vROps Webinar 2016 : Part 5 - Design & Deployment Considerations

As promised, I am posting the recording for the 5th Session of vROps Webinar Series 2016. Both Simon and I successfully delivered the session on Design and Deployment considerations.

Session Details:- In this installment of the series, we discussed the steps and thought processes that should be used before and during the design and deployment of vRealize Operations Manager. During the session among other things we will cover the planning, core components, correct sizing, HA, clustering, DR and future growth.

Once again I would like to thank my friend and partner in this project Simon as without him this would not be possible.

So without further ado, here is the recording for this session:

Note : It is recommended that you watch the video in HD quality for a great experience.

vROps Webinar 2016 - Announcing Part 5 : Design & Deployment Considerations

Time to announce the next part of the year long webinar series on vRealize Operations Manager. This time around, Simon and I thought about discussing Architecture of vROps. To some, it might sound strange as for smaller deployments you might not have to worry about Sizing and Architecture much since it is pretty simple to install and configure a small or a medium node for a small shop. However as your monitoring needs grow and you start adding solutions for monitoring data sources beyond vSphere, you would need to think about scaling up or scaling out. As your monitoring environment weaves into your incident ticketing system, you would start to see the need to HA of vROps and as you have a DR strategy for your workloads, you will start thinking about DR for your operations tools as well. 

We have seen these questions and situations come up in many of our engagements and hence we thought that we should share some of our experience around this area. Below are the Webex Details:

Day & Date          : Friday, 27^th May 2016

Time                     : 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM  (SGT)

Event                    : vROps Webinar 2016

Topic                    : Part 5 : Design & Deployment Considerations

Speakers               : Simon Eady / Sunny Dua

WebEx Link          : Join WebEx meeting 

NOTE - Don't forget to mark your calendars by saving the calendar invite!! Feel free to forward the invite to anyone who might be interested. It's open to all!!


Sharing & Spread the Knowledge!!

Remove "All vCenter Server" option from vROps Authentication Source

A quick post to share a handy option which is available on vROps version 6.1 and above. We all know that their are multiple methods to authenticate a user to login in vRealize Operations Manager. I have usually seen organizations starting with their vROps journey using the vCenter Authentication option which comes out of the box with the product as soon as you integrate vROps with your vCenter server. 

While this is an easy way to authenticate, it is possibly not the best option for vROps authentication due to a number of reasons. The first reason is that not all third party management packs support vCenter Authentication and hence if you login with vCenter credentials and try to view data which is being captured by a non VMware management pack then you might not be able to see it at all. This is because that management pack might not have any integration with vCenter Server. 

Secondly, the number of concurrent sessions supported on vCenter server are way more than what is supported on vRealize Operations Manager. You can read the sizing guidelines here to understand the concurrent session requirements of vROps.

From above considerations, by far the best option is to have Role Based Access Control using Active Directory / LDAP integration which is fully supported on vRealize Operations Manager. Once you have the AD/LDAP integration, you will see the option of "Active Directory" as shown in the screenshot below. At this point to change the login behavior of your vROps users, you might want to get rid f the "All vCenter Servers" since users might continue to use that option since they are used to doing so. 

This option can be removed from vROps version 6.1 and above by browsing to the ADMINISTRATION --- GLOBAL SETTINGS.

Here you would see an option to "Allow vCenter Users to log in to all vCenters using the vROps UI". You would need to edit the global settings by clicking on the "Pencil Shaped" edit icon to disable this option as it is enabled by default (out of the box).

Once on the Edit screen clear the checkbox and click on save. 

After you logout and login again, you would see that you only have the Local and AD option now.

Hope this quick tip will help you have tighter control on how you configure role based access on vRealize Operations Manager.

Share & Spread the knowledge...

VMworld 2016 : Session Catalog is Live for Voting!

VMworld 2016 is around the corner and like every year, I have submitted a few sessions along with my colleagues and customers. If you want to see us presenting these sessions, then please vote for them on the Content Catalog on the VMworld's Website.

To vote, login to the VMworld site using your credentials. If you have not registered then you need to before you could login and Vote. Once you are logged in, click on Learning --Vote for Sessions. Follow the instructions on the next page and you will see the list of all the sessions. You can click on the STAR icon to vote for a session as shown in the screenshot below:

Here are the Breakout Sessions & Panel Sessions we are proposing:

1. Agile : The Scrum Master for your Software Defined Datacenter! [7780]

2. Pulse Check of your Software Defined Datacenter using vRealize Operations Manager & Log Insight [7852]

3. Redefine Performance and Capacity Management with vRealize - Part 1 [7651]

4. Master Performance and Capacity Management with vRealize - Part 2 [7652]

5. Meet the Veterans – discuss Demand, Performance and Capacity management, how your processes and people change to use vROps to plan and control your C [9082]

6. Managing the Organization Private Cloud Capacity, From a People, Process and Technology Prospective. [8874]

7. Event Management with vROps: Tactics for Maintaining the Health of Your SDDC [9163]

Go ahead, read the description of the above mentioned sessions, and if you think these sessions would help you, then vote for them. We would love to share our learning's through these sessions!! See you at VMworld 2016!!

Top vBlog 2016 - Time to Choose the Top Blogs in the Virtualization Space!

Eric Siebert just opened the Top vBlog 2016 voting on vSphere-Land. Like every year, it is important that we vote the best in business to keep the bloggers motivated. So let's pay back from the community to the bloggers by showing some love for their content and efforts.

Like every year, vXpress is nominated for voting as well. If you have liked the work I have done in the past year and it has helped you in learning new things then your vote would be appreciated. 

It is a democratic process and hence I would not share the list of people I have voted for as this might influence your decision ;-)

Here are a few things to keep in mind while voting. (Copying from Eric's post)

• Longevity – Anyone can start a blog but it requires dedication, time & effort to keep it going. Some bloggers start a blog only to have it fall to the wayside several months later. Things always come up in life but the good bloggers keep going regardless of what is happening in their life.

• Length – It’s easy to make a quick blog post without much content, nothing wrong with this as long as you have good content in the post that people will enjoy. But some bloggers post pretty long detailed posts which takes a lot of time and effort to produce. The tip of the hat goes to these guys that burn the midnight oil trying to get you some great detailed information.

• Frequency – Some bloggers post several times a week which provides readers with lots of content. This requires a lot of effort as bloggers have to come up with more content ideas to write about. Frequency ties into length, some do high frequency/low length, some do low frequency/high length, some do both. They’re all good and require a lot of time and effort on the bloggers part.

• Quality – It all comes down to whats in the blog post regardless of how often or how long the blog posts are. After reading a blog post if you come away with learning something that you did not previously know and it benefits you in some way then you know you are reading a quality post. Good quality is usually the result of original content, its easy to re-hash something previously published elsewhere, the good bloggers come up with unique content or put their own unique spin on popular topics.

Here is the LINK TO VOTE

A special thanks to Eric for the efforts he puts in this activity and of-course the sponsors who support the community bloggers with their sponsorship for this event.