VMware Solution

Adoption Guide
VMware Solution Adoption

You can find the most up-to-date technical documentation on the VMware website at:

[Link]

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VMware Solution Adoption

VMware, Inc.
3401 Hillview Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
[Link]

©
Copyright 2023 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright and trademark information.

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Contents
Contents..................................................................................................................... 3
Version History........................................................................................................... 4
Document Overview................................................................................................... 5
Solution Adoption Overview....................................................................................... 6
Solution Objectives..................................................................................................... 7
Technology Operational Processes.............................................................................8
Solution Activities....................................................................................................... 9
Best Practices for Deploying vRealize Operations Manager....................................9
Analytics Nodes................................................................................................... 9
Witness Nodes................................................................................................... 10
Cloud Proxy....................................................................................................... 10
Cloud Proxy and Telegraf Agents.......................................................................10
Management Packs and Adapters.....................................................................11
Deployment Formats......................................................................................... 11
Scalability Considerations..................................................................................... 11
High Availability Considerations............................................................................13
Continuous Availability Considerations.................................................................13
Cluster Management......................................................................................... 14
Fault Domains.................................................................................................... 14
Witness Node..................................................................................................... 14
Analytics Nodes................................................................................................. 14
Collector Group.................................................................................................. 15
Adapter and Management Packs Considerations..................................................15
Hardware Requirements for Analytics Nodes, Witness Nodes, and Cloud Proxy...16
Port Requirements for vRealize Operations Manager............................................16
Consumption Activities......................................................................................... 16
Troubleshooting Workbench Home Page...........................................................16
About vRealize Operations Reference for Metrics, Properties, and Alerts..........18
Monitoring Objects in Your Managed Environment by Using.............................19
Appendix A: Process Routine Mapping.....................................................................21

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Version History

Date Ver. Author Description Reviewers

Consultant Note Amend the text as needed and address the consultant and or
architect notes. After completion, the notes can be removed. This text provides either
sample
guidance information, configuration recommendations for specific services, or customer
specific configurations.

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Document Overview
This adoption guide document is created by VMware Professional Services to support
the subsequent operations of the VMware solution at Customer.

This document is accompanied by other documents that focus on implementation and

operation subjects, such as installation guides, configuration, and verification workbooks.

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Solution Adoption Overview
Adoption of any solution involves the incorporation of the technology into existing business
processes. The creation, training and verification of adopted processes is required to ensure
that the original business aims are achieved post implementation of the solution.

VMware has created a simple methodology to assist with this, the diagram below illustrates
this.

Figure 3-1. See One, Do One, Teach One

Using this methodology Customer will have details on many operational processes that
can be used post implementation of the solution.

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Solution Objectives
During the scoping of the solution with Customer, VMware identified the following
business objectives:

Table 4-1. Desired IT Outcomes of Solution

IT Outcomes

Optimized resource allocations

Centralized dashboards

Improved service quality

Centralised dashboards

Improved service quality

Optimized resource allocations

Monitoring key data center metrics

Monitoring key data centre metrics

Table 4-2. Desired IT Capabilities to Develop

IT Capabilities

Monitor and manage infrastructure performance and capacity

Monitor and manage infrastructure performance and capacity

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Technology Operational Processes
The following table illustrates the list of processes included in this document and how they
relate to the IT Outcomes and IT Capabilities shown.

Consultant Note Review the Consumption processes that have been inserted below. Based
upon the process description map each process to one or more IT Outcomes and IT
Capabilities listed above. The aim is to create the linkage between the processes provided
with this engagement to the pre-sales discussion that determined the Capabilities and IT
Outcomes the customer wanted to develop.

Process Name Related IT Outcomes Related IT Capabilities

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Solution Activities
The following sections provide details of the operational use cases that contribute towards
the development of the IT Outcomes and IT Capabilities that the technology is intended to
support.

This chapter includes the following topics:

 vRealize Operations Manager Adoption Content

vRealize Operations Manager Adoption Content

Best Practices for Deploying vRealize Operations Manager

Implement all the best practices when you deploy a production instance of vRealize
Operations Manager.

Analytics Nodes
Analytics nodes consist of a primary node, primary replica node, and data nodes.

Note The master node is now referred to as the primary node. The master replica node is
now referred to as the primary replica node.

 Deploy analytics nodes in the same vSphere Cluster except when activating
Continuous Availability.

 Deploy analytics nodes with the same disk size on storage of the same type.

 When activating Continuous Availability, separate analytics nodes into fault domains
based on their physical location.

 Depending on the size and performance requirements for analytics nodes, apply
Storage DRS Anti-Affinity rules to ensure that nodes are on separate datastores.

 Set Storage DRS to manual for all vRealize Operations Manager analytics nodes.

 If you deploy analytics nodes into a highly consolidated vSphere cluster, configure the
resource reservation to ensure optimal performance. Ensure that the virtual CPU to

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 physical CPU ratio is not negatively impacting the performance of analytics nodes by
validating CPU ready time and CPU co-stop.

 Analytics nodes have a high number of vCPUs to ensure performance of the analytics
computation that occurs on each node. Monitor CPU Ready time and CPU Co-Stop to
ensure that analytics nodes are not competing for CPU capacity.

 If the sizing guideline provides several configurations for the same number of objects,
use the configuration which has the least number of nodes. For example, if the number
of collecting is 120,000, configure the cluster with four extra-large nodes instead of 12
large nodes.

 Deploy an extra even number of nodes to activate Continuous Availability. If the current
configuration is an odd number of analytics nodes, deploy an extra analytics node to
create an even pairing.

Witness Nodes
A witness node is required when continuous availability is activated to manage the analytics
nodes in the fault domains. vRealize Operations Manager can have only one witness node in
its cluster.

 Deploy the witness node before activating continuous availability.

 Deploy the witness node using the witness configuration.

 Deploy the witness node in a different cluster separate from the analytics nodes.

Cloud Proxy
Using cloud proxies in vRealize Operations Manager, you can collect and monitor data from
your remote data centers. You can deploy one or more cloud proxies in vRealize Operations
Manager to create a one-way communication between your remote environment and
vRealize Operations Manager. The cloud proxies work as one-way remote collectors and
upload data from the remote environment to vRealize Operations Manager. Cloud proxies
can support multiple vCenter Server accounts.

Cloud Proxy and Telegraf Agents

 Deploy Cloud Proxy in the same vCenter Server as the end point VMs on which you want
to deploy the Telegraf agents. For Cloud Proxy sizing information see vRealize
Operations Sizing Guidelines.

 Ensure that your operating system platform is supported by Cloud Proxy, and the most
recent versions of Windows and Linux OS are supported.

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 System times must be synchronized between cloud proxy, end point VMs, the vCenter
Server, ESX host, and vRealize Operations Manager. To ensure synchronized time, use
Network Time Protocol (NTP).

 Ensure that all the prerequisites are met. For more information, see Prerequisites.

 Disable UAC on Endpoint VMs before installing the Telegraf agent. If you cannot do this
due to security restrictions, see KB article 70780 for a work around script.

 Ensure that the version later than 10.2 of VMware Tools is installed on the end point
VM on which you want to deploy the Telegraf agent.

 To deploy Telegraf agents onto end point VMs, ensure that the following prerequisites
are met for the user account being used for deployment:

Windows - The user account must be either:

 An administrator account

 A non-administrator account that is a member of the built-in administrator

group Linux - The user account must be either:

 A root user with all privileges

 A non-root user with all privileges

 A non-root user with specific privileges

For more information, see User Account Prerequisites in the vRealize Operations
Configuration Guide.

Management Packs and Adapters

Various management packs and adapters have specific configuration requirements. Ensure
that you are familiar with all prerequisites before you install a solution and configure the
adapter instance.

 Utilize collector groups to separate data collection into fault domains when
continuous availability is activated.

Deployment Formats
Deploy vRealize Operations Manager with the same vRealize Operations Manager vApp
version for the following node types:

 Primary

 Primary Replica

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 Data

 Witness

See the vRealize Operations vApp Deployment and Configuration Guide for more
information.

Scalability Considerations
Configure your initial deployment of vRealize Operations Manager based on the anticipated
use.

For more information about sizing, see the KB article vRealize Operations Manager
Sizing Guidelines (KB 2093783).

Analytics Nodes

Analytics nodes consist of a primary node, a primary replica node, and data nodes.

For enterprise deployments of vRealize Operations Manager, deploy all nodes as

medium, large or extra-large deployments, depending on sizing requirements and
your available resources.

Scaling Vertically by Adding Resources

If you deploy analytics nodes in a configuration other than large, you can reconfigure the
vCPU and memory. It is recommended to scale up the analytics nodes in the cluster
before scaling out the cluster with additional nodes. vRealize Operations Manager
supports various node sizes.

Scaling Vertically by Increasing Storage

You can increase storage independently of vCPU and Memory.

To maintain a supported configuration, data nodes deployed in the cluster must be the
same node size.

For more information about increasing storage, see the topic, Add Data Disk Space to
a vRealize Operations vApp Node. You cannot modify the disks of virtual machines
that have a snapshot. You must remove all snapshots before you increase the disk size.

Scaling Horizontally (Adding nodes)

vRealize Operations Manager supports up to eight extra-large analytics nodes in a

cluster, or up to 10 extra-large nodes in a cluster when continuous availability is
activated.

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 To maintain a supported configuration, analytics nodes deployed in the cluster must be
the same node size.

Witness Node

vRealize Operations Manager provides a single size regardless of the cluster size
since the witness node does not collect nor process data.

Remote Collectors

Note Fresh deployment of remote collectors is not supported in vRealize Operations

Manager, starting from version 8.10. Remote collectors are available only if you had
deployed them in a previous version of vRealize Operations Manager. If you require a
new agent to collect data, you must deploy a cloud proxy. For more information on how
to deploy a cloud proxy, see the topic, Installing Cloud Proxy in the Installing guide.

vRealize Operations Manager supports two sizes for remote collectors, standard and
large. The maximum number of resources is based on the aggregate resources that are
collected for all adapters on the remote collector. In large scale vRealize Operations
Manager monitored environment, you might experience a slow responding UI, and
metrics are slow to be displayed.

Cloud Proxy

vRealize Operations Manager supports two sizes for Cloud Proxy, small and large.
The maximum number of resources is based on the aggregate resources that are
collected for all adapters on the Cloud Proxy. In large scale vRealize Operations
Manager monitored environment, you might experience a slow responding UI, and
metrics are slow to be

displayed. Determine the areas of the environment in which the latency is greater
than 20 milliseconds and install a remote collector Cloud Proxy in those areas.

High Availability Considerations

High availability creates a replica for the vRealize Operations Manager primary node and
protects the analytics cluster against the loss of a node.

Cluster Management

Clusters consist of a primary node, a primary replica node, and data nodes.

Activating High Availability within vRealize Operations Manager is not a disaster

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 recovery solution. When you activate High Availability, information is stored
(duplicated) in two different analytics nodes within the cluster. This doubles the
system's compute and capacity requirements. If either the primary node or the primary
replica node is permanently lost, then you must deactivate, and then reactivate High
Availability to reassign the primary replica role to an existing node. This process, which
includes a hidden cluster rebalance, can take a long time.

Analytics Nodes

Analytics nodes consist of a primary node, primary replica node, and data nodes.

When you activate High Availability, you protect vRealize Operations Manager from data
loss when only a single node is lost. If two or more nodes are lost, there may be
permanent data loss. Deploy each analytics node to separate hosts to reduce the chance
of data loss if a host fails. You can use DRS anti-affinity rules to ensure that the vRealize
Operations Manager nodes remain on separate hosts.

Collector Group

In vRealize Operations Manager, you can create a collector group. A collector group is a
collection of nodes (cloud proxy, and analytics nodes). You can assign adapters to a
collector group, rather than assigning an adapter to a single node.

Note A collector group must contain the same type of nodes. You cannot mix cloud
proxy, and analytics nodes in a collector group.

If the node running the adapter fails, the adapter is automatically moved to another
node in the collector group.

Assign all normal adapters to collector groups, and not to individual nodes. Hybrid
adapters require a two-way communication between the adapter and the monitored
endpoint.

For more information about adapters, see Adapter and Management Packs
Considerations.

Continuous Availability Considerations

Continuous Availability (CA) separates the vRealize Operations Manager cluster into two
fault domains and protects the analytics cluster against the loss of a fault domain.

Cluster Management

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Clusters consist of a primary node, a primary replica node, a witness node, and data nodes.

Activating Continuous Availability within vRealize Operations Manager is not a disaster

recovery solution.

When you activate Continuous Availability, information is stored (duplicated) in two different
analytics nodes within the cluster but stretched across fault domains. Due to sizing
requirements, continuous availability requires doubling the system’s compute and capacity
requirements.

If either the primary node or primary replica node is permanently lost, then you must replace
the lost node, which will become the new primary replica node. If it is necessary to have the
new primary replica node as the primary node, then you can take the current primary node
offline and wait until the primary replica node is promoted to the new primary node. Then
bring the former primary node back online and it will be the new primary replica node.

Fault Domains
Fault domains consist of analytics nodes, separated into two zones.

A fault domain consists of one or more analytics nodes grouped according to their physical
location in the data center. When configured, two fault domains allow vRealize Operations
Manager to tolerate failures of an entire physical location and failures from resources
dedicated to a single fault domain.

Witness Node
Witness node is a member of the cluster but not part of the analytics nodes.

To activate CA within vRealize Operations Manager, deploy the witness node in the cluster.
The witness node does not collect nor store data.

The witness node serves as a tiebreaker when a decision must be made regarding
availability of vRealize Operations Manager when the network connection between the two
fault domains is lost.

Analytics Nodes
Analytics nodes consist of a primary node, primary replica node, and data nodes.

When you activate continuous availability, you protect vRealize Operations Manager from
data loss if an entire fault domain is lost. If node pairs are lost across fault domains, there
may be permanent data loss.

Deploy analytics nodes, within each fault domain, to separate hosts to reduce the chance
of data loss if a host fails. You can use DRS anti-affinity rules to ensure that the vRealize

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Operations Manager nodes remain on separate hosts.

Collector Group
In vRealize Operations Manager, you can create a collector group. A collector group is a
collection of nodes (Cloud Proxy, and analytics nodes). You can assign adapters to a collector
group, rather than assigning an adapter to a single node.

Note A collector group must contain the same type of nodes. You cannot mix Cloud Proxy,
and analytics nodes in a collector group.

When activating continuous availability, collector groups can be created to collect data
from adapters within each fault domain.

Collector groups do not have any correlation with fault domains. The functionality of a
collector group is to collect data and provide it to the analytics nodes, which then vRealize
Operations Manager decides how to keep the data.

If the node running the adapter collection fails, the adapter is automatically moved to
another node in the collector group.

Theoretically, you can install collectors in any place, provided the networking requirements
are being met. However, from a failover perspective, it is not recommended to put all the
collectors within a single fault domain. If all the collectors are directed to a single fault
domain, vRealize Operations Manager stops receiving data if a network outage occurs
affecting that fault domain.

Assign all normal adapters to collector groups, and not to individual nodes. Hybrid
adapters require a two-way communication between the adapter and the monitored
endpoint.

For more information about adapters, see Adapter and Management Packs Considerations.

Adapter and Management Packs Considerations

Adapters and management packs have specific configuration considerations.

Normal Adapters

Normal adapters require a one-way communication to the monitored endpoint. Deploy

normal adapters into collector groups, which are sized to handle a failover.

Following is a sample list of adapters provided by VMware for vRealize Operations

Manager. Additional adapters can be found on the VMware Solutions Exchange website.

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  VMware vSphere

 Management Pack for NSX for vSphere

 Management Pack for OpenStack

 Management Pack for Storage Devices

 Management Pack for Log Insight

Hybrid Adapters

Hybrid adapters require a two-way communication between the adapter and the
monitored endpoint.

You must deploy hybrid adapters to a dedicated remote collector. Configure only one
hybrid adapter type for each remote collector. You cannot configure hybrid adapters as
part of a collector group. For example, two vRealize Operations for Published
Applications adapters can exist on the same node, and two vRealize Operations for
Horizon adapters can exist on the same node, but a vRealize Operations for Published
Applications adapter and a vRealize Operations for Horizon adapter cannot exist on the
same node.

Several hybrid adapters are available for vRealize Operations Manager.

 vRealize Operations for Horizon adapter

 vRealize Operations for Published Applications adapter

 Management Pack for vRealize Hyperic

Hardware Requirements for Analytics Nodes, Witness Nodes,

and Cloud Proxy
Analytics nodes, witness nodes, and cloud proxies have various hardware requirements for
virtual machines and physical machines.

For information about the components to install on each server profile in your deployment,
and the required hardware specifications, see the KB article vRealize Operations Manager
Sizing Guidelines (KB 2093783).

CPU requirements are 2.0 GHz minimum. 2.4 GHz is recommended. Storage requirements are
based on the maximum supported resources for each node.

vRealize Operations Manager has a high CPU requirement. In general, the more physical CPU
that you assign to the analytics cluster, the better the performance. The cluster will perform
better if the nodes stay within a single socket.

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Port Requirements for vRealize Operations Manager

The most up-to-date technical information about ports can be found on Ports and Protocol.

Consumption Activities
This section contains standard consumption procedures for the capabilities being deployed
as a part of the service.

Troubleshooting Workbench Home Page

The Troubleshooting Workbench home page is where you find active troubleshooting
sessions and recent searches. The active troubleshooting sessions do not persist after you
log out from .

Where You Find the Troubleshooting Workbench Home Page

 Navigate to the Troubleshooting Workbench home page from Home >

Troubleshoot > Workbench.

 From the Quick Start page, click Workbench in the Troubleshoot section.

The Troubleshooting Workbench home page displays a search bar, a list of active
troubleshooting sessions, and recent searches. You can open a session to find potential
evidences for your problems.

How Troubleshooting Workbench Home Page Works

All troubleshooting workbench sessions that are active in the current login are displayed in
the Active Troubleshooting section of the Troubleshooting Workbench home page.
Changes that you make to the scope, time, or potential evidences in the troubleshooting
workbench page are not be saved on logging out. The next time you log in to , the sessions
that were earlier under Active Troubleshooting are displayed under Recent Searches.

Discovering Potential Evidences Using the Troubleshooting Workbench

The Troubleshooting Workbench is where you perform advanced troubleshooting tasks

on an alert that triggered on an object. You can investigate both known and unknown
issues in .

Where You Find the Troubleshooting Workbench

You can start the Troubleshooting Workbench with an alert in context from the alert
information page, or you can search for an object and start the Troubleshooting Workbench

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to investigate known or unknown issues related to the object.

 To start the Troubleshooting Workbench with an alert in context, in the menu, click
Troubleshoot > Alerts. Click an alert from the alert list and click Launch
Workbench from the Potential Evidence tab.

 To start the Troubleshooting Workbench with an alert in context, in the menu, click
Environment, then select a group, custom data center, application, or inventory object.
Click the object and then the Alerts tab. Click Launch Workbench from the Potential
Evidence tab.

 To investigate known or unknown issues with an object in context, search for the object or
click
Environment to locate the object and click Troubleshoot on the top.

How the Troubleshooting Workbench Works

You look for potential evidences of a problem within a specific scope and time range.
The Selected Scope control on the left of the Troubleshooting Workbench page is
where you vary the scope. You can vary the scope in the following ways:

 You can select only the object that you are investigating, or include several upstream
and downstream relationships by increasing the scope. As you increase the scope,
more objects are displayed in the inventory tree.

 You can select a custom scope to include objects of your choice. Click Custom to
open an interactive window where you use the pointer to visually rearrange your
objects, view
relationships and add peers to modify the relationships. To see details about the object,
place the pointer for a few seconds above the object. You can reset a custom scope to
start all over again.

 You can use the drop-down menu to narrow down the type of objects displayed.

The default time range is two hours, and thirty minutes before the alert triggered when the
context is alert based, or one hour before the current time, when the context is object based.
You can select a different time range, up to seven days, using the date and time controls.

The potential evidences are based on Events, Property Changes, and Anomalous Metrics
which are displayed on the right of the Troubleshooting Workbench change in the
Potential Evidence tab. Information in these sections is displayed as cards.

Events

Displays events, based on a change in the metrics. Events for metrics that have

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 breached the usual behavior, and major events that have occurred within the selected
scope and time are displayed. The cards are based on dynamic thresholds for a metric,
which is calculated based on historical and incoming data.

Property Changes

Displays important configuration changes that occurred within the selected scope and
time. Both single and multiple property changes are displayed. For multiple property
changes, you can view the latest and previous changes.

Anomalous Metrics

Metrics which have shown drastic changes within the selected scope and time. Ranks the
results based on the degree of change. The most recent anomalous metric based on a
time- sliced comparison in the current time range is given the highest weightage.

You can explore more details about any of the cards displayed in the Troubleshooting
Workbench by clicking the card pop-out option. You can close a card and it is no longer
displayed in the Troubleshooting Workbench. To load the cards again, click Go in the Time
Range.

When you pin a metric, it appears in the Metrics tab of the Troubleshooting Workbench.
You can perform further investigation on the metric in the Metrics tab. You can compared
the pinned metrics with other metrics displayed in the tab. You can close the pinned
metrics and browse other metrics for specific objects.

Similarly, the Alerts and Events tabs are where you investigate the potential evidences
further. You can filter and group alerts. If you want to focus on the alerts for a specific
object in your selected scope, you can clear all the alerts and then click the object in the
scope.

About vRealize Operations Reference for Metrics, Properties, and Alerts

The vRealize Operations Reference for Metrics, Properties, and Alerts provides
information about the metric, properties, and alert definitions provided with vRealize
Operations.

Intended Audience

This information is intended for anyone who wants to install and configure vRealize
Operations by using a virtual appliance deployment. The information is written for
experienced virtual
machine administrators who are familiar with enterprise management applications and data
center operations.

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Note All unit conversions in vRealize Operations are based on 1024 factor.

Metric Definitions in

Metric definitions provide an overview of how the metric value is calculated or derived.
If you understand the metric, you can better tune to display results that help you to
manage your environment.

Property Definitions in

Properties are attributes of objects in the environment. You use properties in symptom
definitions. You can also use properties in dashboards, views, and reports.

uses adapters to collect properties for target objects in your environment. Property
definitions for all objects connected through the vCenter adapter are provided. The
properties collected depend on the objects in your environment.

generates Object Type Classification and Subclassification properties for every object. You
can use object type classification properties to identify whether an object is an adapter
instance, custom group, application, tier, or a general object with property values
ADAPTER_INSTANCE, GROUP, BUSINESS_SERVICE, TIER, or GENERAL, respectively.

Alert Definitions in vRealize Operations Manager

Alert definitions are a combination of symptoms and recommendations that identify problem
areas in and generate alerts on which you act for those areas.

Monitoring Objects in Your Managed Environment by Using

You can use to resolve problems that your customers raise, respond to alerts that
identify problems before your customers report problems, and generally monitor your
environment.

When your customers experience performance problems and call you to resolve the problem,
the data that collects and processes is presented to you in graphical forms. You can then
compare and contrast objects, understand the relationship between objects, and determine
the root cause of problems.

A generated alert notifies you when objects in your environment are experiencing problems.
If you resolve the problem based on the alert before your customers notice, then you avoid
service interruptions.

You can investigate the problems that generate alerts or that result in calls by using the
Alerts, Events, Details, and Environment tabs. If you find the root cause of the problem,

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you might be able to resolve the problem by running an action. The actions change objects in
the target system, for example, the VMware vCenter Server® system, from .

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Appendix A: Process Routine Mapping
The following table provides the full mapping of process routines for all IT Outcomes related
to the VMware solution.

IT Outcomes

Optimized resource allocations

Centralized dashboards

Improved service quality

Centralised dashboards

Improved service quality

Optimized resource allocations

Monitoring key data center metrics

Monitoring key data centre metrics

The following table provides the full mapping of all IT Capabilities linked to the VMware
solution and the process routines that contribute to the delivery of the IT Capability.

IT Capabilities

Monitor and manage infrastructure performance and capacity

Monitor and manage infrastructure performance and capacity

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