VMware Cloud on AWS is going to change how you think about your infrastructure. This allows you to simply “rent” your own ready-to-go VMware Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC) giving you the flexibility your business needs. Whether it’s quickly adding new capacity to cover a new project or retiring old cluster hardware and moving those workloads to the cloud VMware Cloud on AWS is the answer you seek.
When I talk to customers it’s this great business flexibility they echo first, but soon they start thinking about how they are going to operate this new SDDC environment and I field questions like:
- Am I going to need new tools to manage this new cloud?
- Is this going to double the workload of my operations team as they try to troubleshoot problems?
- Will I lose control of the capacity across these multiple environments?
- I am new to vSAN, will there be a steep learning curve to manage this new storage solution?
They are happy to hear the answer to all of the above is a decisive “No” and the reason for it is vRealize. vRealize Operations fully supports VMware Cloud on AWS and integrates this new environment into the same tool right alongside your private infrastructure(s). Kind of a “one tool to rule them all” (clouds that is). A great example of this the new Operations Overview dashboard where you get a view of the complete infrastructure and the health and status each datacenter including VMware Cloud on AWS. Shameless plug, if you haven’t seen it yet please check out vRealize Operations 6.6 to see what everyone is talking about regarding the new dashboards and flows.
VMware Cloud on AWS troubleshooting is alsosimplified as vRealize Operations comes out-of-the-box with specific dashboards and workflows to resolve cluster, host, VM and vSAN problems. These step-by-step workflows help you resolve problems in the SDDC by providing you alerts, the health of neighbors, parents and child objects, KPIs, highlighted abnormalities and trends all in one place.
In the example below, a line of business owner is complaining about poor performance from a specific service that is running some complex computations for them. We can use the Troubleshoot a VM dashboard to solve this problem. We bring up one of the VMs associated with this service (foldingvm) and we see this VM has been struggling with a lack of CPU resources.
If we click on the alert we are provided recommendations to fix the problem and make the business owners happy. In this case, it is recommending we add another CPU to this VM and provides us an action to do just that. This action could even be automated allowing you to move closer to a fully-automated-light-out datacenter, something I feel everyone should be striving for, but that’s for a blog another day.
vRealize Operations comes out-of-the-box with a ton of alerts that solve hundreds of issues, but not every problem you will face may be solved so easily…especially when the application owner is saying, “Things are running slow…fix it!”. The dashboard takes that into account and provides you with the tools you need to do deep technical troubleshooting. From here we just let the dashboard flow do its work; start at #1 and review until you solve the problem! We can see how this workload behaves throughout the week (#4) on an hour by hour basis. We also have visibility into the related objects in the SDDC (#5) and see the health of the related host and datastore.
Next we review the most critical KPIs for the VM to see if there is a CPU, Memory or Disk issue with the VMs performance (#6) or if it’s fighting any contention (#7).
Finally we can see how the cluster (#8) and datastore (#9) are servicing this VM to determine if this is a wider problem that might be affecting multiple VMs. With all of this information at your fingertips even the most complex issues can be resolved swiftly.
There are also troubleshooting dashboards/workflows for clusters, hosts and vSAN objects and all of them work with VMware Cloud on AWS. The vSAN troubleshooting dashboard is probably my favorite as it has a workflow that starts at the vSAN cluster level and then allows you to drill through the KPIs and details for disk groups, vSAN hosts and even the physical disks themselves.
vRealize Operations can also help you with your VMware Cloud on AWS capacity concerns to ensure you are using this new cloud environment smartly and efficiently. The Capacity Overview dashboard gives you a quick view of the capacity you own across ALL environments. You can choose a specific datacenter to see its total and used capacity details.
Visibility to capacity is important, but more important is running your environments efficiently. You will want to get the most out of your new VMware Cloud on AWS environment and the Reclaimable Capacity dashboard will allow you to do just that. This dashboard shows you how much you can reclaim and where.
Views and quick access to reclamation actions allow you to reclaim CPU, memory and disk space across oversized VMs, powered off VMs, idle VMs and unneeded snapshots. Simply chose a VM and ask vRealize Operations for a sizing recommendation and run the action. You are now saving yourself critical resources and your business money.
If you already use vRealize Operations today great, you are well positioned to manage your new VMware Cloud on AWS environment. If you aren’t using it check it out here.
This blog 
was written by David Overbeek, Director, Technical Marketing
Dave has a lot of public speaking experience. He has spoken at many industry events and conferences over the years and is a frequent presenter at VMUG, VMLive, and Customer Webinar events. He has had the opportunity to present as a speaker and work on the show floor for the last 8 years at VMworld.
