By: Brock Peterson
Blue Medora provides hundreds of dashboards out of the box, but there are still times custom dashboards are required. A client recently contacted me wanting to create an executive level dashboard showing his MSSQL environment health. His requirements were to provide very high level health metrics which executives could use. He also wanted them to only have access to that specific dashboard.
Let’s start with the dashboards. Once logged into vRealize Operations (vROps), go to the Actions dropdown in the toolbar and click Create Dashboard as shown below in Figure 1.
Figure 1
You will then be asked to give your new dashboard a Name and Description as shown here in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Next choose the appropriate widgets from the Widget List tab and size them accordingly in the right hand pane as shown here in Figure 3.
Figure 3
I’ve chosen the high level Heatmap widget and the Health Chart widget. Now configure each widget to publish the required metrics. Do this by clicking the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of each widget. Let’s configure the Heatmap widget first as shown here in Figure 4.
Figure 4
I’ve configured this widget to be called Executive MSSQL Heatmap, it will refresh content every five minutes, it will be grouped by MSSQL Server, and colored by MSSQL Badge|Health State, which is the general MSSQL health itself. Let’s now move onto the Health Chart widget as shown here in Figure 5.
Figure 5
I’ve configured this widget to be called Executive MSSQL Health Chart, it will be refreshed every five minutes, ordered by value, and show the last 30 days of data. Next configure the Dashboard Navigation flow as shown here in Figure 6.
Figure 6
I then clicked Apply Navigations and Save. This last widget tab allows you to send the user to a configured destination when drilling down into your custom dashboard. The final product looks like this.
Figure 7
Now, let’s limit the permissions the executives have to only view this new custom dashboard. We will create a vROps Role, assign a vROps Group to that Role, then assign vROps Users (the executives) to that Group. Once logged into vROps go into Administration – Access Control and click the Roles tab in the right hand pane as shown here in Figure 8.
Figure 8
Click the green plus button to add a new Role. Once created, adjust the permissions of the Role by clicking the pencil icon in the lower right pane of the Permissions window as shown here in Figure 9.
Figure 9
Select the following Permissions: Administration – Login Interactively, Content – Views Management – Render, and Environment – View Dashboard Home Page. This will allow the users to log into vROps, the widget will render properly, and they will have access to the Dashboard Home Page only.
Next, create and assign a User Group to this Role. From the same window, select the User Groups tab on the toolbar and create your User Group as shown here in Figure 10.
Figure 10
Click the green plus icon and create a User Group as shown here in Figure 11.
Figure 11
Click Next and select the Users to put into the new group as shown here in Figure 12.
Figure 12
Next click the Objects tab to select the proper Objects. In our case it will be the MSSQL objects as shown here in Figure 13. Once complete click Finish.
Figure 13
The final step is to share the custom dashboard previously created. From the vROps home page go to Content – Dashboards and click on the Gears icon in the toolbar at the top as shown here in Figure 14.
Figure 14
Click the Share Dashboards option which will present the following screen.
Figure 15
Now simply drag and drop the custom dashboard from the right hand pane into the necessary group in the left hand pane. Click Save and you are done!
