We have seen many new capabilities and enhancements introduced in vRealize Operations over the last several releases. vRealize Operations 6.7 is no exception to this trend. Though this is only a dot release, it is packed full of new and exciting capabilities to make managing your private and public cloud easier, so you can achieve self-driving operations and run production operations hands-off and hassle-free.
In this blog, we will be covering the steps to assess your environment before you upgrade and the upgrade process itself. If you would like to learn more about the new features included with this next release, please see the What’s New in vRealize Operations 6.7 blog.
The evolution of vRealize Operations (vROps) over its many years has seen a number of additional metrics incorporated into the product. With the release of vRealize Operations (vROps) 6.7, you will experience a reduced footprint by 30% and a simplified content so product analytics can run faster. Many of the newer metrics overlap or replace legacy metrics to eliminate unnecessary data points and provide precise performance and capacity analytics within vROps.
Are Your Ready to Upgrade to vROps 6.7?
The product team created a vRealize Operations Upgrade Assessment Tool to help you assess your upgrade readiness and determine how your custom content in previous versions might need to be updated so you can achieve a seamless upgrade.
Getting Started:
Below is a video that walks through running the vRealize Operations Upgrade Assessment Tool:
Understanding Results:
Let’s take a closer look at the report that is generated from the assessment tool. Once you open the generated report you will see the dashboard with a summary of affected objects for dashboards, reports, alerts, supermetrics, and others.
By selecting one of the object types from the Summary Report you will get a detailed list of the affected components, including component name, owner, widget, views, etc. You will notice that not all components might be relevant to you, so focus on those that you actively use.
By clicking on the metric from the Impacted Component Details page, you will see the exact metric in question with a hyperlink to see, when available, a recommendation on a replacement metric to use instead. For example, in the image above you have an affected dashboard named “NOC: VM Configuration”. This dashboard has a deprecated metric called “guestfilesystem|freespace_total”. If you click on the hyperlink metric name you will be brought to the exact metric in question with recommended actions to take.
You will notice that, in this example, there is a suggested replacement metric (Guest File System | Utilization (%)) for the deprecated metric (Guest File System stats|Total Guest File System Free(gb)). You can now go into the dashboard in question in vRealize Operations and replace the deprecated metric with the suggested replacement metric and ensure that the dashboard works before you upgrade to vRealize Operations 6.7.
Once you have completed the upgrade assessment and updated the affected components, if any were found, you can confidently upgrade to vRealize Operations 6.7.
How to Upgrade to vROps 6.7?
The upgrade process is identical to previous upgrades you might have performed. This upgrade has two parts. The first part will update the operating system while the second updates the actual vRealize Operations platform. Below is a short video that walks through the upgrade process:
As you can see from the video above, the upgrade process is simple, straight forward and identical to pervious upgades with one exception, the need to update the currency for your installation. Currency? Yes, vRealize Operations 6.7 includes cost analytics to optimize for performance and capacity. Once you log in for the first time post the platform upgrade you will see the following banner at the top of the window:
After selecting the Action dropdown menu you will select Global Settings, then select Currency to set the currency for the platform. Once the Set Currency window appears you can find the currency appropriate for your installation. Accept the warning that once you set the currency for the platform it can no longer be changed. Finally, select Set Currency to complete the upgrade process. Within a two-hour period you will start to see costing and performance data populated within the different areas of the vRealize Operations 6.7 platform.
Upgrade to vRealize Operations 6.7 to enjoy the major enhancements and new capabilities.
Visit the New Website for Technical Details
I have created a video to better illustrate the Workload Optimization solution and provides a nice overview. You can also view several other videos for vRealize Operations 6.7 on our new website VMware vRealize Suite Technical Guides which is focused on technical resources you can use to get the most out of your vRealize Operations experience.
Additional Resources:
Upgrade Portal:
https://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-operations/upgrade-center.html
Full List of Deprecated Metrics:
http://partnerweb.vmware.com/programs/vrops/DeprecatedContent.html
vRealize Operations Micro-site:
