VMware releases the SDDC Management Health Solution 2.0

Back in the month of September, I wrote about the VMware SDDC Health Solution which would help you deploy a unified management pack within vROps to monitor the health of your SDDC Management Stack. During that first release, the product was limited to monitor vCenter and vRealize Operations Manager. I did mention that it was a big step and if VMware could continue to invest on adding the rest of the solutions of the management stack into this unified management pack, it would help provide a Single Pane to SDDC customers to monitor the health and performance of there SDDC Management Stack which is huge.

The engineering team at VMware just took this to the next level by releasing the version 2.0 of this management pack today.

In its new Avatar, the management pack would now support the following components of the Software Defined Data-center.

• VMware vCenter 
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager 
• VMware vRealize Automation 
• VMware vSAN 
• VMware vRealize LogInsight
• VMware vRealize Business for Cloud
• VMware NSX for vSphere

The management pack now supports 5 additional components and it covers mostly everything you would use in a SDDC Management Stack. While I have used this and was involved in Beta I am ready to install the GA build in my environment and play with it. Here is the overview of the solution from solution exchange.

Reference - https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/products/vmware-sddc-management-health-solution

Overview

VMware SDDC Health Solution provides Single pane of glass towards the SDDC Management stack and provides health (availability & product effectiveness) and configuration.

It provides validations against

- vSphere Hardening Guide

- NSX Hardening Guide

Highlights

• SDDC Health Management : Overview
• SDDC Health Management : Historical Trend
• Health & Configuration based alerts

Description

SDDC Health solution bundles the capability of monitoring various application components of the SDDC management stack. The intent of the Solution is to provide Single Pane of Glass to isolate the health problems in the applications running on the SDDC management plane.

New SDDC Management Dashboard which includes the following:

• SDDC Health Management : Health Overview
• SDDC Health Management : Historical Trend
• SDDC Health Management Apps : Infrastructure View
• SDDC Health Management Apps : Service View
• Health based alerts
• Config based alerts
• Top Recommendations 

Go get it!!

vRealize Operations 6.3 brings VMware SDDC Health Solution

With vRealize Operations 6.3 out there for close to 3 weeks now, I have seen a number of posts around the new features. What I have not seen being spoken about is this hidden gem called "VMware SDDC Health Solution".

I believe this is the first step towards, monitoring the VMware SDDC Stack using vRealize operations, which goes beyond monitoring performance, utilization or capacity. This solution helps you go deep into the various roles of the management stack for application level monitoring. To begin with, the solution has been rolled out as a Version 1.0.

With this first release, the SDDC Solution will help you monitor the key services of vRealize Operations Manager and vCenter Server. It will provide a fancy out of the the box dashboard which will help you monitor these services and some out of the box, pre-configured alerts which will help you troubleshoot issues when they arise. The hope is that VMware will take this solution with the future releases to other components of the SDDC stack, inclusive of the entire management and automation stack to have a full fledged monitoring solution for the entire SDDC stack out of the box. While it is possible to monitor the entire stack today, but having a solution which can bring everything at one place with minimal effort is GOLD... I believe this is a step in that direction and I am ready to implement the solution for my customers.

Here is the solution brief:

Overview

VMware SDDC Health Solution provides Single pane of glass towards the SDDC Management stack and provides health, efficiency, validation and configuration. VMware SDDC Health Solution Version 1.0 supports the following:

• vCenter health
• vRealize Operations Manager health

Highlights

• SDDC Management Apps Health Overview

• SDDC Application Components Overview

• SDDC Management App Alerts

Description

SDDC Health solution bundles the capability of monitoring various application components of the SDDC management stack. The current version of SDDC Health solution combines the Health aspects from the vRealize Operations Manager and vCenter Server Appliance in to a Single dashboard.

Compatibility

VMware SDDC Health Solution is compatible with:

• VMware vCenter Server 5.5
• VMware vCenter Server 6.0
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.3

Resources

SDDC Health Solution 1.0 Release Notes

VMware SDDC Health Solution 1.0 User Guide

More details - https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/products/vmware-sddc-health-solution 

The installation and configuration is available on the user guide and is pretty simple to follow. So go ahead and get on the journey of closely monitoring your SDDC environments.

Share and Spread the Knowledge...

Moving to a New Role: A New Challenge - A New Opportunity!

I wanted to share the good news with all the readers of vXpress, my friends & colleagues across the globe about a change in my professional career which I think would be one of the most important step forward for the next decade of my career. It is time to unlock some new ideas and take up the new challenge.

I have been working with VMware in my second innings for close to 3 years now. For those who are not aware, I was at VMware for 2 years back in 2009-10 working as a Technical Lead within the Global Support Services team. Needless to say that all the in-depth knowledge about VMware concepts and technology came to me with my experience at GSS where I had to face one challenge after another to solve issues faced by clients related to VMware and the entire eco-system around it. 

When I joined them back after a small stint with a system integrator, I was lucky to be a part of the Professional Service group which was a start-up of sorts for India. I still remember that we were a 2 member team with myself & Samir Roshan, doing all the heavy lifting around all the engagements.

Today as I wrap up the Professional Services kick-off in Mumbai with my team & I see that we have grown to a 10 strong member team with 2 more to join us soon. In essence we have grown 6 times in the past 3 years as a team which is FANTASTIC. 

My role has always been evolving and changing during this time and today I have been asked to take up the role of an Enterprise Solutions Architect within the Professional Services arena. With this move, my primary responsibility would be to lay down the pathway to the Software Defined Datacenter for VMware customers. I would also get an opportunity to work on Virtualization of Business Critical Applications & migration of traditional applications from a Unix to Linux platform which would be virtualized in the target state. Well, the new challenge looks humongous but I am looking forward to take it on.

As always, you would start seeing the flavor of my work in my articles. The good thing is that I will get to learn & play around with the existing and upcoming solutions from VMware and ofcourse would love to share my experience around them with everyone.

Thanks once again for all the feedback and viewership on vXpress.

Stay Tuned!!