VMware GG Maximizing VMware VRealize8.0 Ebook FINAL

V M WA R E P R E S E NTS
The
Gorilla
Guide to... ®
Maximizing VMware
vRealize Operations
On-Prem and in
the Cloud
David Davis, vExpert
I N S I D E T H E G U I D E:
• Optimizing for Cloud and On-Premises Tasks
• Top Tips for Deployment and Configuration
• How vRealize Operations 8.0 Enables the Self-Driving
Data Center
Helping You Navigate

The Technology Jungle! In Partnership With
www.actualtechmedia.com
THE GORILLA GUIDE TO...
Maximizing VMware
vRealize Operations
On-Prem and in the Cloud
AUTHOR
David Davis, vExpert
E D ITO R
Brandon Gordon, VMware
Ellie Ruano, VMware
Keith Ward, ActualTech Media
P R O J E CT M A N AG E R
Wendy Hernandez, ActualTech Media
E X E C U T I V E E D ITO R
James Green, ActualTech Media
L AYO U T A N D D E S I G N
Olivia Thomson, ActualTech Media
Copyright © 2020 by ActualTech Media
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used
in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States
of America.
ACT UA LT E C H M E D I A
6650 Rivers Ave Ste 105 #22489
North Charleston, SC 29406-4829
www.actualtechmedia.com
ENTERING THE JUNGLE

Chapter 1: Getting Started with VMware vRealize
Operations 7
What Is vRealize Operations? 7
How Does vRealize Operations Work? 11
How to Buy vRealize Operations 15
vRealize Operations Cloud 16
Learning vRealize Operations in VMware’s Hands-On Labs 19
Why Upgrade? 20
Chapter 2: Deploying vRealize Operations 22

vRealize Operations Architecture 22
Sizing vRealize Operations 24
Installing vRealize Operations the First Time 25
Accessing vRealize Operations 45

Chapter 3: Configuring vRealize Operations for
Maximum Effect 49
Configuring SSO in vRealize Operations 49

Understanding Policies in vRealize Operations 56
Automated Remediation in vRealize Operations 60
Configuring Alerts 65
Predictive DRS 68
Automated Workload Optimization 72
Maximizing Capacity Analysis with vRealize Operations 74
Maximize Troubleshooting with vRealize Operations 77
Configuring Service Discovery 80
iii
Chapter 4: Maximizing vRealize Operations 83
New vRealize Operations 8.0 Features 83
Intent-Driven Continuous Performance Optimization 84
Efficient Capacity and Cost Management 85
Intelligent Remediation 87
Integrated Compliance and Configuration 93
Behold the Power of vRealize Operations 8.0 96
iv
CALLOUTS USED IN THIS BOOK
The Gorilla is the professorial sort that

enjoys helping people learn. In the
Schoolhouse callout, you’ll gain insight into
topics that may be outside the main subject
but that are still important.
This is a special place where readers can

learn a bit more about ancillary topics pre-
sented in the book.
When we have a great thought, we express

them through a series of grunts in the Bright
Idea section.
Takes readers into the deep, dark depths of a

particular topic.
Discusses items of strategic interest to busi-

ness leaders.
v
ICONS USED IN THIS BOOK
D E F I N IT I O N
Defines a word, phrase, or concept.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Tests your knowledge of what you’ve read.
PAY AT T E NT I O N
We want to make sure you see this!
GPS
We’ll help you navigate your knowledge to the
right place.
WATC H O U T!
Make sure you read this so you don’t make a crit-
ical error!
vi
CHAPTER 1
Getting Started with

VMware vRealize
Operations
IT professionals around the world trust VMware’s vRealize Operations
for vSphere management, but not everyone maximizes the power that
vRealize Operations can provide. Many don’t know the tips and tricks
you can use to get the most out of it.
For instance, you may not know that vRealize Operations can manage
the full data center stack, from applications to infrastructure; and it
can do this across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Perhaps
you aren’t aware of the multitude of resources available to soup up
vRealize Operations into a performance and capacity management
machine for the IT operations group. And, I’d be willing to bet that
you aren’t aware of the latest enhancements to vRealize Operations
that allow you to enable self-driving cloud operations in your data
center. Lastly, you may not know it’s available as a SaaS model, too.
In this Gorilla Guide, you’ll learn all that and much more. Please note
that this book is an updated version of an earlier Guide. The information
here refers only to vRealize Operations 8.0.
What Is vRealize Operations?

Before we start, let’s take a moment to give you a brief introduction
to vRealize Operations to ensure that we’re all on the same page.
VMware has designed vRealize Operations to provide what it calls

“self-driving operations” for your data center. But what exactly
does that mean? Self-driving operations is a simple yet powerful
strategy for automating and simplifying operations management
by incorporating AI to solve IT problems, resulting in greater agility
and productivity.
EXPERIENCED VREALIZE OPERATIONS

ADMINS: WHERE TO START
If you already have a good understanding of vRealize
Operations, you can skip this introductory chapter and
the installation chapter (Chapter 2) to move directly
to “Configuring vRealize Operations for Maximimum
Effect” (Chapter 3). If you’re already an experienced vRe-
alize Operations administrator, you may want to start
with the final chapter of the book, “Maximizing vRealize
Operations” (Chapter 4).
Many organizations are missing crucial information about their data

centers. For example, they don’t understand how their applications
are performing today; they don’t have a capacity plan for the future;
and when trouble happens, they blindly restart software and hard-
ware in hopes of returning the applications to the status quo.
All of these are a sign of a data center management group that doesn’t
have any self-driving abilities in their data center operations. It’s no
secret that modern data centers are complex, so it makes sense that
you’d need AI and ML to manage such an environment. vRealize
Operations is the tool, both now and in the future, that you should
be using to manage your complex, modern data center.
With the release of vRealize Operations 6.7, vRealize Operations

provided “Self-Driving Operations.” This was an important addi-
tion. With each subsequent release, VMware has built on those
G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 8

CONSUMER
Capacity & SDDC
Monitoring & Performance Application
Cost Configuration
Troubleshooting Optimization Admin
Optimization Compliance
VMware AI & ML
Skyline VI Admin
Capacity Planner
Cloud assisted Discover, Collect & Inventory App & Infra Topology Cloud Admin
proactive
support with PROVIDER
actions
Edge Data Center Managed Public Cloud

Data Center
Figure 1-1: An overview of vRealize Operations architecture.
capabilities—and now, with vRealize Operations 8, VMware has

added even more artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
(ML) to the ever-advancing self-driving operations feature set of
vRealize Operations. See Figure 1-2.
With vRealize Operations 8.0, the core AI-powered self-driving

engine in vRealize Operations includes:
• Predictive forecasting. Drives automated workload balancing

and placement, capacity forecasting, right-sizing and predictive
Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS).
• Troubleshooting Workbench. Performs root cause analysis based

on dynamic thresholds, anomalous metrics and change point
detection, correlated events and configuration changes. It also
provides smart relationships that help the product auto-discover
the environment based on pattern matching. These patterns are
gleaned from application signatures defined by users.
• Action framework. Drives remediation using built-in actions

or integration with vRealize Orchestrator to automate remedi-
ation and approval workflows. The product also includes alert
and action workflow integration to trigger automated actions on
generated alerts.

Continuous Performance
Optimization
Integrated Configuration Efficient Capacity &

and Compliance Cost Management
Unified Ops Platform
Powered by AI
App-Aware Intelligent
Remediation
Figure 1-2: vRealize Operations capabilities.
The new capabilities included with vRealize Operations 8.0 unlock

use cases, as shown in Figure 1-3.
One of these use cases is hyperconverged operations, or HCIOps.

Companies using VMware vSAN and hyperconverged infrastructure
(HCI) can take advantage of vRealize Operations’ AI-powered ability
to provide greater capacity planning, cost analysis, and troubleshoot-
ing for that infrastructure.
This combined power of the storage and operations teams, made

possible by vSAN and vRealize Operations, is being dubbed “HCIOps”
at many companies.
Use Cases Unlocked by

vRealize Operations
HCI Hybrid Cloud App-aware Compliance Multi-Cloud

Operations Operations Operations Monitoring
Figure 1-3: Scenarios which vRealize Operations 8.0 can manage.

How Does vRealize Operations Work?
Today, vRealize Operations is available as both an on-premises
appliance and a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud edition, with
a comparable feature set. The examples in this book will use the
on-premises virtual appliance deployment option.
No matter your version, the self-driving capabilities of vRealize

Operations can help your organization create specific outcomes. The
most critical of these include:
• Reduced downtime
• Reduced troubleshooting
• Reduced software license costs
• Improve operational efficiency
• Reduced hardware storage costs
See Figure 1-4 for an overview.
These outcomes are made possible by vRealize Operations’ self-driv-

ing remediation, compliance, capacity optimization, cost optimiza-
tion, and performance optimization capabilities. They’re continu-
ously optimized by vRealize Operations via the AI/ML engine.
When deployed on-premises, the vRealize Operations virtual

appliance includes both the database and the analysis engine. The
integrated database stores collected data; the analysis engine pres-
ents that data intelligently, providing relevant alerts. The vRealize
Operations virtual appliance connects to VMware vCenter to learn
about vSphere infrastructure hosts, clusters, VMs, virtual networks,
and datastores.
The appliance also communicates with other data sources like appli-
cations, databases, servers, networks, and more. vRealize Operations
is designed to be able to pull data from just about anywhere and

5 Reasons You Need a
Virtualization Performance
and Capacity Management
Tool
1. Maximize VM Consolidation. Servers now
have massive CPU and memory consolidation
capabilites, giving them the ability to run more virtual
machines (VMs) than ever before on a single server.
Even if the potential number of VMs exceeds your comfort level, it’s your
job as a virtualization admin to push that hardware to the limit to maximize
your company’s IT investment.
The way to discover those limits for your servers and applications is to
slowly increase the number of VMs until your intelligent tool tells you to
stop–which will be before applications start to slow down. Maximizing VM
consolidation, however, isn’t something you should try to do without the
right analytics tools in place.
2. Prevent bottlenecks and downtime. Where are the resource bottlenecks

that will hammer application performance or cause application down-
time in your virutal infrastructure? They can be nearly impossible to find
without a tool that’s monitoring your resource utilization 24/7, tracking
history, and making recommendations.
3. Correlate events and changes. With more complex virtual infrastructure

comes multiple administrators and multiple changes. It’s critical to have a
system that tracks those changes and correlates them with system events
and/or performance issues. This way, when unexpected downtime or per-
formance bottlenecks occur, they can quickly be tied back to events and
changes that may be the root cause.
4. Plan capacity growth. Most workloads tend to grow over time, as the
user/customer base of those applications grows. The virtualization admin
needs to be able to predict that growth before the virtual infrastructure
runs out of capacity.

This foresight is important, since adding new capacity to the virtual infra-
structure may require physical capacity (pCPU, pRAM, or pDisk) that takes
time to purchase and add to the cluster. Your virtualization management
tool must monitor the workloads of your applications over time, and be able
to predict when additional capacity is needed, alerting you even months
ahead of time.
5. Achieve a unified view. Too many so-called virtualization management

tools monitor the virtual infrastructure with only insight from SNMP ele-
ment monitoring, or with only basic information from the vCenter API.
You need a tool that offers a unified view gained from a rich and extensible
wealth of data.
For example, your virtualization management tool should have the ability
to communicate directly with storage arrays for storage insight; it should
have application insight into Tier 1 applications; and it should be able to
provide insight into the hybrid cloud when your company is ready to
migrate workloads.
correlate that data with other data sources, offering a holistic view
of what’s happening in the data center. We’ll go more into vRealize
Operations architecture in Chapter 2.
In the past, when virtual infrastructures were smaller, more static,

and less complex, analysis using only vCenter was adequate for most
companies. There wasn’t a need to push utilization levels, as they
were often satisfied with consolidating 10 or 20 VMs on a server.
Today, enterprises can be running hundreds of VMs on each host

and pushing the VM-to-host ratio to the maximum to squeeze every
penny out of their data center investment. Additionally, organiza-
tions are using desktop virtualization and more complex multi-tiered
applications than in the past.

Self-Driving Operations
OUTCOMES
Reduce Cut Reduce Improve in Reduce

unplanned troubleshooting software operational hardware and
downtime time in half licensing costs efficiency storage costs
Performance Optimization Business Operational

Intent Intent
INTENT & POLICIES
USER PERSONAS
Cloud
CAPABILITIES
Capacity & Cost Optimization Admin

Cost Performance
SRE
SDDC Configuration Compliance Compliance Utilization
VI Admin
Service Level Capacity
Intelligent Remediation
Continuous
AI/ML Engine Optimization
VMware
PLATfORM
Skyline
Application Topology and
Discover, Collect and Persist Cloud assisted proactive
Dependency mapping
support with actions
Metrics, Events, Configurations, Logs
SDDC (VCF) EDGE VCCP VMC Public Cloud
Figure 1-4: A high-level view of vRealize Operations’ self-driving abilities.
While the adoption of virtualization management tools has

increased, those tools haven’t always proven to be worthwhile (in
some cases, they’re even ignored by administrators). Some enter-
prises have managed their virtual infrastructure with vCenter and
command-line tools for years, and believe that there’s no need to
add another tool. Others are using a third-party tool that wasn’t
designed with virtualization in mind, such as an element-moni-
toring tool.
In most of these cases, the enterprise doesn’t realize what it’s miss-
ing until it’s too late. Unfortunately, too many organizations don’t
understand that their existing tools aren’t up to the job until they’re
trying to troubleshoot an application slowdown—or worse, a virtual
infrastructure outage.

This is why vRealize Operations is becoming a necessity in today’s
data centers.
How to Buy vRealize Operations

Before you start using vRealize Operations, there are a few things
you should know. The most important thing is that it’s easy! As
mentioned earlier, vRealize Operations can be deployed on-prem-
ises or SaaS.
There are two ways to buy vRealize Operations: via a perpetual license
or a subscription license.
Assuming you already have vSphere on-premises, you can download

the free 60-day vRealize Operations trial, deploy it, and be up and
running in less than 15 minutes. (A step-by-step tutorial in Chapter
2 will walk you through the deployment.) If you want to try vRealize
Operations without a download, try the live lab environment with the
VMware Hands-On Labs (covered in the next section).
vRealize Operations Cloud also comes with a 30-day free trial.
vRealize Operations Editions

But before you kick off your deployment, let’s review some of the
“must-knows” of vRealize Operations, starting with how it’s pack-
aged and licensed. As mentioned before, it’s sold as either a perpetual
license or subscription license.
vRealize Operations is offered in three editions: Standard, Advanced,

and Enterprise. What’s common across all editions is that they include
vRealize Operations performance monitoring, analytics, predictive
capacity management. Other capabilities vary by edition, found here:
https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/
en/pdf/products/vCenter/vmw-vrealize-operations-datasheet.pdf
vRealize Operations is also included in bundles such as the vRealize

Suite, the vCloud Suite and VMware Cloud Foundation. Traditionally,

vRealize Operations has been licensed per operating system instance
(OSI) and CPU; recently, VMware announced a new licensing option
called portable licensing unit (PLU), which offers the flexibility of a
single license to manage workloads whether they’re on-premises,
third-party hypervisors, physical servers, or supported public clouds.
SIGN UP FOR VREALIZE OPERATIONS

CLOUD
vRealize Operations Cloud is available. You can
request a trial at cloud.vmware.com/vrealize-
operations-cloud
The PLU option is available with vRealize Operations in the vCloud

Suite or vRealize Suite; and then, only with vRealize Operations
Advanced or Enterprise.
The benefit of the PLU licensing model is that there’s no license

switching or conversion required. The PLU allows usage of vRealize
Operations to manage unlimited OSIs deployed on-premises on one
vSphere CPU, or up to 15 OSIs deployed on the public cloud or phys-
ical devices. It includes VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC), all supported
public clouds, VMware Cloud Providers, and third-party hypervisors
and physical servers.
vRealize Operations Cloud

vRealize Operations Cloud is available as a subscription license with
the same features as the on-premises Enterprise Edition. This pro-
vides all the capabilities of on-premises with the benefits of SaaS. The
capabilities include continuous performance optimization, capacity
and cost management, intelligent remediation, and integrated com-
pliance. vRealize Operations Cloud is sold by OSI.

If you purchased vRealize Operations Cloud as a perpetual license,
you’ll want to take a look at the Subscription Upgrade Program for
vRealize Operations. It provides a path for customers to upgrade per-
petual vRealize Operations licenses to vRealize Operations Cloud sub-
scription licenses. For more details about the terms and conditions,
visit the pricing page of the vRealize Operations Cloud webpage at
https://cloud.vmware.com/vrealize-operations-cloud.
vRealize Advanced Edition

There are a number of reasons enterprises move up to the Advanced
edition of vRealize Operations, including:
• vRealize Operations high availability
• Customizable dashboards
• Super metrics. These are user-defined metrics that track com-

binations of metrics or properties, either from a single object or
multiple objects
• Advanced APIs
• Fine-grained cost analytics for reclamation, planning, and public

cloud cost comparison
• What-if scenarios for adding VMs to private and public

clouds, hardware procurement/decommissioning, and adding
vSAN capacity
• Business intent-based automated and schedulable workload

balancing
• vSAN-aware workload placement and host-based placement
• Automated actions
• vSAN troubleshooting and capacity management
• Monitoring of OS resources

• vRealize Orchestrator management pack
• Custom compliance templates
• Automated compliance drift remediation
• Service discovery and application dependency mapping
• ServiceNow Integration
• VMware Skyline integration
• Third-party storage, network, hyper-convergence, and multi-

cloud management packs
vRealize Operations Enterprise Edition

There are four important advantages in vRealize Operations Enterprise
that distinguish it from Advanced:
• Out-of-the-box discovery, monitoring, and troubleshooting for

packaged applications
• Multi-cloud and container monitoring management packs:

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, OpenStack,
Kubernetes
• Care system analytics management pack (for electronic health

record [HRE] mananagement systems)
• Third-party database, middleware, and application management

packs. For example, with vRealize Operations Enterprise edition,
you can use Blue Medora’s SQL Server or Oracle database man-
agement packs.
The primary reason for selecting vRealize Operations Enterprise edi-

tion is the ability to monitor applications and middleware, contain-
ers and public clouds, as well as use 180-plus different management
packs, including:
• Compute

• Storage
• Networking
• Convergence/hyperconvergence
• Other hypervisors
• Containers
• Cloud
• Connectors
• Databases
• Big data
• Applications
Learning vRealize Operations in

VMware’s Hands-On Labs
VMware’s Hands-on Labs (HOL) provides access to the entire VMware
product line. It’s available to anyone at no cost; it’s already installed,
and includes easy-to-follow detailed lab instructions (Figure 1-5).
vRealize Operations in the HOL

VMware currently offers more than 90 HOL labs, with at least six
covering specific components of the vRealize Suite. New labs are
always being released; here’s a sample of eight of the best labs to
help you learn vRealize Operations:
• HOL-2001-91-ISM-HOL - vRealize Operations 8 - What’s New

- Lightning Lab
• HOL-2001-01-CMP - vRealize Operations 7.5 - What’s New
• HOL-2001-02-CMP - vRealize Operations - Optimize the

Performance of Your vSphere Environment

Figure 1-5: VMware’s Hands-on Labs is a great way to learn vRealize
Operations.
• HOL-2001-03-CMP - vRealize Operations – Optimize and Plan

vSphere Capacity and Costs
• HOL-2001-04-CMP - Troubleshooting, Remediation and

Compliance with vRealize Operations
• HOL-2001-05-CMP - vRealize Operations Advanced Topics
These labs cover the new features of vRealize Operations and vRealize
Log Insight, how vRealize Operations manages a hybrid cloud, and
more. If you’re new to vRealize Operations and the vRealize Suite,
consider starting with the “Optimize Infrastructure Performance
with vRealize Operations Manager” lab.
Why Upgrade?
Current vRealize Operations users on an older version of vRealize
Operations may be wondering whether or not they should upgrade to
8.0. This book will provide numerous reasons for that, but to sum-
marize: The lastest edition of vRealize Operations includes improved
ease of use across the board, and a long list of benefits including
greater efficiency, troubleshooting, performance optimization, and
analytics. In addition, the upgrade process is easier than ever.

In this chapter, you’ve learned how vRealize Operations is packaged,
about different features available in each edition, and how you can
get some hands-on experience with the VMware HOL.
The next chapter dives into vRealize Operations architecture, then

shows you how to deploy vRealize Operations step-by-step, and
connect vRealize Operations to vCenter.

CHAPTER 2
Deploying vRealize
Operations
Before you start any new deployment (yes, even in a lab environ-
ment), it’s important to understand the architecture behind the
solution, and the basics of how to size it. This will ensure you don’t
get caught off guard later, unable to scale the solution as your com-
pany’s needs dictate.
You have a choice of deployment options with a SaaS version—

vRealize Cloud Operations Cloud. With this new option, on-prem-
ises vSphere clusters can still be monitored by using the vRealize
Cloud Proxy.
Figure 2-1 shows the architecture inside the vRealize Operations VM.
The single vRealize Operations VM includes the user interface,

RESTful API, vRealize Operations controller, analytics analysis, and
data storage.
By deploying more vRealize Operations VMs, you can easily create a

multi-node cluster, or even a multi-node highly-available cluster.
vRealize Operations Architecture

A huge benefit of the vRealize Operations deployment model is that
you don’t have to install a new guest OS, install a database, install an
app, or even connect it to the database.
vRealize Operations is easily deployed and can run entirely within

a single VM, that you can size to at deployment time with a simple
Remote Remote Remote
Collector Collector Collector
REPLICA MASTER
Front End Front End Front End Front End
Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster

Management Management Management Management
Collector Collector Collector Collector fRONT END

mod JK
WebUI
Tomcat
REST mod Apache

GEODE/Gemfire Communication Shared Data
API JK Web
Tomcat Server
*:6061 *:6061 AdminUI

Tomcat
Gemfire Gemfire mod JK
Locator Locator
*:10000-10010 *:10000-10010 *:10000-10010 *:10000-10010

20000-20010 20000-20010 20000-20010 20000-20010
Controller Controller Controller Controller
Replica node Master node Data node Data node

Analytics Analytics Analytics Analytics
Local Local Local Local

JDBC
JDBC
JDBC
JDBC
Host: Host: Host: Host:

5432 5432 5432 5432
Alarm Alarm Alarm Alarm

FSDB &HIS DB &HIS DB &HIS DB &HIS DB
vPostgres vPostgres vPostgres vPostgres
DataStax
DataStax
DataStax
DataStax
*:5433 *:5433
Replica DB Central DB vPostgres
*:7001, 9042 *:7001, 9042 *:7001, 9042 *:7001, 9042

Cassandra
Cluster
Figure 2-1: vRealize Operations architecture.
“t-shirt sizing” model. For enterprises that have multiple sites or

require high availability, multiple vRealize Operations appliances can
be deployed.
vRealize Operations has been rearchitected in version 8.0 to utilize

the VMware Photon OS and adds continuous availability. That means
D eploying v R eali z e O perations 23

you can take high availability to a whole new level, as a vRealize
Operations cluster can survive the failure of a fault domain, assuring
uninterrupted operations.
vRealize Operations 8.0 also allows extend clusters across data cen-
ters, replicating vRealize Operations data between sites. This even
works across layer 3 networks.
Sizing vRealize Operations

When deploying vRealize Operations for the first time, one of the
things you need to take into consideration is the size of the virtual
infrastructure you’ll manage. This will determine how you size your
vRealize Operations deployment.
During the deployment process (which we will cover in more detail

in the next chapter), you’ll be asked to size the vRealize Operations
VM as small, medium, large, extra small, extra large, remote collec-
tor standard, remote collector large, or witness node for continuous
availability clusters (Figure 2-2). These sizes match up with a range
of VM resources that will be used in your deployment, including
vCPU, vRAM, and storage resources.
Figure 2-2: Sizing a vRealize Operations deployment.

Figure 2-3: Resources available for various sized virtual machines.
Figure 2-3 shows how the different sizes correspond to the vCPU and
vRAM that will be allocated to the vRealize Operations VM.
VMware KB Article 751621 details the sizing guidelines for vRealize

Operations 8.0; please review it for more sizing information.
Using vRealize Operations Cloud relieves the burden of deployment and

sizing—VMware does that for you. Instructions on the on-boarding
process and how to start your 30-day free trial are available at https://
cloud.vmware.com/vrealize-operations-cloud.
Installing vRealize Operations the First

Time
Armed with the knowledge of vRealize Operations sizing and archi-
tecture, it’s time to begin installation.
The vRealize Operations Manager deployment guide offers pages

of installation prerequisites that you should be aware of if you’re
deploying it into a production environment. It’s always recom-
mended to have the latest version of the ESXi and vCenter before
you deploy the latest version of vRealize Operations.
Keep in mind that, unlike a traditional Windows application, with

the vRealize Operations virtual appliance-based deployment model
there’s no need to do things like create a new VM; buy a Windows
1
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/75162

Server OS license; install Windows; create a new table and user on
your SQL Server; install the Windows-based management applica-
tion; connect it to SQL; and so on.
Deploying the vRealize Operations Appliance

There are a few different ways to go about downloading and deploying
the vRealize Operations appliance. Those new to vRealize Operations
should go here: https://my.vmware.com/en/group/vmware/
evalcenter?p=vrops-eval
It will bring you to the VMware vRealize Operations evaluation center,

where you can sign up for a free, 60-day fully-functioning license
for vRealize Operations.
Existing VMware customers can go to the VMware download cen-

ter and download the vRealize Operations OVA directly from there.
If you’re licensed for vRealize Operations, you’ll need to enter your
license key after deployment. (We’ll cover where to enter your license
later in this chapter.)
Figure 2-4: Deploying an OVF Template.

Figure 2-5: Finding the proper OVF file for deployment.
Once you’ve downloaded the vRealize Operations virtual appliance,

you can go to the vSphere Client, Hosts and Clusters, then right-
click on your Virtual Datacenter or Cluster and click Deploy OVF
Template, as shown in Figure 2-4.
This will bring up the Deploy OVF Template wizard to walk you
through the process. It’s here that you’ll specify the OVA file you
downloaded from VMware.com (Figure 2-5).
After that, you’ll be walked through the deployment wizard, starting

with giving the VM a name and selecting where you’d like to deploy
it (Figure 2-6).
If you can’t do that, try creating a Windows VM in the vSphere

infrastructure, connecting to it via RDP, downloading the OVF file to
that Windows VM (because it’s on the same network as the vSphere
infrastructure), and then deploying the OVF file from there.
Next, select the virtual infrastructure resource where you’d like to

deploy the virtual appliance (Figure 2-7.)

Figure 2-6: Naming the VM.
Figure 2-7: Choosing the compute resources.

Deploying OVAs over Slow
WiFi or a WAN is a No-No
If you ever do download an OVA file (for
any virtual appliance) and try to deploy
it using the vSphere Client (Windows or
web), make sure you have a good connec-
tion. Many have struggled trying to deploy
an OVF over a WAN or slow Wi-Fi and had
to troubleshoot numerous FAILED error messages. Typically, when a
connection’s made via reliable Ethernet to the same network that the
vSphere infrastructure is on, the errors simply disappear.
Next, you’ll have a chance to review the details of what you’re about to
deploy (Figure 2-8), including the version of the vRealize Operations
and the required disk size.
Accept the VMware end user license agreement by clicking Accept

and then Next.
Figure 2-8: An overview of your setup parameters.

Now select the size of your virtual infrastructure, based on the sizing
information discussed earlier in this chapter. Sizes range from extra
small to extra large. As we saw, this will determine the resources that
will be allocated to the VM once it’s deployed.
Select the datastore where you’ll install vRealize Operations, the vir-
tual disk format, the VM storage policy (if applicable), and click Next
(Figure 2-9).
Next, select the network to which the vRealize Operations VM will

connect (Figure 2-10).
Figure 2-9: Choosing storage options for vRealize Operations.
Figure 2-10: Selecting the vRealize Operations network.

Figure 2-11: Choose a static IP address if you’re working in a production
or lab environment.
Next, you have the chance to customize the template that will be
used to create the VM (Figure 2-11). This includes the time zone and
any static IP network settings you want to use. If you’ll be using
this in a production or lab environment, using a static IP address is
recommended.
Finally, review everything and, if correct, click Finish (Figure 2-12).
After a few minutes, you should see the new vRealize Operations VM
deployed on the host or cluster specified. After you power on the VM
and a minute or so has passed, you can use the vRealize Operations
console. It will look very similar to Figure 2-13.
As you can see, it directs you to the URL for the vRealize Operations
appliance.

Figure 2-12: Review your settings before clicking Finish.
Figure 2-13: The new vRealize Operations console.

Figure 2-14: vRealize Operations Manager setup screen.
Performing Initial Configuration

Pointing your web browser to the correct URL will bring you to a
screen that looks like Figure 2-14.
As you can see, the three options are to perform an express installa-
tion, a new installation, or expand an existing installation.
In our case, we will choose the express installation to get vRealize

Operations up and running as quickly as possible; if you’d like to
see every additional installation option, choose the new installation.
If you already have an existing installation, you’d choose to expand
that existing installation to add greater scalability or high availability
to your pre-existing cluster.
Choosing the express installation kicks off the three steps of the vRe-
alize Operations Manager initial setup wizard, which is triggered by
clicking Next (Figure 2-15).

The first step is to enter the new password for the admin account.
Keep in mind that you need to use a complex password that meets
the requirements, as shown in Figure 2-16.
Figure 2-15: Creating a new cluster.
Figure 2-16: Set a strong password for the admin account.

Troubleshooting Certificate
Error Issues
There have been some recent certificate
changes that may result in a screen screen
similar to Figure A when you go to the URL
of the vRealize Operations web interface.
Figure A: A potential certificate error screen.
In the past, you could simply bypass this screen by clicking Advanced
and then Proceed. However, you may now find that this isn’t possible if
the error message says that you cannot visit this web page because the
certificate has been revoked.
If this is the case, you need to download the certificate (Figure B), add it
to your Mac OS Keychain (or Windows Certificate Manager) and set it to
always be trusted, as shown in Figure C).

Figure B: Downloading the certificate.
Figure C: Acknowledgement of the trusted certificate.
Once the certificate is set as trusted, you can refresh your web browser—
you should then be taken directly into the vRealize Operations web UI.
After clicking Next, you’re ready to complete the vRealize Operations

installation (Figure 2-17).
Additional options provide the ability to choose a custom security

certificate, and enter an NTP server address for timekeeping.

Figure 2-17: Click Finish to complete the setup.
Figure 2-18: vRealize Operations has now been deployed, and is ready for
the final steps.
Once configured, the vRealize Operations web UI displays a login

screen, at which point you can log in with the admin username and
password you configured (Figure 2-18).

vRealize Operations Manager deployment is now complete, leading
to the final five-step configuration wizard, shown in Figure 2-19.
After clicking Next and accepting the license agreement, you’re

prompted to enter your product license key, shown in Figure 2-20.
Figure 2-19: A few more steps and vRealize Operations is ready to use.
Figure 2-20: Enter the product license key.

Figure 2-21: The final step.
You can choose either the product evaluation default, or, for licensed
vRealize Operations Manager users, enter your product key.
For this tutorial, the product evaluation default was selected. One
more checkbox about being part of the VMware customer experience
improvement program, then click Next, then Finish (Figure 2-21) to
complete the installation wizard.
Configuring the VMware vSphere Cloud

Account
When first logging in to vRealize Operations 8.0, you’ll see an all
new welcome screen (also known as the quick start page), shown in
Figure 2-22.
It’s here that you’re prompted to configure a Cloud Account. This

account is a new concept for vRealize Operations 8.0. In the past,
you’d configure a “solution,” like the vCenter Adapter Instance,
for example.

Figure 2-22: The new Quick Start page.
Figure 2-23: Adding a new Cloud Account.
Cloud accounts are configured for any interface, of any kind, that
you want to perform with other systems (both on-premises and in
the cloud). For example, if you’re going to be monitoring a vSphere
cluster with vRealize Operations, you must configure a vCenter Cloud
Account to begin gathering performance data related to your hosts,
clusters, storage, and VMs.
To do that, we’ll click to Create Cloud Account and then click on Add
Account, as shown in Figure 2-23.

Select vCenter, as shown in Figure 2-24.
This brings you to the Account Information screen (Figure 2-25). It’s
here that you’ll add the name of your instance, provide your vCenter
server’s domain name, and the credentials to access it.
Figure 2-24: Choose the cloud for which you want the account.
Figure 2-25: Adding the proper credentials to the Cloud Account.

Click the plus sign to give your credential a name, user name, and
password, then click Save, as shown in Figure 2-26.
With your credentials added, you next add a display name for your
vCenter server and your vCenter server’s domain name or IP address;
then click the button Test Connection Figure 2-27).
Figure 2-26: Creating the credential.
Figure 2-27: Making sure the connection works properly.

If the test is successful, you’ll be prompted to accept the default cer-
tificate (Figure 2-28).
After clicking Accept, you should see a message like the one in Figure
2-29 that says the test was successful.
After you click OK, vRealize Operations will start collecting data from
vCenter, as shown in Figure 2-30.
Figure 2-28: Accept the certificate to allow the connection.
Figure 2-29: This will make you happy.

Figure 2-30: The functioning Cloud Account.
Figure 2-31: Enabling vSAN Data Collection on a vCenter Cloud Account.
Assuming you are using vSAN in your vSphere infrastructure, you’l

need to make sure that you enable vSAN data collection on your
vCenter cloud account, as you see in Figure 2-31.

It will take some time for vRealize Operations to gather all the data
that it needs to learn about your virtual infrastructure to start making
recommendations for optimization; but within a few minutes, you’ll
start learning where your bottlenecks are and which of your VMs,
hosts, and datastores are currently under the heaviest workloads (and
who those workloads are caused by).
Accessing vRealize Operations

Every vRealize Operations administrator should know how to access
critical vRealize Operations interfaces and how to log into those
interfaces. Here’s what you need to know:
The vRealize Operations Web User Interface

• Access the web interface by pointing your browser to the URL (IP
address or domain name) of the vRealize Operations VM. This
IP address was either statically configured when you deployed
vRealize Operations or obtained by DHCP. If you don’t know the
IP address of your vRealize Operation’s VM, simply go to the
console of the VM inside the vSphere Web Client.
• The username for the web interface defaults to admin; the pass-
word was configured when you deployed vRealize Operations.
The vRealize Operations Administrative

Interface
• This is accessed by pointing your web browser to the same IP
address or domain name used to access vRealize Operations; but
add “/admin” after it, like this: http://192.168.1.221/admin
• The username for the web interface defaults to admin; the pass-
word was configured when you deployed vRealize Operations.
See Figure 2-32.

Figure 2-32: The main admin screen.
The vRealize Operations Pre-

Readiness Assessment Tool
vRealize Operations 8.0 eases the pain of
upgrading from previous versions, thanks
to the Pre-Readiness Assessment Tool
you’ll find in the vRealize Operations Admin
interface. vRealize Operations 8.0 also sim-
plifies upgrades by allowing you to upgrade
with just a single PAK file, instead of two PAK files
as in the past. See Figure D.
Figure D: Updating vRealize Operations has never been easier.

The vRealize Operations Console and SSH
Access
• The vRealize Operations console (Figure 2-33) is typically used
for troubleshooting and network reconfiguration. The console is
accessed through the VM’s console in the vSphere Web Client.
• You can log in to the console using the same admin account
shown in Figure 2-33, but it’s much more useful to log in as the
root account.
• To start the SSH service, use service sshd start (Figure 2-34)
• Now you’ll be able to ssh to the vRealize Operations VM using

your local ssh client (Figure 2-35).
Figure 2-33: Logging into the vRealize Operations console.
Figure 2-34: Starting SSH.
Figure 2-35: Using SSH to log in.

Up Next: Configuring vRealize
Operations
In this chapter, you’ve learned about the vRealize Operations archi-
tecture, how to deploy vRealize Operations, and how to connect it to
vCenter. You should now be up and running.
In the next chapter, you’ll get detailed information on how vRealize

Operations is configured in the real world regarding single sign-on,
alert configuration, custom policies, and more.

CHAPTER 3
Configuring vRealize
Operations for Maximum
Effect
With vRealize Operations deployed and the initial configuration per-
formed, you’re ready to enable self-driving operations for your virtual
infrastructure. In this chapter, you’ll learn about some of the most
common configurations you may want to perform beyond the initial
configuration. You’ll also learn how to configure SSO authentication,
custom policies, custom alerts, predictive DRS, automated workload
balancing, capacity management, service discovery, and more.
Configuring SSO in vRealize Operations

Some administrators always log in to vSphere using root or admin.
Those are the same admins who always log in to vRealize Operations
using the SuperUser “admin” account. This is a shame, because it’s
so easy to configure single sign-on (SSO) with vRealize Operations.
The benefit of SSO is that any login you can use to log in to the
vSphere Web Client will also allow you to log in to vRealize Operations.
And once you log in to the vSphere Web Client, you can use vRealize
Operations without any authentication whatsoever. This is a huge
convenience.
Figure 3-1: Setting Network Time Protocol.
Prerequisites for Configuring SSO

To configure SSO in vRealize Operations, let’s first talk about the
prerequisites. These steps assume that you already have vSphere,
vCenter, and vRealize Operations Manager installed and configured.
Finally, make sure that the time on your vRealize Operations server is
synced with the time on your vCenter server. Network Time Protocol
(NTP) is the best way to do this, and configuring NTP in vRealize
Operations is easy. Just go into Administration, Cluster Management,
and, on the Actions menu, click on Network Time Protocol Settings,
as shown in Figure 3-1.
If you already have an NTP server (likely configured during deploy-

ment of vRealize Operations), you can move on from here. If you
don’t have an NTP server, enter the name of your NTP server and
click Add to add your NTP server.
Next, make sure you have DNS configured for your vCenter server
and vRealize Operations server. If you don’t have DNS properly con-
figured, you’ll get the error “failed to retrieve single sign on SSL
certificates, the host or port is not reachable.”
C on f iguring v R eali z e O perations f or M aximum E f f ect 50

Figure 3-2: Adding authentication sources.
Finally, note carefully the version, update, and patch levels of your
vCenter server and your vRealize Operations server. I recommend the
latest version of both.
Once you’ve met the prerequisites, you can move on to configuring

SSO. To configure SSO in vRealize Operations, go to the Administration
tab, and under Access, click on Authentication Sources. Then, click
Add to add a new authentication source, as shown in Figure 3-2.
Note that under “source type” you can configure authentication to

SSO SAML (likely pointing to vCenter), Windows Active Directory
(AD), or Open LDAP.
It’s a good idea to configure your vCenter server to use AD authenti-

cation, then configuring vRealize Operations to point to vCenter for
SSO SAML authentication. This is preferable to configuring vRealize
Operations to go to AD for authentication.
Enter a name for the authentication source (whatever you want),

keeping the default of SSO SAML for the source type. Then enter
the vCenter IP address or host name, username, and password. See
Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3: Adding source data.
Figure 3-4: Accepting the certificate.
Next, accept the certificate from vCenter and click OK, as shown in
Figure 3-4.
Then, as Figure 3-5 shows, specify which groups you want to import.
Assign vRealize Operations roles to the user groups that you’re

importing (Figure 3-6).

Figure 3-5: Specify user groups to import.
Figure 3-6: Set roles for user groups.

In this case, we added the vCenter administrators@vsphere.local
account and made it an administrator for vRealize Operations.
In production environments, you might want to create an AD group

in which you add your vRealize Operations administrators, then
authorize that group to administer or simply use vRealize Operations.
At this point, your configuration should be complete. To test it, log

out of vRealize Operations and the vSphere Web Client.
Log back into the vSphere Web Client and open the web page for
vRealize Operations; you should be automatically logged in with no
authentication.
As you can see in Figure 3-7, vRealize Operations then allows the AD
admin account to log in.
Remember: the goal of this SSO configuration is that you never have
to log in to vRealize Operations again (during normal usage), as
long as you’re already logged into the vSphere Web Client. Mission
accomplished!
Figure 3-7: If the steps were followed properly, this is the screen you
should see.

Figure 3-8: The role-based access control dashboard.
Understanding vRealize Operations Users,

Groups, and Roles
Just as with any multi-user system, vRealize Operations includes
RBAC (role-based access control) that’s based on users, groups, roles,
and privileges. Some users, groups, roles, and privileges are pre-cre-
ated for you, but you can also create your own.
All of this configuration is done in Administration -> Access Control.

See Figure 3-8.
For example, if we create a new group called Dev-Test, define what

objects it has access to, and configure it with a ReadOnly role, as
shown in Figure 3-9, anyone added to that group will have read-only
access to the vRealize Operations objects that were defined.
For more information on users, groups, roles, and privileges,

check out the vRealize Operations 8.0 Configuration Guide
(https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager
/8.0/vrealize-operations-manager-80-config-guide.pdf) in the
vRealize Operations documentation for more detailed information.

Figure 3-9: Setting permissions for the Dev-Test user group.
Figure 3-10: The Administration tab is where most customization of vRealize

Operations is done.
Understanding Policies in vRealize

Operations
Customizing the vRealize Operations configuration to your liking and
the needs of your virtual infrastructure doesn’t take long, and it’s a
task every admin needs to perform. If you don’t do it at the start, at
some point, you will likely need to do it in the future—so you might
as well do it at the beginning.
If you click on Administration at the top of the vRealize Operations

web interface, you’ll be taken to the administrative interface
where just about all vRealize Operations customizations are made
(Figure 3-10).

Figure 3-11: Setting policies.
In the administrative interface, click on Policies on the left to config-

ure and customize vRealize Operations policies (Figure 3-11).
Understanding Monitoring Policies in

vRealize Operations
Yes, vRealize Operations continually learns about your environment
and doesn’t solely work off of thresholds, but there are some things
that you inherently know about your virtual infrastructure that vRe-
alize Operations can’t know.
For example, you may have a high-priority production cluster (with

many more resources intentionally allocated) and a low priority dev/
test cluster (with many fewer resources intentionally allocated). You
don’t want vRealize Operations alerting you that you need to add
more resources to dev/test if you intentionally under-provisioned the
dev/test cluster for the workload.
Perhaps it’s more critical to be alerted to a low memory situation on a

production cluster than it is for a test/dev cluster. Or you might want
to exclude the vRealize Operations VMs from monitoring and alerting
on themselves.
You can see the importance of customization. And since policies

are applied to groups, there are times when you’ll want to wait on
the creation of new policies and first create a new group type and

associated groups. But if you already have a group type to which you
want to apply your policy, you can go ahead and create the new policy.
WHAT IS A VREALIZE OPERATIONS

POLICY?
A policy is a set of rules that you define for vRealize
Operations Manager to use to analyze and display infor-
mation about the objects in your environment. You can
create, modify, and administer policies to determine
how vRealize Operations Manager displays data in dash-
boards, views, and reports.
NOTE: Be careful if you choose to modify the default policy, as you’re modi-
fying how vRealize Operations does its job, and the information that you see
across vRealize Operations in dashboards, reports, and views will forever
be changed.
Ideally, you want to create a new policy for something such as, let’s
say, your dev/test cluster.
To do this (assuming you already had a group in mind), click on the

Policy Library tab, then the Plus sign to Create a New Policy (shown
in Figure 3-11). From there, you would give the policy a name and
description.
It’s common to create a new policy by starting with an existing

policy. The policy that you start with is called the “base policy,” as
the new policy you create inherits its settings from that policy. See
Figure 3-12.

Figure 3-12: Creating a new monitoring policy.
Figure 3-13: Applying policies to groups.
From there, as shown in Figure 3-13, you’ll associate a policy

with a group.
In this case, I associated that policy with the new “Dev-Test” group
that I created. This is called the “Monitoring Policy.”

Figure 3-14: The new policy is now in force.
At this point, if you used a policy template you have the option of just
clicking Finish to complete the policy creation. Or if you want to view
or modify all the potential options for the policy configuration and
alerts, you can do so.
When you’re done, your new policy will show up in the policy library,
as shown in Figure 3-14.
Automated Remediation in
vRealize Operations
There are many data center monitoring tools
out there that tell you that you have a problem.
Remember the robot from the old sci-fi show “Lost
In Space”? It was always throwing up its arms
and screeching “Warning! Warning! Danger!”
At one time, that may have been helpful (if stressful), but our expec-
tations and needs have evolved. Today’s tools are able to predict
problems before they happen and tell you how to fix them before

they impact your applications. Prediction and suggested remedia-
tion are the new minimum expectation. However, there are very few
tools out there that will not only predict and suggest remediation,
but automate the process.
Consider a cloud analogy. Cloud management requires a tool that

knows what can go wrong in your cloud infrastructure and automat-
ically solve it for you—before it impacts applications; and, yes, even
without notifying you about it in the middle of the night. The ideal
would be for your cloud monitoring and management tool to email
you a report in the morning that says, “I fixed these problems for you
while you were sleeping, and the applications were never impacted.”
vRealize Orchestrator
Management Pack for vRealize
Operations
VMware recently announced the vRealize
Orchestrator Management Pack for vRealize
Operations. This new management provides
self-healing for VMs, hosts, and datastores as well as
automated compliance remediation to ensure continuous host compliance.
You can download the vRealize Orchestrator Management Pack for vRe-
alize Operations here: https://marketplace.vmware.com/vsx/solutions/
management-pack-for-vrealize-orchestrator

This is exactly the type of functionality that vRealize Operations
self-driving operations can provide.
vRealize Operations offers many different actions that can be auto-

mated without any scripting, and without vRealize Automation.
Examples include powering on a VM, powering off a VM, resizing
most VM resources, and more. With these actions, vRealize Operations
is able to prevent downtime or application performance issues before
they happen.
And with the AI and ML capabilities in vRealize Operations 8.0,

self-driving operations is making teams more proactive and agile.
Automated Remediation
There are a few different ways to automatically remediate trouble
with vRealize Operations:
• Automated Workload Optimization. The ability of vRealize

Operations to move running VMs from one cluster to another, pro-
actively preventing performance bottlenecks before they happen.
• vRealize Operations Automated Actions. vRealize Operations can

perform 20 different actions on objects managed by the vCenter
adapter. You can manually perform these actions or configure
alerts to trigger remediation with one of them.
• vRealize Orchestrator Integrated Actions. The same actions that

can be automated with vRealize Operations can also be auto-
mated with vRealize Orchestrator, allowing you to perform more
complex automations.
• Webhooks. By leveraging vRealize Orchestrator integration, you

can trigger an alert based on an email, SNMP trap, or REST API
notification; that alert can then perform an automated action.
For these vRealize Operations actions to work, the vCenter adapter

must have Enable Actions set to Enable, as shown in Figure 3-15.

Figure 3-15: Make sure to check this box, or your operations will fail.
Figure 3-16: You can control a long list of actions.
You can view the multitude of different actions that you can either
perform manually or automate by going to Alerts, Alert Settings, and
Actions, as you see in Figure 3-16.

Figure 3-17: Automation actions available for a virtual machine.
Figure 3-18: Adding more memory to a virtual machine.
If you take a look at a specific vSphere object and click on the Actions
dropdown for that object, you can see the actions that apply to that
object and can be performed manually. For example, Figure 3-17
shows a VM and the manual actions that can be performed.
To automate these types of actions, you need to modify a recommen-

dation to perform an action (remediate) instead of just recommend
remediation steps. To do this, go to the Alerts menu, then into Alert
Settings, Recommendations, and find a recommendation you want
to automate.Figure 3-18, for example, shows a pre-defined recom-
mendation to add more memory to a VM.
In this case, there’s a pre-defined action as well to add more memory

to the VM to automatically remediate the memory contention issue
and resolve application slowness. See Figure 3-19.

Figure 3-19: Don’t forget to save your action, to enable automation.
Automated remediation takes alert recommendations (which already

exist in your vRealize Operations installation) and allows you to turn
on an action to take that supersedes the recommendation. (Note:
for the automated remediation to be successful, you must have set
Automate to Local, for the alert.)
When automated actions kick in, they’re displayed under

Administration, History, Recent Tasks.
While drinking your coffee in the morning, you can look in Recent
Tasks to find out everything that vRealize Operations resolved for
you while you were sleeping.
Configuring Alerts
According to the vRealize Operations documentation, vRealize
Operations Alerts are events that occur on the monitored objects
when data analysis indicates deviations from normal metric values,
or when a problem occurs with one of the vRealize Operations com-
ponents. In other words, alerts are things you need know about.

vRealize Operations Alerts come in three flavors:
• Critical
• Immediate
• Warning
Critical alerts should be acted upon immediately; immediate alerts

(somewhat counter-intuitively) should be acted on “as soon as pos-
sible”; and warning alerts should be checked “when you get time.”
Alerts are visible in a few different areas in vRealize Operations. The

most obvious is the main Alerts menu, as shown in Figure 3-20.
Figure 3-20: The main Alerts menu.
Figure 3-21: Another view of Alerts.

Another place to see alerts is from the Operations Overview, as you
can see in Figure 3-21.
vRealize Operations comes with many different alerts preconfigured.

Under the Alerts menu, then under Alert Settings, you’ll find Alert
Definitions. There, you can see all the predefined alerts; customize
those alerts; and create your own custom alerts. See Figure 3-22.
Figure 3-22: Customizing alerts.
Figure 3-23: vRealize Operations provides actionable advice on

resolving alerts.

Figure 3-24: Defining responses to alerts.
Reacting to Alerts
It’s important to know the different actions that you can take when
you receive an alert. vRealize Operations is typically very helpful in
resolving alerts by explaining the problem, offering metrics to sup-
port its analysis, and providing recommended actions to remediate
the issue (Figure 3-23).
If you select an alert in the Alerts menu, you can take ownership,
cancel the alert, suspend the alert, go to the alert definition, or release
ownership (Figure 3-24).
Predictive DRS
Back in vRealize Operations 6.4, VMware introduced predictive
distributed resource scheduler (pDRS). What does pDRS do that
DRS doesn’t?
If you’re a typical vSphere admin, it’s likely that you already use
DRS in your vSphere infrastructure, and it’s equally likely that you
love it. You may think that DRS is already perfect—but what if DRS
had the information it needed to actually predict the needs of your
applications? With that, your applications could achieve the fastest

performance possible and your vSphere infrastructure could have the
fastest workload balancing ever.
vSphere and DRS have been working together since vRealize Operations
6.2, when Intelligent Workload Placement with DRS was announced.
With Intelligent Workload Placement, vRealize Operations helped to
rebalance VM workloads across clusters.
With Intelligent Workload Placement installed, you may think that

DRS doesn’t need any help balancing workloads within a cluster;
after all, DRS already does its job very well. But let’s look at the
different approaches DRS has available to it.
Traditionally, DRS has worked by reactively balancing workloads

when applications (running on VMs) aren’t getting the resources
they need. DRS analyzes the resources allocated (CPU and memory)
and looks to see if those resources are continuously available; if they
aren’t, it moves that VM to a host that has those resources available.
While this works well in most cases, there is the potential for con-
tention and, thus, negative application performance impact (albeit
very short). DRS is included with vSphere Enterprise Plus and
vSphere Platinum.
The next step from reactive is to balance, which is the Intelligent

Workload Placement approach discussed earlier. With the bal-
ance method, vSphere DRS and vRealize Operations begin working
together.
This is an improvement over the reactive method, because vRealize

Operations is working at a higher level than DRS to analyze perfor-
mance across multiple clusters. While this is by itself better than
DRS, the downside is that it comes with high overhead and doesn’t
do anything to prevent application performance issues and conten-
tion before it happens.

Figure 3-25: Predictive DRS helps admins get ahead of the trouble curve.
Enabling Predictive Distributed Resource

Scheduler (pDRS)
Thus, neither reactive nor balanced can promise elimination of
application performance issues. While they typically fix application
performance issues very quickly, there’s no guarantee that they will;
in addition, there’s no proactive diagnosis and prevention of prob-
lems before they happen.
Predictive DRS does exactly this, helping the admin get out ahead of
their infrastructure (Figure 3-25). With minimal overhead, pDRS pre-
dicts what resources each VM will need that day using the past resource
consumption of each VM as a guide to future needs.
It combines that predictive ability with the knowledge of what VMs

are on each host and the resources that each host is able to contribute.
vRealize Operations makes these predictions using its dynamic thresh-
olds. The great thing about these dynamic thresholds is that they’re
tailored to each individual VM and application.
To enable pDRS, log into your vSphere Web Client (not vReal-
ize Operations), go to your Cluster Configuration tab, click Edit,
enable vSphere DRS and check the box to Enable Predictive DRS (see
Figure 3-26).
Next, navigate to the Administration menu in vRealize Operations,

then to Cloud Accounts. Edit your vSphere cloud account, then under
the advanced settings, enable the vCenter adapter to Provide data to
vSphere Predictive DRS, as shown in Figure 3-27.

Figure 3-26: Enabling Predictive DRS.
Figure 3-27: Getting pDRS the information it needs.
Each hour, predictive DRS will combine its knowledge of the envi-
ronment combined with the historical resource utilization of each
VM, then take action to ensure that the VMs receive the resources
they need before they’re needed. The end result is that your critical
applications never get the chance to suffer performance degradation.

Automated Workload Optimization
Announced with vRealize Operations 6.7 was a new automated
capacity management feature called automated workload optimiza-
tion (AWO). You might be thinking, “Wait! Doesn’t DRS automate
the balancing of workloads in vSphere?” The answer is that yes,
DRS automates the balancing of workloads (although, technically,
it doesn’t balance at all; it ensures that workloads get the resources
that they need).
Unlike DRS, which works within vSphere clusters, automated work-

load optimization automates the optimization of workloads between
vSphere clusters. Thus, to leverage AWO, the first requirement is
having multiple vSphere clusters.
Essentially, DRS works intra-cluster, and AWO works inter-cluster.
How Does Automated Workload Optimization

Work?
You’ll find Workload Optimization on the vRealize Operations Home
screen, under the Optimize Performance section. See Figure 3-28.
Figure 3-28: Optimizing workloads.

Figure 3-29: Business Intent is brand-new functionality in vRealize
Operations 8.0.
With vRealize Operations 7.5, it became possible to edit both

Operational Intent and Business Intent. In the past, Operational
Intent was simply called “Placement Settings.” By editing the
Operational Intent you can specify workload balancing across clus-
ters or consolidated in as few clusters as possible. It’s here that you
can also configure the cluster headroom.
The new Business Intent option, shown in Figure 3-29, allows you
to create simple or complex rules defining how you would like VMs
mapped to hosts or clusters: based on OS, environment, tier, net-
work, or custom tags.
Once you have multiple clusters managed by vRealize Operations, you

can choose to Rebalance Clusters manually (Figure 3-30), configure
rebalancing on a Schedule, or make workload balancing Automatic.

Figure 3-30: Manually rebalancing clusters.
Figure 3-31: Automatic rebalancing of clusters saves you time and in-
creases efficiency.
The ultimate goal is to go from clusters that aren’t optimized to clus-

ters that are continuously and automatically optimized, as shown in
Figure 3-31.
Maximizing Capacity Analysis with

vRealize Operations
With a common goal being to maximize consolidation, it’s important
to ensure that you don’t exceed your capacity. To prevent capacity
bottlenecks, use the Optimize Capacty Quick Start menu and click on
Assess Capacity (Figure 3-32).
By drilling down into a specific data center, you’ll learn the time
remaining before you run out of capacity, optimization recommenda-
tions, and cluster utilization based on the most constraind resources
(Figure 3-33).

Figure 3-32: Assess Capacity Quick Start.
Figure 3-33: Cluster analysis via Utilization Overview.

Figure 3-34: The red line is what you do not want to see—it indicates that
your VM is running out of memory.
From here you’ll learn the CPU, memory, and disk capacity remaining.
In this case, Figure 3-34 shows the memory capacity remaining. This
cluster is in critical shape—vRealize Operations is predicting you’ll
run out of memory within two days, based on current consumption.
vRealize Operations comes to the rescue, however, offering immedi-

ate recommendations for remediating this looming issue that could
seriously impact operations.
By optimizing capacity with vRealize Operations, you can also learn

what, if any, capacity can be reclaimed. In addition, you can perform
what-if analyses to determine the impact on capacity and perfor-
mance by making changes to your environment.

Figure 3-35: Multiple troubleshooting options are available.
Maximize Troubleshooting with

vRealize Operations
While vRealize Operations does its best to predict and prevent prob-
lems before they happen, it’s likely that at some point you’ll need to
use vRealize Operations to troubleshoot your vSphere infrastructure.
To that end, vRealize Operations constantly applies performance

analysis to identify bottlenecks. As you can see in Figure 3-35,
vRealize Operations offers troubleshooting dashboards for clusters,
datastores, hosts, VMs, and vSAN, in addition to the ability to trou-
bleshoot via log data.
Figure 3-36 shows how easy it is to use the Troubleshoot a Cluster

dashboard. It enables you to quickly identify the type of contention
faced by each VM in the cluster.
Besides the troubleshooting dashboards, the real power of vRealize

Operations shines through when you realize how often the vRealize
Operations Smart Alerts are able to point you to the root cause of an
issue and provide recommendations for remediation so that you can
quickly resolve any trouble that might occur.

Figure 3-36: The cluster troubleshooting dashboard.
vSAN Management
In the past, vRealize Operations was capable of analyzing vSAN,
but only when you installed the vRealize Operations Management
Pack for vSAN. vSAN management has been included since vRealize
Operations 6.6, but it must be activated and connected to vCenter.
Note that vRealize Operations Standard edition includes the vSAN

Overview and Migration Dashboards, whereas vRealize Operations
Advanced and Enterprise include additional vSAN-related features
such as vSAN What-If Scenarios, vSAN-Aware Workload Balancing,
and vSAN Performance, Capacity, and Troubleshooting.
With vRealize Operations 8.0, the vSAN management pack is acti-

vated by default—all you need to do is to configure it.
To configure vSAN, go to Cloud Accouts, select your vCenter server,

click Edit, click on the vSAN tab, then slide the vSAN slider, as shown
in Figure 3-37.
After successfully testing the connection (by clicking Test

Connection), make sure that you click Save Settings.

Figure 3-37: Enabling vSAN configuration.
At this point, vRealize Operations will begin gathering statistics from

your vCenter server related to vSAN; then you’ll quickly start seeing
some very insightful statistics and recommendations from vRealize
Operations.
vSAN Dashboards in vRealize Operations

vRealize Operations offers a number of dashboards, including:
• vSAN Capacity Overview
• Migrate to vSAN
• vSAN Operations Overview
• Troubleshoot vSAN
Figure 3-38 displays the vSAN Operations Overview Dashboard.
These dashboards are invaluable. They allow you to plan capac-

ity across multiple vSAN clusters, optimize vSAN clusters, prevent
vSAN trouble before it happens, and, if needed, troubleshoot vSAN
(Figure 3-39).

Figure 3-38: The vSAN Operations Overview Dashboard.
Figure 3-39: Troubleshooting a vSAN cluster.
Configuring Service Discovery

Service Discovery is now native in vRealize Operations. It comes with
41 known services by default, and you can add your own services
to discover more. You get all of this with VMware Tools—no agent
is needed.

Service discovery is configured under Manage Applications and
Discover Services. From here, you click to Configure Service
Discovery, as shown in Figure 3-40.
Figure 3-40: Service discovery allows you to see relationships and dependen-
cies between VMs.
Figure 3-41: Executing a script inside the guest OS is a new ability enabled by
Service Discovery.

Figure 3-42: Service Discovery in action.
One of the best features of Service Discovery is the ability to execute

scripts in the guest OS (Figure 3-41), and even list the top processes
consuming resources inside the guest OS. These functions simplify
the troubleshooting process by eliminating the need to log in to a
server to start triaging what’s happening inside the guest OS.
Service Discovery works by using network communication to discov-

ery relationships and dependencies (Figure 3-42).
Later in this book you’ll learn about vRealize Operations Application

Discovery, which also provides critical information about applica-
tions, but does it using agents and collectors.
Next Up: Self-Driving vSphere

In this chapter, you’ve learned how to configure the most common
vRealize Operations features and how to maximize your vSphere
infrastructure using vRealize Operations features like predictive DRS,
vSAN management, and powerful capacity dashboards.
With the latest version of vRealize Operations, even more powerful

features have been released. In the next chapter we’ll dive into the
latest vRealize Operations features that will allow you to enable a
self-driving vSphere infrastructure.
Drive on!

CHAPTER 4
Maximizing vRealize
Operations
vRealize Operations is powerful—but do you know just how powerful
it is? If not, this chapter is for you. With vRealize Operations 6.7,
VMware brought “Self-Driving Operations for the Data Center,” and
with subsequent releases of vRealize Operations—7.0, 7.5, and now
8.0—VMware has taken this to an entirely new level. What does this
mean for you?
VMware says that self-driving operations bring “Continuous per-

formance optimization based on operational and business intent,
efficient capacity management, proactive planning, and intelligent
remediation.”
The goal for self-driving operations is to provide a unified manage-

ment platform so that the IT organization can optimize, plan, and
scale VMware Cloud and multiple public cloud deployments, from the
applications to the infrastructure.
Let’s take a look at what vRealize Operations 8.0 brings to the table.
New vRealize Operations 8.0 Features

vRealize Operations 8.0 is major release, featuring some amazing
new capabilities. Its self-driving operations break down into four
areas, and that’s how we’re going to break down the new features,
starting with intent-driven continuous performance.
Figure 4-1: How continuous optimization for Cloud Zones works.
Intent-Driven Continuous Performance

Optimization
vRealize Operations has become a next-generation cloud manage-
ment platform (CMP). This is made obvious with the additions of
cloud accounts, cloud zones, and projects that span operations and
automation.
As new workloads span hybrid clouds and global data centers, vRe-
alize Operations is prepared to ensure performance is always opti-
mized, with business intent in mind.
vRealize Operations can perform workload optimization for Cloud

Zones (Figure 4-1). Cloud Zones are created in vRealize Automation
(vRA), while the management pack creates a comparable Cloud Zone
object in vRA.
When integrated, vRealize Operations will be responsible for

Operational Intent and vRealize Automation will be responsible
for Business Intent, based on policies defined on the Cloud Zone
(Figure 4-2).
M aximi z ing v R eali z e O perations 84

Figure 4-2: Integration between vRealize Operations and vRealize Automation in
the the latest version of both.
Additional features include integration and common constructs with

vRealize Orchestrator, and workload optimization and balancing for
VMware Cloud on AWS.
Efficient Capacity and Cost

Management
Anything that you can do to use capacity more efficiently will result
in greater ROI for the business. vRealize Operations Manager 8.0
offers a number of new capacity management features that will allow
you to do just that. Upgrades include:
• Enabling HCIOps with New vRealize Operations 8.0 Features
vRealize Operations 8.0 adds powerful new capacity and cost man-
agement and planning capabilities (Figure 4-3). They include

features like workload placement for hyperconvergence, workload
planning what-if analysis, and data center comparison for private
clouds (Figure 4-4).
These new capabilities will make the HCIOps operating model easier
and more efficient, as HCIOps teams will much more easily be able to
perform workload planning, balancing, optimization, capacity plan-
ning, monitoring and troubleshooting.
Figure 4-3: There are more ways to plan for capacity and cost manage-
ment than ever before.
Figure 4-4: Data center comparisons can help maximize ROI.

Figure 4-5: Track your VMware Cloud-on-AWS cloud spend automatically.
Multi-Cloud Decision-Making Intelligence

Another new feature of vRealize Operations is the ability to moni-
tor VMware Cloud on AWS costs, using bills from the VMware Cloud
Service portal (Figure 4-5).
This allows you to combine capacity analytics with cost information,

making it easy to understand and track how operational efficiency
and capacity management drives cost efficiency.
This cost visibility is extended to public clouds through integration

with Cloud Health by VMware, as shown in Figure 4-6.
Intelligent Remediation
vRealize Operations 8.0 has made many improvements in the area
of intelligent remediation and self-driving operations, powered
by advanced AI. These upgrades allow you to predict, prevent, and
troubleshoot faster—including actionable insights, correlating
metrics, and logs—with unified observability from applications to
infrastructure.

Figure 4-6: A wide range of cost analytics are available.
Troubleshooting Workbench
One such improvement is the new troubleshooting workbench. The
workbench provides a unified IT operations view into applications
and infrastructure health for anomaly detection and expedited root
cause analysis.
There are a number of different ways to get to the new Troubleshooting

Workbench—the fastest way is to find it under Troubleshoot in the
Quick Start menu, shown in Figure 4-7.
To begin troubleshooting, use the search box to find the object you
want to troubleshoot, as shown in Figure 4-8.

Figure 4-7: The new troubleshooting workbench.
Figure 4-8: Searching the workbench.
Once inside the Troubleshooting Workbench, vRealize Operations

diplays potential trouble spots by showing events, property
changes, and anomalous metrics associated with the object you’re
troubleshooting. It also provides the ability to set the scope of the
investigation, allowing you to quickly and easily narrow or broaden
your search (see Figure 4-9).

Figure 4-9: Honing in on the potential problem.
From there, it’s easy to drill down deeper and find the root cause
of an issue. For example, in Figure 4-10, you can see that the vir-
tual machine has a guest OS memory demand that exceeds its
memory limit.
The new Troubleshooting Workbench allows you to easily iden-

tify potential evidence, analyze alerts, correlate metrics, and ana-
lyze events.
Application-Aware Operations
Another new feature of vRealize Operations 8.0 is additional out-
of-band (OOB) applications monitoring and custom scripting (Figure
4-11). With the addition of application-aware operations, you’ll be
able to gain deeper insight than ever before and troubleshoot appli-
cation issues faster than in the past.

Figure 4-10: The problem has been located.
Figure 4-11: Application monitoring is easier and more comprehensive

than ever.
vRealize Operations easily and automatically discovers VMs and apps,

deploys agents with full lifecycle management capabilities, and col-
lects the required metrics for observability and troubleshooting for
common packaged applications.

Figure 4-12: Multi-cloud management is improved with features like
Azure management pack integration.
Relationships between applications and infrastructure are mapped

by vRealize Operations to provide visualization of the full stack and
decrease time-to-identify root cause of performance and availabil-
ity issues.
In addition, vRealize Operations 8.0 offers a number of enhance-

ments to management packs across software-defined data centers
(SDDC), cloud pods, containers/PKS, vRO, NSX-T, and Skyline. To
take one example (Figure 4-12), a new Microsoft Azure management
pack is now native.
This management pack is activated by default. To connect it to Azure,

simply add an Azure cloud accout, as shown in Figure 4-13.

Figure 4-13: Adding Microsoft Azure to cloud accounts.
Figure 4-14: Find out where you’re compliant—and not—with regulations

at a glance.
Integrated Compliance and

Configuration
Compliance is starting to become front-and-center for organizations,
and VMware recognizes this. It’s why vRealize Operations 8.0 offers
integrated functionality for compliance and configuration manage-
ment, including simplified compliance workflows (Figure 4-14).

Management Packs from the
VMware Solutions Exchange
While vRealize Operations 8.0 includes
more native management packs than
ever before, you still have the option
to download hundreds of VMware and
third-party management packs from
the VMware Solutions Exchange. Find it at
https://marketplace.vmware.com/vsx/
Popular management packs for vRealize Operations include VMware NSX,

vRealize Orchestrator, container monitoring, HPE OneView, Dell EMC
Enterprise Storage Analytics, and many more from Blue Medora.

With regulations like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulations
(GDPR) now common, and more coming online regularly, this is a
feature that should not be overlooked.
Upgrades to Regulatory and SDDC

Compliance
The updates allow admins to compare vSphere, vSAN, NSX and
VMware Cloud on AWS compliance status against DISA, FISMA, ISO,
CIS, PCI, and HIPAA requirements. There is also the ability to create
custom compliance standards.
Monitor Compliance for VMs in VMware

Cloud on AWS
Enable security configuration for vSphere, vSAN, NSX and VMware
Cloud on AWS with out-of-the box cluster, host, and VM compliance
dashboards. See Figure 4-15.
Figure 4-15: Compliance monitoring extends to cloud environments.

A COMMUNITY OF SHARING
The VMware Sample Exchange is a community sharing site
where fellow vRealize Operations administrators share
their vRealize Operations dashboards and super-metrics,
making them available for free download and import into
your vRealize Operations instance. You can try the sample
exchange for yourself at - https://vrealize.vmware.com/
sample-exchange/
Behold the Power of vRealize

Operations 8.0
Through this book you have gained a solid understanding vRealize
Operations—how it works, how it’s packaged, how it’s installed, and
how it’s configured.
VMware vRealize Operations delivers self-driving IT operations

management from apps to infrastructure to optimize, plan, and
scale hybrid cloud and HCI deployments while unifying multi-cloud
monitoring.

Get Started with vRealize
Operations Today!
If you already have vRealize Operations but
aren’t running the latest version, check out
the vRealize Operations Upgrade Center:
https://www.vmware.com/products/vreal-
ize-operations/upgrade-center.html
If you don’t have vRealize Operations in place already,

you can sign up for a free 60-day evaluation here.
https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=vrops-eval
For more information about vRealize Operations Cloud, go to:
https://cloud.vmware.com/vrealize-operations-cloud
Powered by AI, it helps IT run production operations hands-off and

hassle-free with a unified operations platform, delivering continuous
performance optimization, efficient capacity management, proactive
planning, intelligent remediation, and integrated compliance.
Now that you’ve seen what vRealize Operations 8.0 can do, why not
give it a try today?

VMware GG Maximizing VMware VRealize8.0 Ebook FINAL

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

VMware GG Maximizing VMware VRealize8.0 Ebook FINAL

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

V M WA R E P R E S E NTS

Helping You Navigate

Copyright © 2020 by ActualTech Media

Chapter 2: Deploying vRealize Operations  22

The Gorilla is the professorial sort that

This is a special place where readers can

When we have a great thought, we express

Takes readers into the deep, dark depths of a

Discusses items of strategic interest to busi-

Getting Started with

What Is vRealize Operations?

VMware has designed vRealize Operations to provide what it calls

EXPERIENCED VREALIZE OPERATIONS

Many organizations are missing crucial information about their data

With the release of vRealize Operations 6.7, vRealize Operations

G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 8

Edge Data Center Managed Public Cloud

Figure 1-1: An overview of vRealize Operations architecture.

capabilities—and now, with vRealize Operations 8, VMware has

With vRealize Operations 8.0, the core AI-powered self-driving

• Predictive forecasting. Drives automated workload balancing

• Troubleshooting Workbench. Performs root cause analysis based

• Action framework. Drives remediation using built-in actions

G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 9

Integrated Configuration Efficient Capacity &

Figure 1-2: vRealize Operations capabilities.

The new capabilities included with vRealize Operations 8.0 unlock

One of these use cases is hyperconverged operations, or HCIOps.

This combined power of the storage and operations teams, made

Use Cases Unlocked by

HCI Hybrid Cloud App-aware Compliance Multi-Cloud

Figure 1-3: Scenarios which vRealize Operations 8.0 can manage.

G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 10

No matter your version, the self-driving capabilities of vRealize

• Reduced software license costs

• Improve operational efficiency

• Reduced hardware storage costs

See Figure 1-4 for an overview.

These outcomes are made possible by vRealize Operations’ self-driv-

When deployed on-premises, the vRealize Operations virtual

G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 11

2. Prevent bottlenecks and downtime. Where are the resource bottlenecks

3. Correlate events and changes. With more complex virtual infrastructure

G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 12

5. Achieve a unified view. Too many so-called virtualization management

In the past, when virtual infrastructures were smaller, more static,

Today, enterprises can be running hundreds of VMs on each host

G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 13

Reduce Cut Reduce Improve in Reduce

Performance Optimization Business Operational

INTENT & POLICIES

Capacity & Cost Optimization Admin

Metrics, Events, Configurations, Logs

SDDC (VCF) EDGE VCCP VMC Public Cloud

Figure 1-4: A high-level view of vRealize Operations’ self-driving abilities.

While the adoption of virtualization management tools has

G etting S tarted with V M ware v R eali z e O perations 14

How to Buy vRealize Operations

Assuming you already have vSphere on-premises, you can download

vRealize Operations Cloud also comes with a 30-day free trial.

vRealize Operations Editions

vRealize Operations is offered in three editions: Standard, Advanced,

vRealize Operations is also included in bundles such as the vRealize

Chapter 2: Deploying vRealize Operations 22

:6061 :6061 AdminUI

:10000-10010 :10000-10010 :10000-10010 :10000-10010

:7001, 9042 :7001, 9042 :7001, 9042 :7001, 9042