Plain Virtualization

I often been asked and also have to refer internally what does vCenter Operations Manager (vC Ops) support in terms of plugin or adapters to what 3rd parties functions or software (in this case they are call packs). During a search recently, I realize VMware Solution Exchange contains all these plugins or adapters and I thought I should just share this.  For vC Ops, you can go directly here .  You will be entitled to these adapters (any licensing requirements please check with specific vendors) depending on the vC Ops editions you own.  For only Advanced and Enterprise would have some free adapters for use and is classified in the page.  For Advanced, other than Hyperic and AWS, most of the adapters are related to Storage performance metrics. For Enterprise Edition, you will see more 3rd parties monitoring tools like SCOM, IBM Tivoli, TeamQuest, etc are available.  Also Enterprise Edition will be able to use Advanced adapters too. A simple screenshot of ...

Happy New Year to everyone who have been following my blog.  It been a great year last year and the start of the year have already got me real busy. To start the year going, I decide to have my first post regarding vC Ops in vSOM which have been rising lots of questions. As more customers are looking at better managing their environment, the standalone vSphere license become less attractive as the only monitoring that is possible is from vCenter performance charts.  Using this could be an easy way out for a small 2-3 hosts environment however if you have more  hosts or over 100 of VMs, that would be a tedious task to be accomplish everyday.  Especially when an issue rise. As you know VMware has release a new package for vSphere which is known as vSphere with Operation Management.  This package added in vC Ops Standard edition as part of the processor license and allow customers to monitor unlimited number of VMs running on such licensing type in the clust...

I realize that there isn't any guide on updating the vC Ops vApp anyway in the guide or on the internet.  Updating the vApp is pretty easy.  You just need to browse to vC Ops in VMware site and download the update file which end with .pak. Access the Admin page to upload the update file and after which just double check after the update is done.

Credit to Edward Chew For anyone who have used vCenter Operations Manager 5, in short vCOps most called it.  But the right abbreviation is vC Ops. You might realize after deployment, some but not everyone will encounter this issue, the data for certain variable becomes unknown.  Slowly you have more of such no data returns.  You can reboot the vApp however this does not resolve any thing. As seen below this is what happen to one of the environment we have.  Luckily thanks to one of my fellow colleague, Edward Chew, he raise a support to seek for a hotfix.  And yes the build version 5.0.0 build 554150 is patched with the hotfix to 5.0.0 Build 635818 After the hotfix is applied the data collection is resumed.   One of the reason this was caused: "it has to do with how vC Ops handle an unexpected situation during collection.  Prior to the patch, if it threw an exception, it wouldn’t recover and its believe it stopped the co...

VMware has release a series of 4 videos regarding vCenter Operations Manager (vC Ops).  It really save me lots of time understanding it on my own.  Wish this was published earlier and I won't have to go through it the tough way myself :( However now with this video, my friends and fellow VMware practicetioner can have a good look at how well vC Ops look and feel and what information can it really deliver. To save trying to look through all the videos and figure out which is whic, I have posted all the 4 in order here. VMware vCenter Operations Capacity Planning & Management: Dashboard Overview VMware vCenter Operations Capacity Planning & Management: Drilldown & Alerts   VMware vCenter Operations Capacity Planning & Management: Heatmaps & Event Management     VMware vCenter Operations Capacity Planning & Management: What-if Scenarios

For those who have been deploying vC Ops and have been using it in their environment, you may not have face any problem deploying the ovf vApp. However there are some who have acquire vC Ops but facing error deploying the vApp.  This applies to mostly customer on Essential, Essential Plus or customer with a cluster without DRS enabled.  vSphere Essential and Essential Plus does not contain DRS features. There is a KB stating this issue and the work around for those customer affected however the caveat is to lose the vApp container.  For those no aware, vC Ops manager consist of two VMs groups together in a vApp container.