By Troy Bailey, Blue Medora
Dashboards are the primary visualization tool for users of VMware vRealize Operations Manager (vROps). This tool provides graphic representation of vROps data and displays overall infrastructure health.
Reports are another great way for vROps consumers to use and leverage data collected from vSphere and third-party management packs. The data in a report can be displayed and transformed in several different ways using the many views provided in vROps.
The latest release of vROps introduces two new dashboard and report features. The first feature allows users to transform dashboards into reports. The second feature enables users to place their favorite report on an external network share. This blog will show you how to set up each of these useful new features.
Dashboards often contain large amounts of data that would be useful as a report to application owners and managers. Follow these easy steps to turn your dashboard into a beautiful report:
- Login to vROps
- Navigate to the Content Tab, as seen in Figure 1
Figure 1 – Navigating to the Content tab, using either of these two options
- Click on Reports
- Click the green Plus sign, as shown below in Figure 2
Figure 2 – Adding a new report
- Give the report a name and description
- Proceed to the next step and select Dashboards from the Data type drop down menu
- Select your dashboard of choice and click Save
Your dashboard will now show up as a report in the Reports section of vROps.
Sometimes it is helpful to archive reports or share them with groups outside of vROps. The latest version of vROps makes this easy, allowing customers to place reports on a network share. To set up this new capability, simple follow these steps:
- Login to vROps
- Navigate to the Content tab
- Click on Reports
- Select the report that you would like to share
- Click the down arrow next to the gear icon and select Schedule report…
Figure 3 – Scheduling a report
- vROps will prompt you to select an object from which to collect data. Select an object and click Next
- Define the schedule as prompted, seen in Figure 4
Figure 4 – Defining the schedule of a report
- Near the bottom of the dialog box, you will now see an option for external locations
- Select the click here link to begin the setup
Figure 5 – Setting up an external share location
Note: Windows UNC or Linux NFS shares are both supported
- Click the Test button
- Click the checkbox Save to external location
- Select your network share from the dropdown
- Input your Relative Path if you wish to go further down in the path of your share
- Click Finish
The selected report will now be created on the provided schedule and placed on a network share for consumption externally.
For more information on VMware vRealize Operations, visit the product page on the VMware website. Find out more about management packs for vRealize Operations Manager by visiting the Blue Medora product page.
