*Formerly vRealize Operations
I am very excited to announce quite a few updates for VMware Aria Operations. We’ll be talking about updates that range from a brand new launchpad, improved search experience, VCF operations, new integrations, and much, much more. In fact, there are so many new announcements that we will be following up with many deep-dive blogs for many of these topics to give you the full technical details. These new features have been released to all customers running VMware Aria Operations deployed as SaaS today, April 13. To find out more about how you can make the switch to SaaS, talk to you VMware representative today.
Launchpad
Let’s start out with the new face of VMware Aria Operations – the new Launchpad page (formerly Quickstart). We understand that the way you work has changed over the last few years and we want to better support your journey by giving you options that better align with multi-cloud workflows. You’ll see that you now can quickly dive deep into any given area of interest. For an example, if you are looking at your capacity, you can click on that card and you are brought to a Capacity page where you can assess your current capacity, optimize your infrastructure or plan for future capacity needs.
You’ll see below that in addition to the pillars that VMware Aria Operations is built on, you can now quickly move to applications, infrastructure or VMware Clouds.
Product Naming
You may have noticed in the screenshot above that the name has officially changed in the product from vRealize Operations to VMware Aria Operations. That’s right, all of those vROps Ninja stickers, t-shirts and socks are now officially collector’s items. I’m personally banking on my great-great-grandchild going on Antique Roadshow in the year 2187 and making billions off the items that I’ve collected over the years.
VMware Cloud Foundation Operations
In our last release VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) was introduced as a native cloud account. Now that VCF onboarding has been simplified we want to help give you deeper views and context around your management products for VCF (SDDC apps: vCenter, vSAN, NSXT; VCF apps: SDDC Manager, LifeCycle Manager). To do that, we have created a native page within VMware Aria Operations that looks at the overall health of your VCF accounts and domains. From that page you can define availability and performance issues by drilling down from the VCF workload and management domains to the management servers (in case of management domain only) and particular compute and storage clusters to navigate and fix the issue.
VMware Aria Operations Integration for VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Next, let’s dive into our new integration linking VMware Aria Operations and VMware Aria Operations for Applications. This new integration gives you the ability to go seamlessly between these two interfaces, looking at and correlating metrics for both the infrastructure and the application.
As you can see in the image above, there is bi-directional visibility between VMware Aria Operations and VMware Aria Operations for Applications. With these views of K8s objects, metrics and alerts you can launch, in-context, from one platform or the other to follow the object you are investigating.
VMware Aria Operations Integration with VMware Aria Operations for Logs
We continue to develop ways that you can integrate tools, bringing stronger data-depth and context. Log analysis is an essential capability of IT Operations, and that is why we are bringing this data within the same interface, with the same experience across on-prem or SaaS deployments. You can see in the image below that you are able to review logs right within VMware Aria Operations. You can even create custom Logs dashboards within VMware Aria Operations.
You can also start with an object in VMware Aria Operations and view the logs associated with that specific object by selecting the new Logs tab.
Multi-Cloud Operations Overview
As you continue to adopt multi-cloud, we want to continue building wholistic visibility for all of the objects that you are monitoring in VMware Aria Operations. You’ll see in the image below the new Multi-Cloud Overview page that lists all VMware Clouds and public clouds that you are able to monitor. Depending on what cloud account you click on, you’ll be able to see a summary view of what is happening in top objects associated with that cloud.
For VMware Cloud accounts you’ll see summaries associated with capacity and cost underneath the map and top objects.
There is also a separate page that looks at Total Cost of Ownership broken out by capacity, cost drivers, and datacenters.
Additionally, if there is a VMware Cloud solution that you are not currently utilizing, you can learn about the advantages, create an account, and guide you through setup.
For public cloud accounts you can see locations that you are utilizing, the top services, and below that the services growth trend and alerts volume.
Metric search
As part of improving the overall global search capability, we have taken steps to improve the experience and capabilities of the feature. You will now be able to search by starting with metrics or object types and use using search queries to add conditions using multiple metrics. The search results page also got a makeover so that you can deep dive into the metric or also launch directly into the Troubleshooting Workbench.
Alerts Enrichment
Reduce alert noise! The VMware team has performed an extensive analysis looking at all types of alerts, trying to understand how to reduce noise and bring more attention to the alerts you need to focus on. The team was able to deprecate over 30% of alerts causing noise through this exercise. Now you can group your alerts to see what is important to you.
Dashboard Sharing – Group Editing
For quite a while now you have been able to easily share dashboards by sending links within your organization. But now it is easier to create groups and give edit privileges for those groups or individuals. So, if you have a dashboard that you’d like a group of developers to be able to log in and edit, you can put them into a group and assign them rights for specific dashboards.
Automation Central Enhancements
This change is relatively simple, but important as it has been requested by many of you. You now have the ability to select a specific snapshot, based on a specific name and size to be deleted from an Automation Central scheduled job.
Supporting Advanced Authentication Mechanisms for Webhook Plugin
VMware Aria Operations boasts an incredibly open ecosystem, thanks in large part to webhook plugins, which support a variety of authentication mechanisms. We are expanding the webhook plugin authentication types to include: Basic auth, OAuth 2.0, Bearer token, Client certificate, and API key. Once created, the credential lifecycle will be managed by VMware Aria Operations for applicable credential types. For example, VMware Aria Operations will continuously refresh the token in the case of the oAuth 2.0 credential type.
Simplified UX for Collector Groups and Cloud Proxies
In an effort to improve the experience related to collector groups creation we have made several enhancements within the product. The key highlights include:
- Moving collector groups to a new tab next to cloud proxies in Data Sources for consistency.
- We have added a Collector Group column in the grid for easy filtering and sorting along with individual cloud proxies.
- Simplified Edit and View Details showing Cloud Proxy and Collector Group details in the right pane.
- Additional statuses for the high availability collector group configuration, allowing for easy troubleshooting.
VMware Cloud Cost Analysis
You can now analyze and compare cost, price and VMware Cloud bill metrics for your objects, groups, applications, tenants, etc. for any VMware Cloud that you are utilizing. Your analysis definition can be saved for repeated usage and exportable for offline viewing.
Google Cloud VMware Engine
Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) has been growing and now it is easier than ever to use. GCVE is available in 15 Google Cloud regions with more on the horizon. With this update there is a simplified process to link VMware Aria Operations with GCVE with the ability to add a dedicated cloud account, which leverages a project ID – meaning you have unique identifiers for all of your projects in GCVE. With these new capabilities you will be able to auto-discover new SDDCs and pull them into VMware Aria Operations for easy monitoring.
Additionally, you are now able to view bill-based costing for GCVE and look at cost metrics at the project level, giving you detailed views into the specific projects that you’re running in GCVE. This is all with one account to manage multiple GCVE SDDCs including vCenter, vSAN and NSX.
Horizon Monitoring
With the number of instant clones used in a Horizon environment, many of you were running into issues due to volume of VMs created as objects in VMware Aria Operations for each instant clone used. We have added a property in VMware Aria Operations that will allow you to identify if an object is an instant clone or not. Then we have added a hidden global setting for specifying the retention period of instant clone VMs. If you do not set your retention period for instant clone VMs, these will be treated as regular objects.
Horizon Management Pack
We have added cost and price metrics for the following items in Horizon:
- VDI Pool
- RDS Farm
- VDI Desktop Session
- VDI App Session
- RDS Host
- User
Workload Placement Enhancements
We have a few new features for Workload Placement (WLP). We understand that many of you run on distributed networks, which can make WLP complex. Now we have added a policy that requires a parameter for a target network as a criterion for workload optimization. To enable this feature select Configure > Policies > select “Generate a Target Network mapping”.
The second feature that we’ve added is support for an allocation model in WLP. This will eliminate compute clusters becoming over-allocated after WLP.
What-if scenario Planning Improvements
The first update for what-if scenarios is that we now have the ability to run outdated scenarios which eliminates the need to manually update the start date for frequently run scenarios. Keep in mind that while the start date can be in the past, the end date cannot. The second update is that you can now run what-if scenarios with custom VM profiles with up to 100 custom profiles. So if you have custom profiles defined you will be able to easily select a profile instead of individual VMs.
Looking for more?
This blog is a highlight of the features released this quarter. For full details on this exciting new release, be sure to check out the release notes. If you want to learn more about how VMware Aria Operations can help you and your organization then head over to VMware Tech Zone. Request a trial of VMware Aria Operations, engage in a VMware Aria Operations Cloud hands on lab, or request a conversation with one of our experts today.
