VM named "MGMTPM-SQL1".
7. Once "MGMTPM-SQL1" is selected, the dashboard to the right labeled "Virtual

Machine IOPS" is refreshed with metrics specific to that Virtual Machine (CPU, Memory,
etc.).
Take a few moments and explore this dashboard and further investigate the
relationships between objects like NetApp Volumes, Datastores, and Virtual Machines.
By doing so, you will see how having multiple data sources available in vRealize
Operations further extends the speed at which you can gain insight into how these
different objects interact.

HOL-SDC-1601
Quickly Correlate VMware and NetApp Metrics During

Troubleshooting
To further illustrate how vRealize Operations Manager can expedite the troubleshooting
process, let's walk through a scenario with that will combine the need for visibility at the
storage and the virtual machine layers.
A member of the storage team tells you over lunch one day that she has noticed a
specific NetApp Volume encounter a significant spike in Read IOPS occassionally.
Normally this NetApp Volume (ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81_vol) has a low amount
of IOPS, but before your team can add any additional Virtual Machines to this volume,
you need to get an understanding of where these spikes are coming from. You tell her
you will look at vRealize Operations Manager to see if you can identify any additional
information. Let's get started!
1. First, click in the search bar in the top right hand corner of the screen and search for
the NetApp Volume in question (ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81_vol). You don't need
to type that entire string as the search function will identify partial matches too.
Type "fc_81" and see what matches you can find

HOL-SDC-1601
2. You see a match for a NetApp Volume and it is, indeed, the volume that the storage
administrator told you about (ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81_vol). Go ahead and click
on the volume in question.

HOL-SDC-1601
View Metrics for Specified NetApp Volume
At the Summary page for the specified NetApp Volume

(ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81_vol):
1. Choose the "Troubleshooting" tab.
2. Then select "All Metrics".
3. Down below in the Metric Picker, find the menu for "Volume Performance" and
expand.
4. Finally, double-click on the "Read Operations per Second" metric to add it to the
pane to the right and show the sparkline graph.
Expanding the Date/Time Range to View Metrics
Since the storage administrator told you that she hasn't noticed any pattern to these
spikes, you decide to expand the date/time range from "Last 6 hours" to "Last 7
days".
1. Click on the calendar icon in the toolbar above the metric sparkline as shown above.
2. Change the drop down menu to "Last 7 days".

HOL-SDC-1601
3. Click Go in the bottom right of that window to apply the new date range.
Identify Spikes in Read IOPS
As you can see by the resulting graph, there are indeed significant spikes in Read IOPS
for this specific volume. So now let's try to identify what might be causing those spikes.
There are two spikes that are fairly close in size that represent somewhere around
1,000 Read IOPS as a High-Water Mark.

HOL-SDC-1601
Use Relationships Widget to Identify Parent/Child

Relationships
Above the NetApp Volume Object in the Relationships Widget, you will see a vSphere
Datastore with a similar name (ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81). Double-click on this
datastore object and you will notice that the view will change to show the next layer of
objects directly related to this vSphere Datastore. From here we can identify which
workloads could be contributing to these spikes in Read IOPS.
Investigate Workloads Connected to Datastore
Connected to the vSphere Datastore (ntp_w_mgmt_sas_1000_fc_81) you notice

several Virtual Machines and three vSphere Hosts. Let's choose a couple of the Virtual
Machines and view the Read IOPS metrics collected from each resource.
You notice a SQL server VM so that might be the culprit. Select the VM "MGMTPM-
SQL1" (single-click). When you select that object the Metric Picker widget below will
update to reveal available metrics for that resource.

HOL-SDC-1601
Choose Reads per Second (IOPS) Metric
Expand the "Datastore I/O" category and select the "Reads per second (IOPS)"
metric. Double-click that metric to add it to the Read IOPS metric for the NetApp
Volume you selected earlier.
Compare Read IOPS Metrics
While there is a spike for Read IOPS on the "MGMTPM-SQL1" VM on 6/13/15 that
seems to match the date/time of the spike on the NetApp Volume, this VM cannot be
responsible for all of those Read IOPS seen by the NetApp Volume. Notice that the High-
Water Mark for the NetApp Volume is close to 1,000 IOPS and the High-Water Mark for
the VM is only 183. In addition, there is a spike on 6/10/15 on the NetApp Volume that
doesn't match the VM metrics.
Based on this data, the "MGMTPM-SQL1" VM cannot be responsible for those spikes.
Go ahead and close that graph for the SQL VM by clicking on the grey "X" on the right
side of the graph.
Repeat the previous steps by choosing a different workload from the Relationship
Widget.
This time:

HOL-SDC-1601
1. Choose the VM named "MGMT-W-VCSA1" (single click on the VM icon),
2. Expand the Datastore I/O Metrics,
3. Then choose "Reads per second (IOPS)" just like you did for the SQL VM.

HOL-SDC-1601
Compare Read IOPS Metrics Again
This VM just might be the culprit for the Read IOPS spike seen by the NetApp Volume on
6/13/15. You can see that there is a spike of almost the same size. If you go one step
further and zoom in around that spike in Read IOPS, you can get exact numbers for that
specified time, but based on this information you are confident this VM caused one of
the spikes in Read IOPS. You can be that confident because you have actual data from
both the NetApp storage system and the Virtual Machine in the same tool, vRealize
Operations Manager.
In the interest of time, let's stop there but if you want to evaluate the other VMs
connected to this datastore to identify what caused the Read IOPS spike on 6/10/15, feel
free to explore the vRealize Operations Manager interface and investigate!
Hopefully these simple exercises illustrate the power of the NetApp Storage
Management Pack from Blue Medora. By adding data, alerting and relationship mapping
from the NetApp storage systems to those same attributes collected from your VMware
environment and vRealize Operations Manager's robust analytics, you gain incredible
visibility into your IT applications and infrastructure.

HOL-SDC-1601
Conclusion
Thank you for taking the time to explore these 3rd Party Storage Management Packs.
Conclusion - 3rd Party Storage Management Packs
Hopefully you have seen how data from these management packs allows administrators
to gain better insight into the environment as well as reduce the time it takes to
troubleshoot problems. By combining metrics, alerts, etc. from storage platforms with
those from the VMware virtual environment, you can have visibility into infrastructure
and application interdependencies allowing IT to provide better service, availability and
response to the business.
To learn more about EMC Storage Analytics, please visit this link: https://www.emc.com/
storage/storage-analytics.htm
To learn more about NetApp Storage Management Pack by Blue Medora, please visit this
link: http://www.bluemedora.com/products/vrops-management-pack-for-netapp-storage/
To learn more about vRealize Operations Manager, please visit this link:
https://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-operations

HOL-SDC-1601
Module 5 - Log
Management with
vRealize Log Insight - (60
Minutes)

HOL-SDC-1601
Overview of vRealize Log Insight

vRealize Log Insight delivers real-time log management for VMware environments, with
machine learning-based Intelligent Grouping, high performance search and better
troubleshooting across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
High Performance Ingestion
vRealize Log Insight can process any type of log or machine generated data. vRealize
Log Insight supports very high throughput rates and low latency. vRealize Log Insight
possesses a collection framework which accepts data agentlessly through syslog, a
Windows or Linux agents, and via a RESTful Ingestion API.
Scalability
vRealize Log Insight can scale out by using multiple virtual appliance instances. This
enables linear scaling of the ingestion throughput, increases query performance and
allows for ingestion high availability. In cluster mode, vRealize Log Insight provides
master and worker nodes. Both master and worker nodes are responsible for a subset of
data. Master nodes can query all subsets of data and aggregate the results. vRealize
Log Insight provides an internal Load Balancer allowing you to load balance and scale
out with out additional infrastructure requirements.
Real-Time Search
Data ingested by vRealize Log Insight is available for search within seconds. Also,
historical data can be searched from the same interface with the same low latency.
vRealize Log Insight supports complete keyword queries. Keywords are defined as any
alpha-numeric, hyphen, or underscore characters. In addition to the complete keyword
queries, vRealize Log Insight supports glob queries (for example, erro?, vm*) and field
based filtering (for example, hostname does NOT match test*, IP contains "10.64").
Furthermore, log message fields that contain numeric values can be used to define
selection filters (for example, CPU>80, 10<threads<100, and so on).
Search results are presented as individual events. Each event comes from a single
source, but search results may come from multiple sources. You can use vRealize Log
Insight to correlate the data on one or multiple dimensions (for example, time and
request identifiers) providing a coherent view across the stack. This way, root cause
analysis becomes much easier.
vRealize Log Insight Agent
vRealize Log Insight uses a native Windows or Linux agent to gather log data from
Windows and Linux servers as well as desktops. You can collect events from Windows
event channels and log files, then forward them to the vRealize Log Insight server. Some
of the benefits of the agent are centralized configuration, ease of use, data

HOL-SDC-1601
compression, and encryption. 3rd party agents are supported as well, but those
benefits listed above provide unique advantages of using our native agents.
Intelligent Grouping
vRealize Log Insight uses a new machine learning technology. Intelligent Grouping scans
incoming unstructured data and quickly groups messages together by problem type in
order to give you the ability to rapidly understand issues that may span your physical,
virtual, and hybrid cloud environments. The Event Trends tab in the Interactive Analytics
page provides automatic analysis of your events with context around new insights and
anomaly detection. We can now see how events are trending in a specified time interval
and easily detect ones that are potentially affecting the health of your environment or
application.
Aggregation
Fields that are extracted from log data can be used for aggregation. This is similar to the
functionality that GROUP-BY queries provide in relational databases or pivot-tables in
Microsoft Excel. The difference is that there is no need for extract, transform, and load
(ETL) processes and vRealize Log Insight scales to any size of data.
You can generate aggregate views of the data and identify specific events or errors
without having to access multiple systems and applications. For example, while viewing
an important system metric, for example the number of errors per minute, you can drill
down to a specific time-range of events and examine the errors that occurred in the
environment.
Runtime Field Extraction
Raw log data is not always easy to understand, and you might need to process some
data to identify the fields that are important for searching and aggregation. vRealize Log
Insight extracts most fields automatically, and you can dynamically extract a new field
from the data. It is as easy as double-clicking the message text and selecting “Extract
Field”. The regex is provided automatically based on your selection. The extracted
fields can be used for selection, projection, and aggregation.
Dashboards
You can create dashboards of useful log metrics that you want to monitor closely. Any
query can be turned into a dashboard widget and summarized for any range in time. You
can view a breakdown of errors by for the last five minutes, hour, or day and observe
the trends in log events.
Content Packs
While not covered in depth within this lab, Contant Packs contain predefined Fields,
Queries, Dashboards and Alerts for specific systems or applications. A good example
would be the Content Pack for Brocade or the Content Pack for Micorsoft SQL Server.
Both contant subject matter specific definitions for their focus area. The Brocade

HOL-SDC-1601
Content Pack will contain Fields, Dashboards and Alerts specific to Brocade and the
Content pack for Microsoft SQL Server will do likewise for Microsoft SQL. This will allow
you to bring in log messages from these systems and not have to create the Fields,
Queries, Dashboards or Alerts from scratch. Contant Packs for Log Insight are free and
can be installed into Log Insight after the initial configuration is complete. To see a full
list of management packs please connect to https://solutionsexchange.vmware.com/
store after this lab.
Security Considerations
IT decision makers, architects, administrators, and others who must familiarize

themselves with the security components of vRealize Log Insight must read theVMware
vRealize Log Insight Security Guide. For more information, you can visit the vRealize Log
Insight Documentation found at https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/log-insight-
pubs.html
The Security Guide contains concise references to the security features of vRealize Log
Insight. Topics include the product external interfaces, ports, authentication
mechanisms, and options for configuration and management of security features.

HOL-SDC-1601
Dashboards Overview
Dashboards– Think of the dashboards page as an overview section. Dashboards

provide the ability to quickly visualize log data and determine potential issues within an
environment. Log Insight provides two different types of widgets inside a dashboard:
charts and queries. Charts are a visual representation of data and the most commonly
used widget. Queries are saved pieces of information that provide both a visual and
textual representation of data on the Interactive Analytics page, but they are listed only
by a defined name on the dashboards page. Query widgets are typically used when a
chart widget does not provide enough useful information.
Interactive Analytics– Allows administrators and engineers to perform searches using

plain language or REGEX strings and view log message detail to determine problem
areas and perform root cause analysis.
Interactive Analytics Overview
The Interactive Analytics page allows administrators and engineers to drill down into log
messages, to determine problem areas, and to perform root cause analysis.
At the top of the page, just below the navigation bar, you will notice a section with a
black background. This section gives you a visual representation of your log data.

HOL-SDC-1601
The chart in this section should look similar to the chart widgets that you saw on the
Dashboards page. By default, the overview chart is a bar chart that displays the count
of all events over time for the log messages seen over the last five minutes. Log Insight
refers to ingested data as events. The events visually represented on the overview chart
can be manipulated in a variety of ways, but most commonly are changed through the
use of functions and groupings.
There are many options available once you have created a custom query in the
Interactive Analytics page:
• Add current query to favorites - You can save your current query and time
range in Log Insight to view it later. Saved queries can only be loaded from the
Interactive Analytics page.
• Add current query to dashboard - You can save lists of search queries to your
custom dashboards by creating query list widgets.
• Export or share current query - In addition to saving a dashboard you can
also choose to save a query. NOTE: A saved query stores the time range in
addition to the query. This is different then how all other pieces of information are
saved in Log Insight (i.e. everything else you can save does not include the time
range.)  
• Create or Manage Alerts - When you find a query you care about you might
want to configure an alert when that query returns one or more results. Log
Insight allows for alerts to be sent via email or vCenter Operations.
• Manage Extracted Fields - This is important if you wish to find an extracted
field that does not appear on the current query page.a

HOL-SDC-1601

HOL-SDC-1601
Content Packs Overview
Content packs provide a powerful way to extend Log Insight through pre-defined
knowledge about particular events. To browse to the Content Packs section, select the
three bars icon in the navigation bar and select Content Packs.
Alternatively from any browser (when not in the lab) you can go to
https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/loginsight for a list of all the Content Packs
available for Log Insight. An example of that web page is above.
A content pack is made up of various components. These components can include:
• Dashboards – the dashboard groups (i.e. pages) that make up the selected
dashboard
• Queries
◦ Chart widgets
◦ Saved queries – located under Saved Searches
• Alerts – remember always disabled when exported

• Agent Groups - contain configuration for monitoring, parsing, and tagging event
to be sent to Log Insight
• Fields – labeled as Extracted Fields

HOL-SDC-1601
Video Overview of Log Insight

One issue we have come across regularly with headphones and the ThinClients used at
the HOL events, is the headphones don't always get plugged in all the way. Please make
sure your headphones are seated all the into the device.
A short 8 minute overview video of Log Insight

HOL-SDC-1601
Dashboards and Interactive Analytics

Dashboards Overview
Dashboards– Think of the dashboards page as an overview section. Dashboards

provide the ability to quickly visualize log data and determine potential issues within an
environment. Log Insight provides two different types of widgets inside a dashboard:
charts and queries. Charts are a visual representation of data and the most commonly
used widget. Queries are saved pieces of information that provide both a visual and
textual representation of data on the Interactive Analytics page, but they are listed only
by a defined name on the dashboards page. Query widgets are typically used when a
chart widget does not provide enough useful information.
1 - Click the Interactive Analytics tab.
Finding Installed Dashboards
1. Click the down arrow to open the Dashboard Menu

2. The first section of the Dashboard Menu is the Custom Dashboards section. Any
dashboards you create or clone will be listed here. You can also share any
dashboard you create with other users. No action require in this step.

HOL-SDC-1601
3. The next section is the Contant Pack Dashboards section. Listed here will be all
the Content Packs that have dashboards associated with them. By default the
VMware - vShpere is automatically installed during the vRealize Log Insight
installation. No action require in this step.
4. Click the VMware - vSphere menu choice

HOL-SDC-1601
vSphere Dashboards
1. The vSphere Dashboards are the out of the box dashboards that come with
vRealize Log Insight used for categorizing and troubleshooting vSphere log
messages. VMware has created multiple dashboards catagorizing the log
messages from vCenter, ESXi, storage networking, etc... and their services into
commonly requested groupings. No action required in this step.
2. Click the General - Problems menu choice
The General - Overview Dashboard
The General Overview Dashboard give you overall information about the log messages
being received from vSphere. Each Widget gives information about a the log messages
(events) being received from vSphere. As the name implies this is only an overview
dashboard more details will be covered further on in this lab and in other dashboards.

HOL-SDC-1601
1. The event type and how they are being sorted is usually described by the widget
title. No action required in this step.
2. You can always get more info about the events displayed in the widget by
selecting the Interactive Analytics icon in the upper right of each widget. No
action required in this step. This will be covered in depth later on in this module.
3. Click the General - Problems dashboard

HOL-SDC-1601
vSphere General - Problems Dashboard
The General - Problems dashboard shows a widget for the most common problems that
may come up within vSphere.
1. You can drag the scroll bar to see more of the dashboard
2. Better Picture NEEDED - Add data from Log Genterator
3. Click the InteractiveAnalytics tab
Overview Interactive Analytics
Interactive Analytics– Allows administrators and engineers to perform searches using

plain language or REGEX strings and view log message detail to determine problem
areas and perform root cause analysis.
The Interactive Analytics page allows administrators and engineers to drill down into log
messages, to determine problem areas, and to perform root cause analysis.
At the top of the page, just below the navigation bar, you will notice a section with a
black background. This section gives you a visual representation of your log data.
The chart in this section should look similar to the chart widgets that you saw on the
Dashboards page. By default, the overview chart is a bar chart that displays the count
of all events over time for the log messages seen over the last five minutes. Log Insight
refers to ingested data as events. The events visually represented on the overview chart

HOL-SDC-1601
can be manipulated in a variety of ways, but most commonly are changed through the
use of functions and groupings.
There are many options available once you have created a custom query in the
Interactive Analytics page:
• Add current query to favorites - You can save your current query and time
range in Log Insight to view it later. Saved queries can only be loaded from the
Interactive Analytics page.
• Add current query to dashboard - You can save lists of search queries to your
custom dashboards by creating query list widgets.
• Export or share current query - In addition to saving a dashboard you can
also choose to save a query. NOTE: A saved query stores the time range in
addition to the query. This is different then how all other pieces of information are
saved in Log Insight (i.e. everything else you can save does not include the time
range.)  
• Create or Manage Alerts - When you find a query you care about you might
want to configure an alert when that query returns one or more results. Log
Insight allows for alerts to be sent via email or vCenter Operations.
• Manage Extracted Fields - This is important if you wish to find an extracted
field that does not appear on the current query page.a

HOL-SDC-1601
Working with Log Insight

In this section we will use Log Insight explore the logs of a vSphere environment. Often,
without a log analysis tools such as Log Insight, log errors are not viewed until
production workloads have degraded or failed and the business is impacted. With Log
Insight we can uncover log events and patterns that may ultimately lead to problems so
we can take action before hand. In this section we will focus on log analysis and
dashboards, though you can use these same principles to create alerts and forward
them to vRealize Operations or via SMTP.
Log Insight Bookmark
1. If you are not already logged into Log Insight server loginsight-01a, click the Log
Insight folder and select loginsight-01a

HOL-SDC-1601
Login to Loginsight-01a
User: admin
Password: VMware1!
Click Login -or- Press Enter
Log Insight's Dashboard General Overview
If you have successfully connected to a vCenter, earlier in this module, the first screen
you will see is the vSphere - General Overview dashboard.
1. If you are not already at this screen click the Dashboard button.
2. This is the dashboard category tile, it tells you the source of the dashboards that
are available (to see a complete list of installed dashboards click the down arrow
next to the category title). Dashboards are either created within Log Insight or
come as part of a Content Pack. By default the vSphere Content Pack comes pre-
installed. Dashboards from any other content pack that you install can be found
by clicking that arrow.
3. Section 3 is a list of actual dashboards for the current category - The image
above shows the dashboards from the VMware - vSphere Content Pack.
4. Section 4 of the screen allows you to apply a date/time range filter to limit the
data you are viewing within the dashboard. Keeping this to a minimal range

HOL-SDC-1601
improves the performance of the UI due to the system only needing to query that
limited set of data.
5. Section 5 shows the filters which are available as part of this dashboard. The
filters allow you to quickly focus the dashboard on a specific object/item of
interest.
6. Widgets, the widget in Log Insight are configured to query the consolidated log
database and show specific areas of regular interest. In this case, the widget is
showing a graphical representation of all the vSphere log messages and when
they were generated. Widgets can be arranged in multiple way and sizes.
Interactive Analytics
1. Click Interactive Analytics

HOL-SDC-1601
The Interactive Analytics Screen
The following describes the different sections of the Interactive Analytics Screen:
1. This area show the graphical representation of the current Query, because we
have not specified anything as a query or filter all the events are being shown.
2. This section modifies how the graph displays the data.
3. The Search box, you can enter anything here you would like to search for within
the logs on file. for example this could be a host name, error message or number
4. Data Range, Log Insight auto-correlates all log data, in this field you can specify a
specific time range you would like to search for log entries. By default the time
range field is set to Latest 5 minutes of data. Be advised: large date ranges will
take a longer time to return the complete set of data, but that data will stream in
as the query result is returned. In this lab we have only just connected to the
vCenter thus we have a limited time range where data is available.
5. Events are the log entries which match the query and will be displayed here. The
key words (Fields) contained in each of the log messages will be called out in blue
below the log message. By default Log Insight understands all the Syslog defined
fields. As as part of content packs Fields are added which are specific to their
domain. In this case all the vSphere and Syslog Fields are available.
6. Field List, all the defined fields from all the log messages which are part of the
result set from the query, are listed here. You can click on any one of them and
they will show you a graphical representation of the number of log messages
which are associated to that field.

HOL-SDC-1601

HOL-SDC-1601
Searching Log Events
As you enter keyword searches inside the search box, Log Insight will provide auto
complete options as you type.
1. In the search field type vcsa* (remember to type in the asterisk), in this case we
are looking for all messages which are related to the vCenter vcsa-01a. In
English, simply type in what you are looking for and we added an asterisk as the
wildcard.
2. Enter the data range, in this case please level it at 5 minutes.
3. Press Enter or click the search Icon.

HOL-SDC-1601
Event Types
Event Types are used when troubleshooting to quickly narrow down the resulting set of
log messages into pattern matched clusters. This capability allows you to quickly
eliminate irrelevant log messages.
1. Click the Event Types Tab. This will sort the result set of log messages by Event
type
2. Event Types will provide the count of messages of the pattern matched type
3. Click the x to remove this message type from the result set and automatically
creates a filter for that message type.
Note: The lab you are taking is a live dynamic environment. What you see will differ
from what is captured in the screenshot. Please choose any event in the window and
proceed to the next step.

HOL-SDC-1601
Filters
After deleting the Event Type (the log messages are retained they are only removed
from this query), the system automatically creates a filter or constraint excluding that
specific event type.
Creating a Filter
Now we will create a new filter to only include log messages based on the text api
invocations. This will show the number of api connections to your vCenter server.
1. Click Add Filter

HOL-SDC-1601
Set Filter Constraints
1. Set the Operator to contains

2. Type api invocations
3. Click the search button
At this point the result list will only show log messages related to the text api
invocations that are not event_type v4_5c26184d.
Now we have narrowed down our results to only 4 event types (prior to adding filters
there were over a dozen different event types).
Field Extraction
Extracted fields provide a powerful way to construct queries in Log Insight. You can also
create you own custom extracted fields.
1. Switch back to the Events tab.
2. Highlight the value next to "API invocations:". In the example above, its listed as 2,
but this number could be different.
3. A pop up window appears, select Extract field.

HOL-SDC-1601
Fields configuration
A Fields configuration will appear on the right side of your screen. We now need to name
the extracted field, determine who can use the field, then save the field for use in the
future. You will use this extracted field later in this module when we integrate with
1. In the Field Name input box, type vmw_vc_api.
2. Under Available for drop down, you have the option to make this extracted field
available to just yourself or all users. Leave this as Me Only.
3. Click Save.
Extracted Field Complete
Notice that we now have a new field called vmw_vc_api. We will leverage this later in
the module. For now, we will move to the next step.
Grouping Events
Now we want to group these events which add some additional data into our graph.
1. Select over time drop down.

HOL-SDC-1601
2. Place a check next to vmw_vc_auth_source (VMware - vSphere) and

vmw_vc_auth_user (VMware - vSphere)
3. Select Apply.
Legend Created
Notice that a legend has been created on the right side of the graph to display the IP
address and the username for who was connecting to the vCenter appliance.

HOL-SDC-1601
Add Query to Dashboard
Now we will create a new dashboard called API Invocation Events based on our search
results.
1. Click Add to Dashboard.
Add Chart to Dashboard
1. Enter API Invocation Events in the Name field

2. Ensure the Dashboard 1 is selected, you could change the dashboard you are
adding this query to to any dashboard you have right to modify or create a new
dashboard.
3. Click Add

HOL-SDC-1601
Navigate to the Dashboards page
1. Click Dashboards
Select My Dashboards
1. Click the drop down arrow for the dashboard list.

2. Select My Dashboards.

HOL-SDC-1601
Observe the Modified Dashboard
Observe that a new widget named API Invocation Events is now included with
Dashboard 1.

HOL-SDC-1601
Log Insight Agents

The Log Insight Agent collects events from log files on Windows or Linux operating
sytems and forwards them to the vRealize Log Insight server. In a Linux system, when
syslog forwarding is not sufficient, the agent can be configured to collect events and
forward them to Log Insight. Some applications store log data in flat text files on the file
system, the agent can collect and forward these. The Log Insight Linux Agent runs as a
daemon and starts immediately after installation.
The Log Insight Windows Agent collects events from Windows event channels and log
files, then forwards them to Log Insight. A Windows event channel is a pool for collecting
related events in a Windows system. By default the Log Insight Windows Agent collects
events from the Application, System, and Security channels. The Log Insight Windows
Agent runs as a Windows service and starts immediately after installation.
For this lab, we installed and configured the Linux Agent on our vRealize Operations
Manager appliance (the installation of the agent is not part of this lab). The Windows
Agent is available as an .msi file and the Linux agent is available as a .tar file.
Both agents can monitor directories and collect events from flat text log files
During and after installation, you can configure the following options for the Log Insight
Windows Agent:
■ Select the target Log Insight server to which the Log Insight Windows Agent forwards
events.
■ Select the communication protocol and port that the Log Insight Windows Agent uses.
■ Add additional Windows event channels from which the Log Insight Windows Agent
collects events to.
■ Select Windows directories to monitor and add flat log files to collection.
3rd party agents are also supported, but our own native agents (for Windows and Linux)
offer significant advantages, such as easy/central configuration through the log insight
UI, data compression, and encryption over SSL (available in version 3.0).
Select the Agents Management Page - Update Screen

Capture
Note: Ensure that you are on the Log Insight browser tab.
1. On the upper right, click the admin drop down.

2. Select Administration.

HOL-SDC-1601
3. Select Agents from the left hand navigation pane.
Agents - Update Screen with installed agents
Click Download Log Insight Agent Version 2.6.2

HOL-SDC-1601
Centralized Agent Configuration
A new feature is the ability to create an agent group. In the “Agents” page of the
“Administration” section of the UI, one can configure an agent group and centrally
manage disparate groups of agent configurations for linux, windows, and vSphere
solutions.
We will create a new group for Windows Agents to apply specific configuration changes
to our windows agents.
1. Select All Agents.

2. Select New Group.
Agent configuration - Needs update
The agent configuration is now saved and you will see an "Agent configuration saved
successfully" popup window that will automatically disappear.
Reviewing Events from agents.

HOL-SDC-1601
Integrating Log Insight with vRealize

Operations
One regular issue issue we have come across with headphones and the ThinClients used
at the HOL events is the headphones don't always get plugged in all the way. Please
make sure that your headphone plug is completely seated within the device.
5 minute video demonstrating the integration of Log

Insight with vRealize Operations Manager

HOL-SDC-1601
Conclusion
Thank you for completing the vRealize Log Insight Module!

HOL-SDC-1601
Module 6 - Hybrid Cloud

and Heterogeneous
Management with
vRealize Operations

HOL-SDC-1601
Introduction
Hyper-V, AWS and vCloud Air have been given their own module to showcase some of
the capabilities of the enterprise version of vRealize Operations Management. At the
enterprise level, we can leverage application-level metrics. At the advanced level, we
have insight to the operating system metrics but we often need more data to better
determine potential issues that may arise within an application. The enterprise level of
vR Ops gives us more details at a lower level of the stack.

HOL-SDC-1601
Logging In and Getting Started

Keyboard Shortcuts
To aid in typing some of the entries in the lab, we have added a txt file on the
ControlCenter desktop to help account for the variations in keyboard layouts.

HOL-SDC-1601
vCenter Operations Tab
Make sure you select the HVM - vR Ops 6 bookmark to start the session.

HOL-SDC-1601
Screen Navigation


HOL-SDC-1601
Login as Admin
User name: admin

Password: VMware1!
Click Login.

HOL-SDC-1601
Hyper-V and AWS

Highlights
• Overview of native EPO agent monitoring features.

• Collects resource information and performance details from AWS through
Cloudwatch
• Provides pre-configured dashboards for health and performance insights on AWS
resources
• Customizable so only data from key resources is collected
Description
The vRealize Operations Management Pack for AWS can be installed on any Advanced,
or Enterprise edition vCenter Operations Manager Installation. This includes both the
appliance and stand alone deployments. The Management Pack connects to several APIs
on the AWS side including Cloudwatch. Metrics and other data can be collected for EC2
instances, EBS Volumes, Auto Scaling Groups, Elastic Load Balancers, and Elastic Map
Reduce clusters.
The AWS Management Pack can be found on VMware's solution exchange.
As with other management pack, the AWS management pack provides some default
dashboards. We'll show those dashboards here.
Go Home to start this process
To navigate to the AWS dashboard category, click on the Home icon and open the
Dashboard List.

HOL-SDC-1601
View the Hyperic section
From the Dashboard List, under Hyperic you can see the Microsoft metrics vCenter
Operations Manager monitors natively with the new EPO agent.
Hyperic Hyper-V VM Utilization Dashboard
In the Hyper-V VM dashboard, we are listing the CPU and Memory usage for the Hyper-V
guests. A single-click on the resource will show the history of the selected metric for
that resource.
But for this section lets focus on AWS.

HOL-SDC-1601
Navigate to the AWS dashboard category
Check the AWS checkbox and click on AWS Instance Utilization.

HOL-SDC-1601
AWS Instance Utilization Dashboard
With the AWS data, we show all of the AWS guests broken down by CPU, Memory, Disks
and Net information. The widgets show a ranked list of resource by each metric.
Clicking on one of the resources will show the historical value for that selected metric.
For instance, in the Top 25 Instances by CPU usage, click on the first guest. In the
widget below, you will see the historical trend for that selected resource.
Select the AWS Troubleshooting Dashboard.
AWS Troubleshooting Dashboard
For this dashboard, interaction can start with either the AWS object selected or the AWS
Relationship selection. Ideally, one would select an object in the AWS relationships to
drive the two widgets on the right. When a resource is selected, the interesting metrics
will show a list of all metrics related to the selected resource. In the Health, Anomalies,
Events Mashup, you will be able to correlate the resources health with anomalies and
events related to the selected resource.

HOL-SDC-1601
Select the AWS Volume Performance Dashboard.

HOL-SDC-1601
AWS Volume Performance Dashboard
Volume Performance gives us insight into the AWS volumes read and write statistics. In
the upper left, we see a list of the volumes disk write times in seconds. When we select
a volume in the list, we get the resources on that value in the widget directly below.
The same process can occur for the other widgets on this dashboard.

HOL-SDC-1601
AWS Instance Heatmap Dashboard
Similar to the instance utilization dashboard, this one displays the resources in a the
form of a heatmap. The color of the heatmaps vary depending on the selected widget.
For the Network Load, hovering over one of the resources shows that the color is a
score based on the bytes transmitted going outbound.

HOL-SDC-1601
vCloud Air
Highlights
• Automated– Patented, self-learning analytics

• Integrated– An integrated approach to performance, capacity, and configuration
management
• Comprehensive– Built on an extensible operations platform designed for dynamic
hybrid cloud environments
Description
The vRealze Operations Management Pack for vCloud Air extends vCenter Operations
Manager capabilities of vCenter Operations to vCloud Hybrid Service, providing a
consistent user experience across clouds. This pack includes an embedded adapter that
collects metrics, change events, and resource topology information from vCloud Hybrid
Service and displays this information in pre-built dashboards. Now you can monitor,
isolate, and resolve performance bottlenecks on vCloud Hybrid Service faster by
leveraging your existing vCenter Operations capabilities that are already in use.
The vCloud Air Management pack can be found on the VMware Solution Exchange
server.
Additional Information for the vCloud Air management pack:
Overview
The vCenter Operations Management Pack for vCloud Hybrid Service extends these
Operations Management capabilities of vCenter Operations to vCloud Hybrid Service,
providing a consistent user experience across clouds. This pack includes an embedded
adapter that collects metrics, change events, and resource topology information from
vCloud Hybrid Service and displays this information in your on-premises vCenter
Operations Manager. Now you can monitor, isolate, and resolve performance
bottlenecks on vCloud Hybrid Service faster by leveraging your existing vCenter
Operations capabilities that are already in use.
Highlights
• Automated– Patented, self-learning analytics

• Integrated– An integrated approach to performance, capacity, and configuration
management
• Comprehensive– Built on an extensible operations platform designed for dynamic
hybrid cloud environments
Description

HOL-SDC-1601
The vCenter Operations Management Pack for vCloud Hybrid Service extends vCenter
Operations Manager capabilities of vCenter Operations to vCloud Hybrid Service,
providing a consistent user experience across clouds. This pack includes an embedded
adapter that collects metrics, change events, and resource topology information from
vCloud Hybrid Service and displays this information in pre-built dashboards. Now you
can monitor, isolate, and resolve performance bottlenecks on vCloud Hybrid Service
faster by leveraging your existing vCenter Operations capabilities that are already in
use.
Go Home to start this process
To navigate to the vCloud Air dashboard category, click on the Home icon and open the
Dashboard List.
Select the vCloud dashboard category
Opening the vCloud Air category we see that four dashboards are provided as part of
the management pack. We'll go through each of the dashboards to explain their use.
Click on vCloud Air VM Utilization.

HOL-SDC-1601
vCloud Air VM Utilization Dashboard
The vCloud Air VM Utilization dashboard gives us insight into a cloud's resource usage
on CPU and Memory. In the widgets, we get a list of the resources ranked by usage.
Clicking on a resource will show us the history of that usage.
Select the vCloud Air Data Center Utilization Dashboard.

HOL-SDC-1601
vCloud Air Data Center Utilization Dashboard
The vCloud Air Data Centre Utilization dashboard gives us insight into the virtual data
centres and the ability to view top resource users in different categories like CPU Usage,
Memory Usage, Memory Reservations Used, Storage Capacity Provisioned.
Please select some of the virtual Data Centers in the top list widgets to view the history
of these resources.
Select the vCloud Air Troubleshooting Dashboard.

HOL-SDC-1601
vCloud Air Troubleshooting Dashboard
There is a lot of data on this dashboard. Be sure to scroll down to see the widgets off
screen. To make the use of this dashboard, select a vCloud Air resource from the VCHS
Relationship widget on the left side. When you select a resource, the widgets will
update to reflect the selection. The ordered symptoms lists the anomaly totals through
the hierarchy of the selected resource. The Interesting Metrics widget shows
performance metrics for the selected resource. Beneath the Interesting Metrics (scroll
down) is the Health, Anomalies and Event mashup. Here we can correlate the health of
the selected object against the anomalies and events associated with the selected
resource.
Select the vCloud Air Heatmaps Dashboard.

HOL-SDC-1601

HOL-SDC-1601
vCloud Air Heatmaps Dashboard
In the heatmap dashboard, we break down the big four, CPU, Memory, Disk and Network
loads. For each widget, resources are represented by the colored rectangles. The
greater the load, the more red the color. As you click on resource's rectangle, the
history view is updated to show the value for the metric over a period of time. Hovering
over the rectangle will give information relative to that resource like name, data center
and metric value.

HOL-SDC-1601
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed taking this module and can see the value monitoring AWS,
Microsoft Hyper-V and vCloud Air will bring to your environment! Be sure to take the
survey at the end.
these resources:
• vRealize Operations Management Packs - VMware Solution Exchange -

https://solutionexchange.vmware.com

HOL-SDC-1601
Module 7 - Application
Discovery and
Dependency Mapping
With vRealize
Infrastructure Navigator -
(30 Minutes)

HOL-SDC-1601
Introduction to vRealize Infrastructure

Navigator
This module will introduce you to the basic features of vRealize Infrastructure Navigator.
Overview of vRealize Infrastructure Navigator
VMware® vRealize™ Infrastructure Navigator™ (formerly known as vCenter

Infrastructure Navigator) is a component of the vRealize® Suite™. It automatically
discovers application services, visualizes relationships and maps dependencies of
applications on virtualized compute, storage and network resources.
Intelligent Operations Groups
vRealize Infrastructure Navigator enables you to leverage the application dependency

context to proactively manage the virtual infrastructure. With intelligent operations
groups and VMware® vRealize™ Operations Manager™ integration, users are enabled
to quickly identify in-context performance and capacity issues, as well as optimization
opportunities, as they relate to grouped objects either by business, or operational
relevance.
• Organize IT operations by line of business, production workload or configuration

type and create group policies to prioritize alerts, thresholds and group
membership
• View health, risk and efficiency at the group and component level
Create Application Patterns and Mappings
With vRealize Infrastructure Navigator, you can map services running in your virtual
environment, examine the application discovery status, view and analyze the
dependency. It provides a centralized view of your application environment.
• Map virtual infrastructure resources such as virtual machines, web servers, mail
servers, database servers, application servers, cache servers, messaging servers,
application management servers, and virtualization management servers.
• Detect inconsistencies from the norm and troubleshoot errors.
Define Protection Groups and Recovery Plans
Administrators can use vRealize Infrastructure Navigator to understand how various

changes in the virtual environment will affect the availability and reliability of their
application infrastructure. This allows for proactive risk assessment against SLAs.
• Improve business continuity and disaster recovery planning by using automated

application discovery and mapping

HOL-SDC-1601
• Manage changes (planned or unplanned) by understanding the impact on

applications

HOL-SDC-1601
Exploring vRealize Infrastructure

Navigator
vRealize Infrastructure Navigator integrates with the vSphere Web Client. As a result we
will use the Web Client to explore vRealize Infrastructure Navigator's abilities.
Keyboard Shortcuts
To aid in typing some of the entries in the lab, we have added a README.txt file on the
ControlCenter desktop to help account for the variations in keyboard layouts. Where
applicable you can also use the README file to copy and paste commands included in
steps.

HOL-SDC-1601
Launching the Browser
Launch the vSphere Web Client
Open a new Tab in your browser to go to the vSphere Web Client.
1. Click the vSphere Web Client bookmark in your browser

2. Username: administrator@vsphere.local
3. Password: VMware1!
4. Click Login

HOL-SDC-1601
Begin Navigation to the vCenter
1. From the Left Hand Navigation Bar, choose vCenter Inventory Lists

HOL-SDC-1601
Choose vCenter Servers
1. Choose vCenter Servers
Select the vCenter Server
1. Choose vcsa-01a.corp.local. The left hand navigation window will refresh with
information about the vCenter Server

HOL-SDC-1601
Select the Summary Tab
1. In the tab bar at the top of the center content pane choose 'Summary' if it has
not already been selected
Examine the Infrastructure Navigator Widget focused on

vCenter
The Infrastructure Navigator Portlet displays all the known application services currently
configured on this vCenter. By expanding the twistie on the application service
categories we can see the details of specifically which discovered services are active.
1. Expand the twistie on each application service category to display its details
2. To see which application services are currently running on which VM's, we can use
a specialized inventory view: Click the 'Show all in inventory' hyperlink

HOL-SDC-1601
The Application Services Tab
1. Click Manage
2. Click Application Services
3. The Application Services tab added by vRealize Infrastructure Navigator shows

detailed information about what vRealize Infrastructure Navigator has discovered
• Name - The name of the Virtual Machine that has been discovered. It is a fully
accessible vSphere Web Client Object and can be interacted with.
• Services - The list of the application services (if any) that have been discovered to
be running on this VM
• Applications - Contains the list of any custom defined applications that have been
discovered. (This will be covered in a later exercise.)
• Discovery Status - Displays the current status of the VM from vRealize
Infrastructure Navigator's point of view. In order for VM's to be successfully
discovered they must be powered on and have VMware Tools running.
• Successful Discovery - To keep the cpu and network load down vRealize
Infrastructure Navigator will perform auto-discovery every hour. (For this lab we
have tuned this value down to 5 minutes, but this is not recommended for normal
environments.)
4. Below the main table are two tabs, which show information about the selected VM.
You may need to click the Recent Tasks pushpin to collapse the bottom
window
5. The general tab shows some general information about the VM that was collected
by vRealize Infrastructure Navigator. The services tab show servers that have been auto
discovered by vRealize Infrastructure Navigator.

HOL-SDC-1601
Searching for VMs running Specific Application Services
From this view you can use filtering to quickly find the application services that you are
looking for.
1. In the Filter Text Box enter 'RabbitMQ' to display all the VMs running the Rabbit
MQ application.
2. Click the hyperlink for 'vin-01a' to display information VIN has gathered.

HOL-SDC-1601
Looking at the Infrastructure Navigator Widget focused on

a VM
The Infrastructure Navigator Widget provides a summary of the application

dependencies (both incoming and outgoing) for the selected VM.
1. In the tab bar at the top of middle pane choose Manage.

HOL-SDC-1601
Application Dependencies Map (Graphical View)
The Application Dependencies Map provides a graphical view of the application

relationship dependencies centered around this VM. Looking at the Infrastructure
Navigator box in the center we can see that this VM is running both tcServer and
RabbitMQ. These are application services that support infrastructure Navigator itself.
We can also see that there are multiple arrows leaving the Infrastructure Navigator VM
pointing to other VMs that it is connected with. A quick inspection shows that it is
connected to 2 ESXi hosts on port 902 (for VIX protocol on target hosts to perform
discovery) and to the vCenter to ports 80/443 (for displaying information in the vSphere
Web Client).
1. In the Application Dependencies bar, click the black triangle next to Map View.
2. Select Table View.

HOL-SDC-1601
Application Dependencies Table View
This the Table View of dependencies. The same information is visible as the previous
Map View, but the information is laid out in table form. Note that this is the default view
when there are many relationships to and from a single VM.

HOL-SDC-1601
Defining a new Application Service &

Custom Application
In this exercise we will define a new custom application using vRealize Infrastructure
Navigator. We will use this definition later in vRealize Operations as a custom group.
Our custom 3-Tier application uses Apache HTTP, Tomcat Server, and PostgreSQL. The
Apache process (httpd.worker) and the PostgreSQL application process (postmaster) are
not known to vCenter Intrastructure Navigator. We will define a new application service
for those processes. Once complete, we will create a custom application definition.

HOL-SDC-1601
Open the Hands on Lab Multi-Tier Application
In this exercise we will be using our Hands on Lab Multi-Tier application to demonstrate
how Infrastructure Navigator can discover multi-tier applications. Infrastructure
Navigator establishes relationships between application by watching how VMs
communicate. We will bring up the multi-tier appliaction once to initiate those
connections.
1. Within the browser, open a new tab and click the SpringTrader::
Dashboard bookmark. Login with the following details.
2. Username: Administrator
3. Password: VMware1!
4. Click Login

HOL-SDC-1601
Examine the Multi Tier Application
This is the Hands-on-Lab springtrader application. Once this page appears, our
application has been defined and we can continue.
Define Application Service
vRealize Infrastructure Navigator will instantly update all running VM's when a newly
defined application service is created. Custom Application Services will also always be
visible whether or not a client is currently connected to them. By looking in the Type
column you can now see the user defined icon indicating that this service was defined
by a user and is not native to Infrastructure Navigator.
Navigate Home in the vSphere Web Client
Click back to the vSphere Web Client.
1. Within the vSphere Web Client navigation bar, on the upper left side, choose the
Home (house) icon.

HOL-SDC-1601
Find the st-db VM
1. On the upper right corner of the vSphere Web Client locate the Search bar and
type st-db then press enter.
2. When the search completes, click the 'st-db' virtual machine.
Switch to the Application Dependencies Tab
1. In the middle content pane, choose the 'Manage' tab.

2. Choose the 'Application Dependencies' sub tab.

HOL-SDC-1601
Open the Service Details Tab
1. Use the slider bar in the middle to click and drag the details pane up and
provide more room to work.
2. Click the 'Services' Tab

HOL-SDC-1601
Define the PostgreSQL Application Service
PostgreSQL uses port 5432 as it's default. Our custom application uses a process
named 'postmaster' instead of the default 'postgres'. For this reason we'll only define
the PostgreSQL service to port 5432.
1. In the Action column, choose the plus sign '+' in the row where port 5432 and
process postmaster are displayed. The Create User Defined Service Definition
window will appear.
2. Click the checkbox next to 'Port'.
3. In the Name field enter 'PostgreSQL DB'.
4. Choose the category Database Server.
5. Click OK
The dialog box will disappear and the PostgreSQL application will appear as a user-
defined service.
Find the st-web VM
1. In the upper right corner of the vSphere Web Client, locate the Search bar and
type st-web and press enter on the keyboard.
2. When the search completes, click the st-web virtual machine.

HOL-SDC-1601
1. In the middle content pane, choose the Manage tab.

2. Choose the 'Application Dependencies' sub tab.
Open the Service Details Tab
1. Use the slider bar in the middle to drag the details pane up and provide
additional room.
2. Click the Services tab.
3. Check the Show unknown services with no incoming dependencies
checkbox.
Define the HTTPD application service
The default Apache process name is 'httpd' and not 'httpd.worker' in our custom
application. Port 80 is used by many web servers for this definition. We will include the
process name in the definition to differentiate our application.
1. In the Action column, choose the plus sign '+' in the row that displays port 80
and process 'httpd.worker'. The Create User Defined Service Definition window
will appear.
2. Click the checkbox next to Process.
3. Click the checkbox next to Port.
4. In the Name field enter Apache HTTP (httpd.worker).
5. Select the category Web Serverfrom the drop down list.
6. Click OK

HOL-SDC-1601
The dialog box will disappear and the Apache HTTP (httpd.worker) application will
appear as a user-defined service.

HOL-SDC-1601
Navigate to Infrastructure Navigator
1. ClicktheHome (house) icon.

2. Select Infrastructure Navigator.
Click the Manage Tab
1. Click the 'Manage' Tab.

HOL-SDC-1601
Create a new Automatic Application Definition
1. Click the green plus sign '+' to create a new Application Definition.
Enter the Application Name and Description
The Create Automatic Application Definition dialog box appears.
1. In the Name field enter Springtrader 3-Tier App.

2. In the Description field enter This is our sample 3-Tier Application.
3. Click the Next Button.

HOL-SDC-1601
Define the rules
Our 3-Tier application consists of three applications working in concert across 3 VM's. To
define this application relationship within vRealize Infrastructure Navigator, we will
model these relationships. These relationships should always be listed in order that the
data flows. In our case the order is Web -> Application -> Database.
1. Our custom application consists of 3 components, we will generate two more

rules. Click the green plus sign '+' two times and 2 additional rules should
appear.
2. Choose each of the services as they appear in the screen image. Click to
uncheck the 'Clustered' checkbox. We are not using any load balancing/
clustering network topologies in this sample.
3. Click Next

HOL-SDC-1601
Accept the new definition
1. Click the Finish button to accept the new definition.

HOL-SDC-1601
Wait for the application discovery to complete
Now that the new automatic application has been created vCenter Infrastructure
Navigator will do a discovery for it. This process in our lab environment should take
about a minute to complete (in a real world environment with thousands of VM's under
vCenter management this could take much longer).
1. Click the refresh icon every 10 to 15 seconds until the application has been
discovered.

HOL-SDC-1601
Navigate to vCenter Inventory Lists in the vSphere Web

Client
1. Clickthe Home (house) icon.

2. Select vCenter Inventory Lists.

HOL-SDC-1601
Choose vCenter Servers
1. Inventory Lists choose vCenter Servers
Select the vCenter Server
1. Choose 'vcsa-01a'. The left hand navigation window will refresh with information
about the vCenter Server.
Select the Application Services Tab
1. Click the Manage tab.

2. Click the Application Services tab.

HOL-SDC-1601
Filter resources for our new application
Our application is listed in the Applications column. Each instance of the application will
have a number in parentheses listed to identify the individual VMs that are associated
with each application instance.
1. We can quickly filter our Application Definitions by entering the application name.
In the Filter field, type Springtrader to only see our application instances.
Find the st-web VM
1. On the upper right corner of the vSphere Web Client, locate the Search bar and
type st-web and press enter on the keyboard.
2. When the search completes, click the st-web virtual machine.

HOL-SDC-1601
1. In the middle content pane, choose the Manage tab.

2. Choose the Application Dependencies sub tab.
View the Dependency Map for the st-web VM
Nothing appears to have changed in our application dependency view. The st-web web
server still shows it is connected to the st-tcs-1 application server. We have defined a
new custom application and can look beyond the First Level of Dependencies.
Note: If Table view is displayed, but Map view is selected, you may need to switch to
Table view then back to Map view in order to display Map view properly.
1. Click the black triangle and select Map View.

2. Click +2 link.

HOL-SDC-1601
View the full application view
Now we can see the full application interaction list between all the VM's connected to
our Springtrader application. vRealize Infrastructure Navigator, through the power of
Custom Application definitions, has empowered vSphere Web Client users with the
ability to see a full application-by-application dependency view from any VM that is
connected to any application.
If you need to edit or delete an application definition, you can click on the appropriate
icons in the Action Column for the service. In the next section, we will explore how you
can leverage this application dependency information in vRealize Operations Manager.

HOL-SDC-1601
Integration with vRealize Operations

Manager
This section will cover the basic integration between vRealize Operations Manager and
vRealize Infrastructure Navigator.
Note: This exercise assumes that you have completed "Defining a Custom Application".
If you have not done so, please go complete that section first.
Note: It may take up to 15 minutes for the application defined in vRealize

Infrastructure Navigator to show up in vRealize Operations Manager.
Log into vRealize Operations Manager
From the Firefox browser, open https://vrops-01a.corp.local
Use the following credentials to login to vCenter Operations Manager vSphere UI:
User name: admin
Password: VMware1!
Click Login.

HOL-SDC-1601
vRealize Operations Manager Web Client
You are now logged into the vRealize Operations Manager Web Client.
1. In the left hand navigation menu choose 'Environment'.
Infrastructure Navigator Custom Groups in vRealize

Operations Manager
We can now see in the list of groups that our custom application 'Springtrader 3-Tier
App' has been defined within vRealize Operations Manager and can be used like any
other group.
1. Click on the name 'Springtrader 3-Tier App".
Note: The instance number at the end is dynamically generated by vRealize Operations
and may not match the number listed above.

HOL-SDC-1601
Badges fed by an Infrastructure Navigator application
We can now see that we have specific badges and information that provide details
about our vRealize Infrastructure Navigator group.
Out of the Box vRealize Infrastructure Navigator Content.
There are two out of the box dashboard that are created when the VIN management
pack is installed in vRealize Operations Manager. These dashboards are called VIN
Application Topology and VIN VM Dependencies.
To locate the dashboards, please follow the steps below:
1. Click Home in the left frame.

2. Click on Dashboard List.
3. Place your cursor over VIN.
4. Select the VIN Application Topology dashboard.
Your view will be shifted to the VIN Application Topology, but the VIN VM Dependencies
will also open in another tab.

HOL-SDC-1601
VIN Application Topology Dashboard
VIN Application Topology Dashboard - Use for a quick visual summary of the overall
topology of the applications discovered by vRealize Infrastructure Navigator.
Applications discovered by vRealize Infrastructure Navigator are labeled and can be
viewed in the Topology widget in this dashboard.

HOL-SDC-1601
VIN VM Dependencies Dashboard
VIN VM Dependencies Dashboard - Use to monitor the all of the known VMs, their
properties, and their relationships in vCenter Server.
1. Select VIN VM Dependencies from the dashboard tab.
Conclusion
You have now completed all of Module 8 - Application Discovery and Dependency
Mapping With vRealize Infrastructure Navigator. This is also the last module of HOL-
SDC-1601.

HOL-SDC-1601
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed taking this module and can see the value of monitoring
applications and building dependencies maps with vRealize Infrastructure Navigator! Be
sure to take the survey at the end.
these resources:

• vRealize Infrastructure Navigator - http://www.vmware.com/products/
vcenter-infrastructure-navigator

HOL-SDC-1601
Conclusion
Thank you for participating in the VMware Hands-on Labs. Be sure to visit
http://hol.vmware.com/ to continue your lab experience online.
Lab SKU: HOL-SDC-1601
Version: 20160301-080524

Hol-Sdc-1601 PDF en

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hol-Sdc-1601 PDF en

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

HOL-SDC-1601

vCloud Air............................................................................................................ 218

Lab Overview - HOL-

A Readme.txt file is included on the desktop with authentication information.

The complete listing of all twelve modules are:

Module 2 - Building Dashboards, Views, and Reports in vRealize Operations Manager -

Module 3 - OS and Applications Management with vRealize Operations Manager - (45

Module 4 - SDDC VMware and Infrastructure Management Packs - (30 Minutes)

Module 5 - Log Management with vRealize Log Insight - (60 Minutes)

Module 6 - Hybrid Cloud and Heterogeneous Management with vRealize Operations

Module 7 - Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping With vRealize Infrastructure

• Module 1 - John Dias

Activation Prompt or Watermark

Disable Remember Passwords in Firefox

1. Open the Firefox menu.

Disable Remember Passwords continued

1. Click to uncheck Remember passwords for sites.

This session/overview of the new technology represents no commitment from

Features are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts,

Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.

Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features discussed or

• “These features are representative of feature areas under development. Feature

Workload Balancing and Placement

Start Firefox and Adjust Zoom Level

Adjust the zoom settings in the browser:

Select the vRealize Operations Manager HVM Bookmark

1. Click the "vRealize Operations" folder on the bookmarks toolbar.

Log In to vRealize Operations Manager

1. Enter "admin" for the user name.

Identify a Resource Constraint

1. Click the Alerts icon.

3. Click on the alert text to find out!

Get Alert Details

1. Click the button "Set Memory for VM"

Remediate Memory Stress

1. Click the "Cancel" button.

Switch to the Virtual Machine Object

1. Click on the "Analysis" tab.

Review Stress (Continued)

1. Hover over the icon for Parent "w2-mgmtpm-2.mgmt.local" host system.

2. Click on the icon for Parent "w2-mgmtpm-2.mgmt.local" host system.

Review Capacity Remaining

1. Click the Capacity Remaining tab.

2. Double click on the host icon.

Review the Parent Host System Capacity

Review the Parent Host System Capacity (Continued)

Start "Rebalance Container" Action

1. Click on the Actions pull down from the menu bar.

Review "Rebalance Container" Action

1. Click the Cancel button.

Video - Workload Placement Demonstration (4:06)

Identify Reclaimable Cluster Capacity

Another way to address resource constraints is to free up any unused resources. In

1. Click the Reclaimable Capacity tab.

So, where do we start?

View Virtual Machine Reclaimable Capacity

Let's gather a few more details for that converstation.

1. Click on the "MGMTPM-SQL1" virtual machine link.

Review Virtual Machine Reclaimable Capacity

1. Click on the Analysis tab

Review Virtual Machine Workload

1. Click on the Workload tab.

2. Click on the link to view "Virtual Machine Memory Diagnose"

This session/overview of the new technology represents  no commitment from