By: Cameron Jones, Blue Medora
VMware’s vRealize Operations (vROps) has allowed VMware administrators the ability to monitor their environments at an entirely new level. Using predictive analytics and dynamic thresholding, vAdmins are able to see not only what is currently wrong in their environment, but what will go wrong in the future. The platform also provides actions to remedy any issues that have been raised. While this alone is impressive, the predictive analysis engine doesn’t stop there. This feature also allows virtual infrastructure admins to run capacity plans on their environments, ensuring that there are always enough resources to run mission critical workloads without stress. To wrap it all together, VMware provides out-of-the-box dashboards and reports to quickly view key predictive analysis features, as well as health and performance metrics.
Figure 1 – View Oracle and VM metrics side-by-side
This feature set allows virtual administrators to dive in and investigate their VMware environment quickly and effectively. When trying to investigate problems in the environment, vAdmins needs to be able to see similar metrics across the stack. This is where Management Packs come in. For example, let’s look at an Oracle Database. If an Oracle DBA complains that their queries are running slow it could be from the VM or the host, but it could also be an issue with their database. The vROps Management Pack for Oracle Enterprise Manager allows the VMware admin to see Oracle metrics side-by-side with the VMware metrics, allowing for quick diagnosis of the root problem.
The addition of the Management Pack for Oracle Enterprise Manager is great for troubleshooting performance issues and allowing teams to communicate more fluidly, but it some cases it doesn’t solve the problems at hand. What if the hardware should fail? There are a number of management packs available to the vAdmin that ensure the underlying hardware is not failing either. These packs can range from servers to storage to networking. These management packs span from EMC to Trend Micro to Dell and HP. In Figure 2, we are viewing NetApp Storage and UCS Blade Servers. To gain this visibility and ensure there are no hardware failures in our Oracle environment, we have added the Management Pack for Cisco UCS and the Management Pack for NetApp Storage.
Figure 2 – Locate issues from application to hardware
Let’s take a closer look at Figure 2. Here we can see that if we were just looking at the Oracle Databases and the VM they are hosted on, we would see there is no issue. In fact, our environment looks completely healthy. However, the Chassis and power supplies that this environment is running on are currently having health issues. When we look closer, we can see that the redundant power supplies are not working. If the primary power supply were to go out, our entire environment would go down. This is just one example of the ways vROps can be used to diagnose current performance issues and prevent future issues.
External management packs allow vAdmins new visibility into areas of their environment where they were blind before. Each of these management packs also utilizes the features of the vROps platform to provide detailed information on each monitored system. These features include the predictive analytics, alerting, capacity planning, and out-of-the-box dashboards and reports. To learn more about extending your vRealize monitoring, visit the Solution Exchange.
