VROPS

vROps Cluster without a Load Balancer (gotchas) Product Version - vRealize Operations 7.5 While it is far from recomended to deploy a vROps Cluster without a loadbalancer there are circumstances where this is done. Recently helping a customer deploy a couple of simple issues cropped up that were not immediately obvious as to why they were issues. Unable to connect to Master Node when expanding the cluster We hit this issue and initialy it was a question mark moment there were no firewalls in the way and network connectivity was good end to end.

VMware have been very busy in the last few months across many of their products and Operations Management has not gone untouched. We saw glimpses of things to come late last year and now we see the Cloud Management Team in VMware really ramping things up with vRealize Operation 8.1 vRealize Operations Cloud One of the bigger items to arrive very shortly is vRealize Operations Cloud (SaaS), this means you do not need to worry about standing vROps up in your environment to see what value it can bring to your infrastructure monitoring.

I did a quick search online and could not find a collated list so, by way of a quick summary from all the VMworld 2018 announcements and comments my good friend and PM for vRealize Operations Sunny Dua has made, I have collated a list of what we can expect to see in the next iteration of vROps (7.0). The list is in no order of interest or importance, some of the mentioned improvements have been long standing requests so enjoy and get hyped (I know I am).

There are many improvements, changes and new additions to vROps in version 6.7 but one of the aspects that stands out to me personally is the direction VMware are taking with the product. Aside from the obvious addition of cloud costings and comparisons and a reworked capacity planning (from the ground up) and new hook in to Wavefront (which I really like) there has been some real effort to improve how you can further automate things from vROps.

Something that has come up with customers recently is why and when old data is cleaned up from your vROps instance. I will make the assumption that you have your data retention set to 6 months but the process is the same whether the value is less than or greater than 6 months. When data reaches and or goes beyond the age threshold set in the global settings it will be cleaned away by a daily process “Old Data Cleaner”.

In this episode, Sunny gave us a deep dive into the WLP and WLB features of vROps. We were also joined by a special guest, Jad El-Zein who gave us a great insight into how vRA utilises vROps for initial placement of freshly provisioned VMs We would highly appreciate it 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.

This was as I expected, the busiest day sessions wise for me. There was so much good stuff I had to be a little ruthless on what I wanted and or needed to attend while also wanting to get into the solutions exchange. Also at the end of the day the customer appreciate party was scheduled so that was something I was looking forward to a great deal (Hint - Kaiser Chiefs)

I managed to dodge the rainstorms in the morning before arriving, the hotel being just across the road from the Venue was a huge help (Thank you Xtravirt) The main session was great particularly HCX announcement and the VR admin demo. I then hit the solutions exchange as soon as it opened. There are all the usual suspects there -except- Cisco (anyone know why?) It was also great to see the guys from Blue Medora.

In this coming episode, Sunny will DIVE DEEP into the interesting topic of introducing automation into operations. While we all know that, automating day to day operations tasks is becoming the choice of an IT organization, it is hard for them to find a solution which can completely understand their business policies and provide them the efficiency they need from automating simple operational tasks. Based on our research, we found that, one of the most time consuming activity done by an Virtual Infrastructure Administrator is to juggle resources between the changing business requirements and ensure that every VM which is being hosted in their environment is BEING SERVED WELL.

Having missed last years VMworld I feel very ready for attending the EMEA VMworld in Barcelona. I almost felt annoyed about missing last year as the big announcements really caused a stir in the community and wider afield. (VMware on AWS) The announcements from the US VMworld this year were equally exciting so I am very keen to hear what else VMware has planned to reveal in a Barcelona. I have put a good deal of effort into planning what I will be doing and attending to maximise my time there without burnout (Veterans I hear you laughing)