In a previous blog post, vRealize Network Insight integration with vRealize Operations, we looked at version 1.0 of the vRealize Network Insight Management (vRNI) Pack for vRealize Operations. That was the first step in integrating the networking data from vRNI directly into vRealize Operations (vROps). It includes features like streaming of vRNI events into vROps, Launch in context, and Single Sign-On when using Workspace ONE Access (vIDM) for authentication. In this blog post, we will look at the subtle but amazing enhancements in the integration.
Starting vRealize Network Insight 6.0 and vRealize Operations 8.2, we have enhanced the integration in a couple of ways. First, the Management Pack is now natively available and comes as a default integration! Out of the box, and you don’t need to install the management pack anymore.
Secondly, vRealize Operations now synchronizes the applications that vRealize Network Insight has discovered in the network.
There are multiple ways of creating an application into vRNI, but its Flow-Based Application Discovery is the most effective and simplest method. It looks at the network traffic between the VMs and then maps them into application boundaries. It then goes more in-depth and defines the tier boundaries as well.
After configuring the native management pack for vRealize Network Insight in vRealize Operations, the discovered applications will synchronize. You can then take full advantage of the application-level monitoring that vRealize Operations has to offer.
Let check out how to configure this!
Configuring the Integration
First, make sure you have both vRealize Network Insight 6.0 and vRealize Operations 8.2 in place.
Then, configure the vRNI native integration by logging into vROps and going to the Administration -> Management -> Integrations tab. Configure the vRNI details: IP or hostname of the Platform appliance (Platform1, if you have a vRNI cluster), credentials (the auditor or member role is sufficient), and the vROps collector that should be assigned.
Take note of the Advanced Settings. By default, only vRNI events from common data sources (NSX objects, vSphere Hosts, VMs, and Applications) are imported. If you want all vRNI events inside vROps, make sure to Enable the first option. You can also enable importing the vRNI user-defined events and only import specific severities.
Once you save this configuration, vROps will start polling vRNI for information.
Application Synchronization
Let’s look at an example of an application discovered by vRNI, then synchronized to vROps. This application, called Funbike, was discovered via Flow-Based Application Discovery and looks like this in vRNI:
There are six tiers, traffic flowing between the tiers. The best part is that this is a hybrid application; workloads are hosted in AWS as EC2 instances and vSphere VMs. This is how it looks in vROps:
The first thing to notice is that all applications discovered with vRNI will be prefixed with “vRNI –“. The application has the same six tiers as in vRNI, and you can zoom in closer to the workloads and see the object that vROps has attached. The Web and Mgmt have AWS EC2 instances, while the DB and DBLB tiers are vSphere VMs.
Once the applications are in vROps, you can start using it’s world-class Application Monitoring to keep an eye on the application-level performance.
Application Launch in Context
Another benefit of integration is the Application launch in a context, which launches the vRNI Application dashboard. You can get a sense of the overall incoming/outgoing traffic, total flows, the locations from which users are accessing this application, its network topology, top talker VMs by flows, micro-segmented tiers, VM metrics, and so on.
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Demo
Watch this video to get a full demo of the Application-Aware Operations with vRealize Network Insight and vRealize Operations:
Conclusion
This post, in combination with the previous blog post, vRealize Network Insight integration with vRealize Operations, should give you a good understanding of what vRealize Network insight can do and what vRealize operations can do when it comes to Application-aware operations.
Starting vRealize Network Insight 6.0 and vRealize Operations 8.2, this is what you get:
- Native, built-in integration
- Application synchronisation
- Triggered vRNI events will stream into vROps
- Single sign-on between vROps and vRNI (when using Workspace ONE Access (vIDM) for authentication)
- Launch in context (from VMs, Hosts, Applications, etc.) to vRNI straight from vROps
- Available for both the on-premises products and the Cloud Services
The perfect combination: vRealize Network insight focuses on in-depth network troubleshooting and monitoring, and then vRealize Operations monitors everything else up to the application layer.
