Part 1 - What's New with vRealize Operations Manager 6.6.

I am happy to share that VMware has released the vRealize Operations Manager 6.6 version which was anounced through a blog post by Taruna Gandhi a few days back.

While I have been closely following all the releases of vROps for the past couple of years, this release is special to me as I am a part of the engineering group which has worked on making this release possible for the last 6 months.

The goal behind vRealize Operations Manager 6.6 was to improve the time to value and accelerate the user experience by providing out of the box answers to questions which are faced by IT on a day to day basis. Be it the administrators who manage the IT systems and applications, or the Executives, who are responsible for making strategic decisions around Capacity and Growth, this release of vROps caters to all the personas will multiple use cases out of the box.

In my opinion, operations at all levels and across all the areas of IT is ran in two modes. The preferred choice is Proactive, however many times one has to be Reactive as well. Be it Performance, Capacity, Utilization, Availability, Configuration or Compliance, one must have easy ways to answer simple questions while running operations.

For instance, a person responsible for procuring capacity should have simple yet exhaustive statistics which allow them to take the next procurement decision proactively. A System Administrator should have simple yet comprehensive metrics and logs to troubleshoot an issue in a fire-fighting situation. 

If you notice, the requirements above are conflicting and it is always important to strike a balance between TOO SIMPLE and TOO COMPLEX. You sway either ways and the value is lost.

With the above thought process in mind, vROps 6.6 was designed and I am happy to give you a quick preview of What's New with this release!!

Note, this is just the first part, in the coming days, you will see a series of blog posts which will deep dive into individual areas to help you use all the goodness coming with this release. With that, let's dissect the release notes to see what all is coming in:

• Simplified usability and faster time to value capabilities:

• New HTML5 user interface provides an easier and consistent experience. The new UI is clarity based which is a standard used by all the products of VMware. This allows you to seamlessly go from one area of the solution to another whether it is metrics, logs or cost without learning the menus or impacting your user experience.

• Consolidation and simpler grouping of menus leading to enhanced user experience.

• The Getting Started dashboard allows for quick navigation.

• Persona based dashboards provides for answers in one place. Dashboards are separated into categories such as Operations, Capacity and Utilization, Performance Troubleshooting, Workload Balance, and Configuration and Compliance.

• Out of the box integration with vSAN and vRealize Automation provides quick time to value. 

• Added Native vSAN management capabilities:
• Allows for centralized management across stretched clusters.

• Ability for complete vSAN management, which includes administering performance, capacity, logs, and configuration and health.

• Fully Automated Workload Balancing:

• Ensures performance across the datacenter's with fully automated workload balancing, across clusters and across data stores.

• Ensures DRS Configurations and provides the option to set DRS automation level for individual objects.

• Predictive DRS takes action to preempt resource contention.

• Utilizes operations analytics to optimize initial placement of workloads through vRealize Automation.

⏯See Workload Balance in action here.

• Additional out-of-the-box compliance capabilities:

• Ability to tackle compliance problems through the new vSphere hardening dashboard

• Extends compliance through PCI & HIPAA compliance for vSphere.

• Ensures business configurations through new cluster, host, and VM configuration dashboards.

• Sizing & Scalability Enhancements:

• You can now scale to 6 Extra Large Nodes in a cluster which can support up to 180,000 Objects and 45,000,000 metrics.
• You can now monitor up to 60 vCenter Servers with a single instance of vROps.
• A large Remote Collector can support up to 15000 objects.
• and many more.....

In the upcoming parts of this series, I will deep dive into each of the above mentioned areas and give you more details on how you can operationalize some of these features to match your day to day operational use cases.

Stay tuned for more!!

Do It Yourself - vROps Ninja Sticker

In a recent collaboration with Simon Eady, we created a cool vROps sticker which came out really well post production. The sticker represents a Ninja who can solve world problems through vRealize Operations Manager. 

I might have exaggerated the magnitude and capabilites of Mr. Ninja here 😜, but all it symbolises and relates to is a VMware Expert who can be a Ninja when it comes to solving IT problems. Be it Capacity Mangement, Performance Troubleshooting or day to day Operational Nuiances, A Ninja always raises his sword and is ready to face the situation.  

In the world of Virtualization and Software Defined Datacener, whether it is about apps or infratsructure, vRealize Operations can be the sword of Mr. Ninja.

Hence we call this persona a "vROps Ninja". Here is how Mr. Ninja looks like:

I ordered them from stickermule and they came out really well. This is how the set looks like post production.

While I am giving away all the stickers to people I meet in various VMUGs and the upcoming VMworld in Las Vegas and Barcelona, I have a lot of internal and external requests on how people can create there own Mr. Ninjas 😊😊

With this post, I am essentially sharing the secret sauce.

Here is where you can order them - https://www.stickermule.com/unlock?ref_id=7298480701  (if you order through this link you get a $10 discount.)

I ordered a 3inch x 3inch and it came out as the exact size I wanted. So I would recommend that size to you. You will need a high contrast photo of Mr. Ninja to get the right resolution. Here is the full contrast picture which you can download and use.

So go ahead, create your own Ninjas and use the sword of vRealize Operations Manager to Solve world problems.... 

[UPDATE - November 2018]

We have moved on from the older Ninja Image and created some new variants of Ninja's. Wanted to share the same with you all to chose from.

Here are the versions:

Self Driving Ninja

vROps Armenia Ninja

vROps India Ninja

vROps Singapore Ninja

So go ahead and pick the one you need.


You can get a $10 credit if you order using the following offer from stickermule.

Top vBlog 2017 - Time to Choose the Top Blogs in the Virtualization Space!

Eric Siebert recently opened the Top vBlog 2017 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.

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.

Last year a few folks told me that it was difficult to find my blog, this year around Eric has stacked rank the top 50 blogs and vXpress (35) can be found right on the first page.

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.

Take a Lab & Win a Drone!

While we all know that hands on lab at VMware is one of the best place to learn about VMware products, the cloud management business unit (CMBU) at VMware will take your experience of HOL at a completely different level.

I am talking about the levels at which drones fly 😜😜😜😜

Last day to register is May 19th.. So hurry..

Here is the link for more details - http://www.vmware.com/promotions/2017-hol-drone.html 

Competition Rules and Regulations

• Entrants must take any eligible Hands-On Lab in order to be considered for the prize.
• The contest runs from April 19 to May 19, 2017.
• The contest is for US residents only.
• Participants must agree to the terms and conditions of the contest when signing up for a lab.
• The winner will be announced on the VMware Hands-On Labs Blog.

Reference link - https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2017/04/take-hands-on-lab-win-a-drone.html 

vROps Webinar Series 2017 - Part 2- Full Stack monitoring with vRealize Operations Manager

Time to share the recording of the second episode of the vROps Webinar Series 2017. This time around we were joined by Craig Lee and Brock Peterson from Blue Medora to talk about "Full Stack Visibility" which vROps can provide by using various extensibility solutions.

We discussed the following use cases and demonstrated them in live environments:

Use Case 1 - Full-Stack vSphere Monitoring. From application to Infrastructure.


Use Case 2 - Amazon RDS Workloads. Monitoring public cloud workloads with vROps.


Use Case 3 - vROps Extensibility. Metrics, Logs and Costing come together along with other 3rd party extensibility options.

Special thanks to Blue Medora for participating in the Webinar Series and contributing to the vCommunity.

We would highly appreciate if you could spend 30 seconds to fill up this quick and simple survey to provide us your feedback. You can also request topics of your choice through this survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2J2G82S

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

Share & Spread the Knowledge!!