I know that this blog has covered what’s new in vRealize Operations 6.6 a number of times already with posts like “awesome new HTML5 interface” and “what’s new in vROps 6.6” but the great thing about the new vRealize Operations 6.6 is that there is SO MUCH to talk about. In this post, I’d like to cover, what is likely to be, one of the most used features of vRealize Operations 6.6 and that is Dashboards. In fact, let’s make it fun and “count them down” in Top 10 List style! (well Top “7” List, in this case)
#7 Troubleshooting Dashboard
When there’s a problem in the datacenter, you need to be able to fix it – and fix it FAST! That’s where the vROps Troubleshooting Dashboard becomes your go-to dashboard to find out what’s wrong and how to resolve it, ASAP. In the graphic below, you can see that the troubleshooting dashboard shows a specific host that has a problem, the critical stats of that host (health, stress, and status of relatives), and potential recommendations as to how to resolve the any issues.
Plus, you should know that there are many more troubleshooting dashboards beyond the “Troubleshoot a Host” dashboard, shown above. There are, in fact, 6 different troubleshooting dashboards, as you can see in the graphic below-
#6 vSAN Dashboards
If you are using VMware vSAN you should know that there are at least 5 different vSAN Dashboards available by default in vROps 6.6. In the graphics below you can see the vSAN Operations Overview Dashboard and the vSAN Capacity Overview Dashboard – both of which are invaluable tools for anyone managing a vSphere infrastructure that utilizes VMware vSAN (who doesn’t, right?)
#5 Applications Dashboards
Did you know that vRealize Operations offers application-level dashboards? Yes, it’s true! With vROps 6.6, you can create application-specific dashboards. For example, the graphic below shows a Microsoft SQL Server dashboard. This dashboard shows you the status of the SQL Server cluster and hosts. If you notice in the graphic, you are even able to drill down to the SQL database level and monitor performance at that level. This is the kind of dashboard that enterprises need for monitoring Tier-1 applications (of which SQL Server is, at most companies).
#4 Capacity Overview Dashboard
Managing, monitoring and troubleshooting performance issues when they happen is always going to be of greatest concern but what about planning for the future? The Capacity Overview Dashboard is one of my favorite dashboards because this is where you are going to drill down into specific infrastructure resources like the CPU capacity, memory capacity, storage capacity, and more. It also allows you to see if you have reclaimable capacity. For example, in the graphic below you can see that we are able to compare our total capacity to our used capacity to calculate the free capacity. You can also see that, in this environment, there are 59 powered off virtual machines and 124TB of reclaimable disk capacity.
#3 Capacity Reclaimable Dashboard
To go deeper on reclaimable capacity, the Capacity Reclaimable Dashboard is where you want to look. As you can see in the graphic below, this dashboard goes into more detail on the specific vCPU, memory, and disk space that you can reclaim from each of your environments, and which virtual machines it can be reclaimed from.
#2 Heavy Hitter VM Dashboard
What applications and virtual machines are most of your resources going to? The Heavy Hitter VM Dashboard will answer that question!
#1 Operations Overview Dashboard
The Operations Overview dashboard provides you Just what it describes, an overview of all the infrastructure being monitored by vRealize Operations.This dashboard provides an overview of your virtual data centers, clusters, hosts, and datastores. It breaks down this overview by showing you the number of running virtual machines vs. powered-off virtual machines. Additionally, it provides the alert volume across your data centers, the uptime of your data centers, and a “top 15 list” of the virtual machines that may be experiencing performance issues. This is #1 my “go-to” dashboard in vRealize Operations.
As vExpert Sunny Dua explains the value of Dashboards in his post “Introducing Operations Dashboards in vROps 6.6“, the new vROps 6.6 dashboards were created based on the custom dashboards that so many companies – large and small – had created over time and had been used daily. These dashboards weren’t something that VMware developers cooked up in a lab. These dashboards are created based on the needs and feedback of real VMware customers. This is a real examples of how customers are driving the improvement in every new release of vRealize Operations.
You can download the free trial of the new vRealize Operations 6.6 or try the free vROps 6.6 VMware Hands-On-Lab.
Also, checkout the YouTube PlayList on vROps Dashboards, with over 26 videos on the many Dashboards available in vROps 6.6 !
To learn more about the latest and greatest features in vRealize Operations 6.6, stay tuned to the VMware Cloud Management Blog !
