How-To: VMware vRealize Operations Manager Installation

I’ve recently being playing around with the vRealize Suite as part of on-going evaluations into various management tools. Today I’m going to cover the installation process for vRealize Operations Manager. There have been a number of improvements in the latest version of Operations Manager. It was not just a name change from vCOPS to vROps as part of the latest release, there have been a number of great features added and I think VMware have finally put the effort into making their management suite of products work cohesively. I’m not going to go into the ream of features and updates to vRealize Operations Manager as others have done a far better job at that than I can but I can provide a step by step installation guide.

DEPLOYMENT

Step 1:

Go to VMware vRealize site and download a trial version of vROps. You will require a VMware account to do this and agree to any licensing. You can download the OVA file for vROps to your local computer. Once you have downloaded the appliance you can go into vCenter and select Deploy from OVF Template

Step 2:

Select the OVA file just downloaded and click Next

Step 3:

vRealize version and the size on disk will be displayed. Click next to continue.

Step 4:

Accept the license form VMware and click Next

Step 5:

Enter a name for the vROps appliance and place the appliance in the relevant folder. In this instance I have put it into Development as this is an evaluation install.

Step 6:

You can select different size configurations from Very Small to X-Large depending on the number of VMs that need to be monitored and analysed. Depending on the configuration size you’re vCPU and Memory requirements will vary. Click Next.

Step 7:

Select the required resource pool. Click Next to continue.

Step 8:

Select the datastore and click next to continue

Step 9:

You may have a requirement to thick provision, in my case I don’t so I’ve selected Thin Provision. Choose whichever option you prefer and click Next.

Step 10:

Enter the networking details for the vROps appliance and click Next

Step 11:

Confirm the settings for the appliance and click Finish to complete the deployment

START UP:

Step 12:

Open a console into the newly deployed appliance. You will see the vmware screen appear as the appliance writes the new configs.

 

Once the appliance has completed the installation you will see a similar screen to the below. Next you need to launch the web console on the IP address provided earlier as part of the deployment to configure the start-up configurations.

Step 13:

Open a web browser and if prompted to accept https site settings click through the prompts to continue. You will then be taken to a Get Started screen. If this is the first appliance with the vROps farm click New Installation, otherwise you can choose to expand a current vROps system. A new option is to select the Express Installation. I haven’t tested this and the next few steps are all related to the New Installation.

Step 14:

Click Next on the Getting Started initial setup for a new cluster.

Step 15:

Enter a password for the admin user and click Next

Step 16:

At this point you can choose to install a CA signed certificate or even a third-party certificate or just use the defaults. As this is an evaluation environment I’ve selected the default certificate. Click Next.

Step 17:

Enter a cluster name and also select which NTP server you want to synchronize against.

Step 18:

Click Finish to finalize the initial setup.

Step 19:

You will be taken to a newly designed configuration screen which shows the current cluster status. Click on Start vRealize Operations Manager to allow vRealize to come online. You can see from the State that vROps is currently Powered Off and Offline.

Step 20:

Once vROps begins the start up process a notice is received to ensure there are enough nodes in the cluster to handle the required workload. Click Yes to continue.

Step 21:

Once vROps is setup and started you will notice the state will change.

Step 22:

Enter the vROps IP address or DNS name into a browser and you will receive a log in prompt.

LOG IN:
Step 23:

Once you log in you will get prompted for some more configuration settings. Select New Environment if this is a new environment or you can import data from a current vCOPS environment. Click Next.

Step 24:

Accept the license and click Next

Step 25:

Enter a license key if you have one or just continue with a Product Evaluation and click Next.

Step 26:

Click Finish to complete the login.

CONFIGURATION:

Step 27:

Now that vROps has been deployed the next step is to get it configured as quickly as possible so you can start to collect data. The initial screen you will see is the admin and configuration screen for vROps. The first step in this process is to add a license if one was not already added. As mentioned above you can continue with just an evaluation license but if you do happen to get your hands on a license you might as well enter it at this point

Step 28:

In order to get the collectors working some credentials will need to be configured so that the collector config can pull on those credentials. Click on Credentials and then select the + sign.

Step 29:

Enter the credentials and add a credential name, username and password. Click Ok to save it.

Step 30:

Now that the credentials have been added you will need to configure the VMware vSphere solution. Select Solutions and click the configure icon for the solution

Step 31:

Select the adapter you want to configure and enter adapter settings. In this instance I will be monitoring a Flexpod based vCenter environment and will use the credential added earlier

Step 32:

Select OK on the certificate request

Step 33:

Click Ok

Step 34:

If vCenter is associated with a previous vCOPS environment that is not being migrated you will receive this prompt. Select Yes to override the other system

Step 35:

Next you can configure the advanced settings to allow auto discovery. Do so and click Next.

Step 36:

Define the monitoring goals for the new environment. This can be subjective and modified to suit your needs. Once completed click Next.

Step 37:

Click Finish to complete the configuration of the solution

Step 38:

The collection status for the vCenter Adapter is now set to Collecting. This also shows that it is receiving data. The next step to complete is the Python Actions Adapter to allow vROps to perform actions within vCenter. Select the configuration icon for the solution as per a previous step

Step 39:

Enter the adapter name and the credential to use to connect to vCenter. Click Save Settings

Step 40:

Now you will see both adapters are collecting.

INTERFACES

Step 41:

Now that you’ve done all the hard work it’s time to get into the interfaces to see what data is being captured. Anyone that has used vCOPS in the past will notice the omission of the numbers from health, risk and efficiency metrics. According to VMware these were just causing confusion. It takes about 20 minutes for a full scan to be done on the environment and for information to flow up.

vROps now shows what the workload usage is and which resources are being constrained. In this example the CPU is constrained. There really has been a major improvement of the analysis metrics and interfaces in this release of vROps. While not shown here, vROps also provides recommendations for constrained resources in the environment which adds great value to the product. At the moment it’s not possible to action all of those recommendations directly in vCenter but it is something that VMware are working on for the next dot release of vROps.

The vSphere Virtual Machine Configuration Summary shows the VM OS types, memory, vCPU and VMware Tools versions. This can be quite useful for a quick overview of the environment

I’m not going to add any more interface screenshots than that. The best thing to do it get your hands on a copy and install a trial version in your environment. I’d also recommend talking to your VMware rep to discuss what you want to get out of the product as this can help guide your evaluation/implementation.