Exporting Content with vRealize Operations Manager Policies

Policies as we know are the control center of vRealize Operations Manager. In the vRealize Operations Webinar Series, we have been running for the entire year, we have seen that policies needs to be touched, configured, modified etc, with every feature or functionality available out of the box or being customized with vROps. This pretty much aligns with all the products of VMware. They all have a theme of Policy Based Control which allows you to built, run and operate the Software Defined Datacenter components by tying them down to your business policies.

With this article, I wanted to highlight, that policies is not about configuration only, they are also about content. In a recent project, I discovered that with vROps 6.2.1, you can utilize policies for exporting and importing content from one vROps instance to another. This includes:-

• Alert Definitions

• Symptom Definitions

• Recommendations, &,

• SuperMetrics

This in my opinion is a killer feature as it allows you to create content once and distribute the same by a simple export and import of a policy. This opens a lot of avenues to collaborate and share meaningful content with community.

While the above mentioned content can be exported & imported easily, things like Views, Dashboards and Reports still need to be exported and imported individually. I believe with time, VMware should work towards unifying & ease content management by making everything exportable and importable like LogInsight content packs.

I will not go into the details of how to Export & Import policies, since I have already done an article on this sometime back which is applicable today as well. I will utilize this feature and work on creating a collaborative content library where you can share content with policies.

Stay tuned for more fun on vROps!!!

vROps Webinar 2016 - Part 7 : Working with Alerts & Symptoms

Time to release the recording for the latest part of the vROps Webinar Series.  We completed the 7th session of the series where we spoke about vRealize Operations Manager Alerts and Symptoms. 

Alerts as we all know would always remain the heart and soul for the operations teams to run the data centers, whether old school or the modern software defined.

In all cases you need alerts and more importantly you need meaningful and actionable alerts. In this part of the series, Simon and myself concentrated on making you aware of the alert constructs in vROps and as usual share experiences around how we help customers leverage the strong feature set of vROps to customize alerts and related symptoms, recommendations and actions to drastically reduce the Mean Time to Resolution of issues.

The journey so far has been fantastic and we would continue to add more content as we progress into the rest of the year. 

Stay tuned for more and enjoy this recording!!!

Till next time.. Have a Good One!!

VMworld Session : Agile : The Scrum Master for your Software Defined Datacenter! - 7780

I am extremely excited to share that my VMworld session 7780 : Agile : The Scrum Master for your Software Defined Datacenter has been accepted for VMworld US. For the past one year, I have worked in customer environments where the life-cycle management of SDDC has been the primary focus.

During this time, I have interacted with multiple customer teams who have been using different tools and processes to build and manage the life-cycle of the Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC). With this session, I wanted to team up with someone who is extremely knowledgeable in this area and has not only used the Agile frameworks for SDDC, but also for software development in his past work life. I am glad to share that I am partnering with Pritam Wadhwani to deliver this session. Pritam is one of the early adopters of Agile frameworks for Infrastructure Management and Development of new services within a SDDC environment. He has vast experience of software development in his previous work-life which balances the act of applying the principles of software development into infrastructure management.

With this session, we will share some of our experiences with the audience at VMworld for them to be successful in their journey towards the deployment of Software Defined Datacenter. We will not stop at deployment, but would also talk about the day 2 operations (life-cycle management) use cases.

So if you are showing up at VMworld US, do sign up for this session as soon as the content catalog is LIVE.

Here are the details of the session:

Session Title - Agile : The Scrum Master for your Software Defined Datacenter!

Type - Breakout Session

Session Abstract -

You virtualized the SERVERS to reduce Capex & Opex in your data-centers. You virtualized the STORAGE to make it Inexpensive but remain High Performance. You virtualized the NETWORK to make it Simple yet Secured.

Guess What? You have embraced the power of a Software Defined Datacenter!

While VMware allows you to build your infrastructure in the software tier, it is important that you quickly learn how to manage the life-cycle of this Software Defined Infrastructure & the Services it has to offer. When the world of Software Development is moving towards Agile Frameworks, it only makes sense to leverage the same to help Deploy, Run & Scale your Software Defined Datacenter. Alongside life-cycle management of the various components of SDDC, Agile frameworks can also help IT build & deliver various services tailored to the requirements of business needs.

This methodology of managing IT infrastructure as a piece of software code is no longer a distant dream. Concepts such as DevOps are clearly trying to deliver the missing development piece in the current operational structures of organizations. Frameworks like Agile with methodologies such as Scrum, DSDM, XP etc. make it possible for you to maximize your investments in SDDC.  

Session Outline –

The purpose of this session is to help organizations learn about managing the life-cycle of their Software Defined Datacenter using Agile Frameworks.

The focus of the speakers would be on the following areas:

• Provide an overview of the Agile Frameworks.
• Share real-world scenarios on how Agile helps manage the life-cycle of a Software Defined Datacenter.
• Enhance existing and built new IT services on top of Software Defined Datacenter
• Share sample Kanban dashboards which can help track your journey into the world of Software Defined Services

With the above learnings, any organization would be able to maximize their investments in SDDC and ensure that they can make progress towards delivering Anything as a Service (XaaS).

KT 1 – Learn about Agile Frameworks and how they can help a DevOps team manage and enhance the Software Defined Services Portfolio of an Organization

KT 2 – How to release new features against specific business requirements on a SDDC Platform

KT 3 – Learn about Scrum methodology to manage the life-cycle of SDDC and provide visibility into the progress using Kanban Boards

See you at VMworld!!!

vROps Webinar 2016 - Announcing Part 7 : Working with Alerts & Symptoms

Time to announce the next part of the year long webinar series on vRealize Operations Manager. With the last part of the series, we started focusing on content withing vROps. We will continue the trend and talk about a major function of vROps a.k.a Alerts. Alerts is the most used and most ab-used part of vROps, and with this session we want to give you some insights on the entire life-cycle of the alerting function of vROps.

We will touch upon, defining alerts, making sure they are actionable, understand how they are manged within vROps and also talk about the components which make up an alert. 

Day & Date          : Friday, 29^th July 2016

Time                     : 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM  (SGT)

Event                    : vROps Webinar 2016

Topic                     : Part 7 : Working with Alerts & Symptoms

Speakers               : Simon Eady / Sunny Dua

WebEx Link          : JoinWebEx Meeting

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


Sharing & Spread the Knowledge!!

vROps Webinar Series decks available for download

I have got a number of requests from the readers and viewers of vXpress about the presentation decks used during the vROps Webinar Series. While a lot of people complimented about the video series, they wanted to share some of this knowledge by presenting this information to their colleagues in their circles.

I have collated all the decks and posted them to the links below. So go ahead and download them, use them or distribute them. Hope they help you with your journey of vRealize Operations Manager!!

Click here for vROps Webinar Series 2017

Click here for vROps Webinar Series 2016

Share & Spread the Goodness!!  👍👍👍