Configure the vSphere solution

The next step in installing vRealize Operations is to connect it to your vCenter(s), and the way to do this is to configure the VMware vSphere Solution.

Solutions are how vRealize connects to resources to manage them. A solution is usually delivered by way of a separately installed Management Pack. The VMware vSphere Solution is, however, installed automatically during the initial installation of vRealize Operations Manager, so there is no further code installation required, just configuration.

Tip

The End Point Operations solution is also installed automatically during vRealize Operations installation. We will cover other solutions in Chapter 7, vRealize Operations Manager Solutions and the End Point Operations solution in detail in Chapter 10, End Point Operations.

Solutions, or Management Packs, usually contain the following:

• Adapter(s): A plug in to vRealize Operations that connects to the resource being managed, and collects metrics and properties.
• Dashboards: Pre-configured dashboards in vRealize Operations to help troubleshoot and visualize the resource being managed.
• Content: Alerts, Symptoms, Views, Actions, and Reports specific to the resource being managed.

In the vRealize Operations UI, click on the Administration icon highlighted in the following screenshot:

Solutions is the first item on the Administration panel, so it will already be selected. You will see the End Point Operations (labelled Operating Systems/Remote Monitoring) and the VMware vSphere Solutions, in the Solutions panel on the right.

Note

A note on the credentials required by vRealize Operations:

vRealize Operations requires credentials to connect to your vCenter(s). There are two type of credentials that can be configured:

• Standard Credentials: These are used by the adapter to log into your vCenter(s), and collect metrics and properties. The login ID used by the adapter needs to have at least read permissions to the objects it is collecting.
• Registration Credentials: These are optional, but recommended if the standard credentials do not have vCenter administrative permissions.

Allowing vRealize Operations to register with vCenter will enable it to apply the vRealize Operations plug-in to the vSphere Web Client. This means that you will be able to see things such as the Health status of your VMs, and launch vRealize Operations from the vSphere Web Client.

Click on the VMware vSphere solution to select it and then the cog icon to start the solution configuration.

The VMware vSphere solution consists of two adapters:

• vCenter Adapter: For collection of the metrics and properties of everything managed by a vCenter
• vCenter Python Actions Adapter: Used by Actions within vRealize Operations to perform actions on vSphere objects. For example, to reconfigure, or power on a VM.

Configuring the vCenter adapter

The configuration panel for the vCenter adapter is shown first. Click on the arrow next to advanced Settings so that you can see all the 12 fields of this panel. They should be filled in as follows:

1. Display name: What the adapter will be called. For example, Production vCenter 1.
2. Description: A free form text field you can use to add a description.
3. vCenter Server: The IP address or FQDN of the first vCenter you want to connect the adapter to
4. Credential: Click on the green plus icon to add a credential.
   

   The manage credential panel will require the following information:

   • Credential Name: A free from field for you to name the credential. For example, Production vCenter 1 Admin User.
   • User Name: A user with sufficient permissions to collect the data.
   • Password: The password for the data collection user.

   Click on OK to save the credential and continue.

   At this point, you should test your connection to vCenter by clicking on the Test Connection button. A dialogue box showing you the details of your vCenter's certificate will appear. Click on OK to continue if you trust the certificate. If you have configured the credentials correctly, you will get a dialogue box saying Test was successful. Click on OK to continue. Now let's look at the Advanced Settings options:

5. Collector/Groups: Use this drop down option to select the specific node or Collector Group you want the adapter to run on. The Default Collector Group contains all the nodes in the cluster and is generally the option you should select.

   You may select a specific node where you have particular sizing or design considerations, such as knowing the adapter is going to collect significantly more metrics in the future, and you wish to avoid an adapter rebalance.

   Collector Groups are used to group Remote Collectors together for high availability purposes, and are discussed in the Administration Panel section towards the end of this chapter.

6. Auto Discovery: If this is set to True, then any new objects added to vSphere after this initial configuration will be automatically added to vRealize Operations. If it is set to False, they won't. This is generally used post-installation if, for example, you want to pause discovery or if you are doing some maintenance work, and don't want the new items to appear in vRealize Operations.
7. Process Change Events: vRealize Operations collects change events such as VMotion Initiated or VM reconfigured from vCenter. You can turn this collection off by setting this field to False from the default setting of True. Again, this is probably most useful if you are doing some maintenance and don't want to clog vRealize Operations with un-needed event information.
8. Enable Collecting vSphere Distributed Switch, Virtual Machine Folder, and vSPhere Distributed Port Group: If any of these are set to False, it disables the collection of that object type. This allows you to reduce your dataset size by disabling the collection of object types you may be less interested in.
9. Exclude Virtual Machines from Capacity Calculations: This will reduce the nightly analytics load and would generally be used in implementations that were reaching the limits of scalability.
10. Maximum Number of Virtual Machines Collected: This limits the number of Virtual Machines the adapter can collect for. This would be used if you were worried about scalability and wanted to govern the adapter's collection capability.
11. Registration User: If you are using a registration user, as described in the previous tip box, you enter its login details here.
12. Registration Password: This is the password for the registration user.

Once you have completed the panel, click on Save Settings. Before we click on Next in the wizard, we should configure the Python Adapter.

Configuring the vCenter Python Adapter

The vCenter Python Adapter provides the Actions functionality to provide remediation capabilities. We will cover Actions in Chapter 5, Alerts, Symptoms, Recommendations, and Actions.

Click on vCenter Python Actions Adapter at the top of the Manage Solution panel.

The vCenter Python Adapter has only 5 fields to fill in. They are a subset of the vCenter Adapter fields, so follow the steps in the previous section, changing Display name and Description to something appropriate for the Python Adapter. The credential will require vCenter administrative permissions.

Once complete, click on Save Settings and then click on Next to bring up a final panel that will define your initial monitoring goals.

Defining monitoring goals

The final step in configuring the vCenter Solution is to define your initial monitoring goals. This will create your Default policy. There are five sections in the Define monitoring goals panel to consider:

• Which objects do you want to be alerted on?: The default is all vSphere objects, but if you want to just be alerted on infrastructure, or just on VMs, click on the radio button to change the selection.
• Which type of alerts do you want to enable?: The default is Health, Risk, and Efficiency. If you want to remove any of these alerts, untick the check-box.
• Overcommit CPU in your Environment?: This will define how capacity planning for CPU is set up. The default of Yes to overcommit CPU is generally the most appropriate and will set CPU to a Demand capacity model.
• Configure Memory Capacity Based on?: This will define how capacity planning for memory is set up. The three options are:
  • True Demand – Most aggressive: This will set memory to a Demand based capacity model.
  • Memory Consumed – vSphere Default: This will set the capacity model to be based on memory consumed by vSphere as reported in vCenter.
  • Do not Overcommit – Most Conservative: This is a pure Allocation model.

    Tip

    We will cover Demand and Allocation capacity models and how you tune your policies in depth in Chapter 6, Capacity Planning and Capacity Projects.

    As described in that chapter, although the default of Memory Consumed is fine, there may be occasions where you would want to start with a pure Allocation model without overcommit.

• Enable vSphere Hardening Alerts: This will enable the out of the box vSphere Hardening Guidelines alerts. The default of No will be fine for now. We will enable them during an exercise later in this chapter.

Once you have made your selections, click on Next and then Finish to complete the configuration. You have now completed configuring the VMware vSphere Solution and you will now see it collecting and receiving data in the Solution Details panel, as seen in the following screenshot: