As the VMware portfolio continues to evolve and unify, in-product capabilities sometimes find new homes. Late last year Skyline Advisor was decommissioned and many customers have expressed interest in continuing to receive value from four of the key capabilities that Skyline Advisor offered customers – Proactive Diagnostics, Log Assist, Environment Health Checks, and TAM Insights Data. All four capabilities are still available today – let me walk you through which products those capabilities reside in and how to take advantage of them.
Proactive Diagnostics
Previously, you could find diagnostic capabilities spread across Skyline Advisor, Skyline Health Diagnostics, and VMware Aria Operations for Logs. With VMware Cloud Foundation Operations 5.2, those disparate capabilities have all found a new home and are delivered as a unified experience within the new Diagnostics Console in VMware Cloud Foundation Operations
For an in-depth look at these capabilities I’ll point you to Sonny Nguyen’s blog where he walks you through the new Diagnostics Console Experience. There are already over 500 findings and additional findings continue to be added.
If you prefer learning through experience or you don’t have a VCF 5.2 environment, I can think of no better way to delve into these capabilities than to check out our VMware Hands-on Labs. These labs are available at no cost and provide a deployed VMware environment that you can explore at your own pace.
To learn about the new VCF Diagnostics Console, you’ll want to make sure to check out the ‘VCF Operations – Getting More Out of It! (HOL-2501-02-VCF-L)’ lab. Specifically, turn your attention to Module 15 – Using VCF Diagnostics to Understand the Operational Health of your Private Cloud. Proactive Diagnostics are available to all VCF customers running VCF 5.2.
Log Assist
Previously Log Assist within Skyline allowed customers to select and upload log bundles directly to an existing support case which offered both a streamlined user experience as well as quicker time to resolution. As of December 2024, this capability is now available through Skyline Health Diagnostics (SHD), a standalone Virtual Appliance. If you’re not already familiar with some of the capabilities Skyline Health Diagnostics offers, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to review my previous blog.
To utilize Log Assist in Skyline Health Diagnostics, you’ll need to be either a SHD Operator or SHD Administrator and have an open Support Case in the Broadcom Support portal. Make sure you have the Broadcom username, password, and Site ID as well. Once you are logged into Skyline Health Diagnostics, click the Log Assist button on the top menu.
From there you can select the appropriate product (vSphere for vCenter, ESXi, and vSAN logs or SDDC Manager for SDDC Managers logs) and enter the credential information for the endpoint.
At this point you’ll select the logs that you want to include in your upload.
To conclude the workflow you’ll enter your Support Case details and then you can initiate the transfer of the log bundles.
Please note, if you receive support through one of Broadcom’s authorized partners and not directly from Broadcom you will need to manually upload files to the Support Portal. If you’re interested in downloading Skyline Health Diagnostics for yourself you can find the instructions on the Broadcom Knowledge Base.
Environment Health Checks
VCF Technical Adoption Manager (TAM) customers are entitled to a Health Check of their vSphere environment. Over the years, VCF Professional Services and TAMs have leveraged various tools to assist in this process. Currently, VMware Health Analyzer is a tool available to VCF Professional Services, TAMs, and select VMware Partners that aids them in analyzing your vSphere configuration. Your PS/TAM/Partner will use the information gathered to confirm technical consistency, validate best practices, and identify areas where potential system degradation and bottlenecks can affect system health. After an in depth discussion of the findings, you will receive a Health Check Report that documents those identified gaps along with prescriptive remediation recommendations based on best practices. If you have a TAM, they will then add and track any necessary configuration changes as part of your joint Success Plan, ensuring they are successfully executed. Contact your TAM or Broadcom Account Team if you are interested in learning more about these Health Checks.
TAM Insights
Your VCF TAM can also provide deep insights into your VCF environment and how it has changed over time. Using a tool called TAM Data Manager, your TAM will gather analytics about your environment on a regular cadence (typically quarterly) and provide you with a variety of visualizations to help drive a deeper understanding of your VCF environment. The insights gathered from the trending reports, along with your TAM’s expertise, are turned into actionable plans (tracked in your Success Plan) to optimize and streamline the operations of your environment. In the first sample report below, important trends around resource consumption, interoperability, availability, efficiency, and product lifecycle are at your fingertips.
In a second view, a deeper dive into the makeup of your vSphere environment is presented.
These two views are just a snapshot of the handful of visualisations that are available from your TAM through the data collected by TAM Data Manager.
Conclusion
Broadcom remains deeply committed to your success, continuing to lead innovation across the VCF product portfolio. As a result of this innovation, customers’ favorite capabilities such as Proactive Diagnostics, Log Assist, Environment Health Checks, and TAM Insights have found new homes. Innovation on these capabilities continues, so keep an eye out for future enhancements coming in our flagship VCF 9 release and beyond.
If you aren’t already running VCF 5.2 or later, you will need to do so before upgrading to VCF 9. Talk to your TAM about what you need to do to be ready for VCF 9. And if you’re interested in exploring any of the capabilities covered in this blog, please reach out to your TAM (if you have one) or your Broadcom Account Team.
