Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 8 Configure Windows Server Monitoring

In the previous seven post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source, create custom alerts and notifications, creating dashboards, upgrading the appliance to the latest version and requesting / configuring a custom SSL cert.

In this post we will be going through installing the Windows agent and configuring the management pack to alert on Windows server OS level alerts like performance, services and application. This can be useful for monitoring physical servers running Windows.

Below is a link to the VMware document on vROps agent deployment I used for reference.

End Point Operations Management Agent Installation and Deployment (vmware.com)

Below is the list of support Operating system for vROps agent.

Operating System	Processor Architecture	JVM
RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.x, 6.x, 7.x	x86_64, x86_32	Oracle Java SE8
CentOS 5.x, 6.x, 7.x	x86_64, x86_32	Oracle Java SE8
SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLES) 11.x, 12.x	x86_64	Oracle Java SE8
Windows 2008 Server, 2008 Server R2	x86_64, x86_32	Oracle Java SE8
Windows 2012 Server, 2012 Server R2	x86_64	Oracle Java SE8
Windows Server 2016	x86_64	Oracle Java SE8
Solaris 10, 11	x86_64, SPARC	Oracle Java SE7
AIX 6.1, 7.1	Power PC	IBM Java SE7
VMware Photon Linux 1. 0	x86_64	Open JDK 1.8.0_72-BLFS
Oracle Linux versions 5, 6, 7	x86_64, x86_32	Open JDK Runtime Environment 1.7

First we need to enabled the management pack for Operating Systems / Remote Services Monitoring.

After the management pack is enabled we need to download the agent, the 8.2 version works for both 8.2 and 8.3 and is available to download on the same page as the vROps appliance.

Download vRealize Operations – My VMware

Once we have the agent, we can deploy to the servers that need to be monitored.

Copy the file to the server and run installer.

Add in the vROps server when prompted to

Next the installer will look for the thumbprint for the cert that is used for vROps. Logon to https://vrops/admin and click on the cert icon on the top right to view the current cert details.

Enter the user name and password that will be used to connect to vROps.

Set the install location the default is to install in c:\ep-agent this can be change if required.

The agent should now start to install.

We can run ep-agent.bat query from the install folder ep-agent\bin to confirm the agent has installed correctly.

Once completed we can check vROps to confirm the agent is reporting back, to view the agent in vROps logon to the web client > Administration > End Point Operations.

To view details for the server go to Environment > Operating Systems > Operating System World > Windows and select the server to view.

Once the server is added we can now monitor disk, CPU, memory and other metrics.

We can also monitor services.

To add a service to be monitored,

Go to server and click on action > monitor os object > monitor windows service

Give the monitor a name, select the object type and add in the service name (this needs to be the actual name and not the display name)

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Set the collection interval. Click ok to to create the monitor.

Click on Environment and we can view the service monitor we just added.

If we stop the service the next time the collection runs the service should show a critical alert.

We can add addtional metrics if needed. In this example we might want to see the logical disk space % free.

First we either need to modify the existing policy or create a new policy.

In this example we will be adding a new policy and inherting from the default policy.

Go to Policies and click add, give the policy a name and select where it will be inherit from. Then click create policy.

Go to the policies and click on the policy we just created and go to edit policy.

We will be adding a metric so we will select metrics and properties and enable the required metrics.

% free is under EP Ops Adapter > Windows >Fileserver Logical Disk > Utilization and % Free space (%).

Set the policy state to enabled.

Next we can apply the policy to either the object or if there are a lot of device it would be easier to create and apply to a custom group.

Now we can go to the server and confirm the policy is applied.

After a few minutes we can check the server object we can see the new metric and the data start to be shown.

Now that we have the metric showing next we can create an alert.

First we will need to create a symptom definition. Go to symptom definitions and click add.

Select the metric that will be used and give the symptom a name and set the threshold.

We can search to for the symptom to confirm it exist.

Next we need to create the alert. Go to alert definitions and click add.

Give the Alert a name and select Windows as the base object type.

Next we need to add the symptom we created.

Add a recommendation if any are applicable or create a recommendation (this is not required but can be usefully)

We need to add to a policy in this case it’s the Windows_Server_Agent and create a notification if this is required.

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We can search for the alert to confirm it has been created and to view the details.

Now when the server goes below 10% free disk space the server will alert.

Below is what the email notification will look like, we have configured email notification in a previous post so we wont go back over it here.

There are many metrics and alerts that can be configure this is just an example of one type. We can also create multiple alerts so that we get warning alerts at maybe 20% before getting a critical alert.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 7 Configure Custom Certificate

In the previous six post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source, create custom alerts and notifications, creating dashboards and upgrading the appliance to the latest version.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 4: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 5: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 5 Create a Dashboard – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 6: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 6 Upgrading vROps – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be going through requesting and applying a custom certificate. Configuring a custom cert is good practice from security standpoint and also will stop the security warning when access the vRealize web client.

Adding a certificate requires that there is a internal certificate authority that can be used to issue the certificate or we could use a public CA but there would be a cost to that, in this example we will be using a Windows Server CA.

I used the below VMware kb as reference when creating the cert.

Enabling TLS on Localhost Connections (vmware.com)

Configure a Custom Certificate (vmware.com)

First step is to connect to the vROps appliance using ssh connection and to generate the key file and cert request that will be used to generate the cert.

To enabled ssh go to the admin page and enable the ssh status.

If you have not updated the root password on the appliance already then this require to connect by ssh. To do this open a VM console for the appliance and go to login. The default root password is blank so just hit enter and it will prompt for a new password to be set.

Once the above has been completed, ssh to the vrops server I use putty but any ssh client will work.

After connecting I usually create a folder to keep the key file and cert request to they are simpler to find later if I need them again.

Next we need to generate a key file

openssl genrsa -out key_filename.key 2048

Next run the below command to create the certificate request

openssl req -new -key key_filename.key -out certificate_request.csr

Enter in the details for the cert. These can also be pre creating using a .config file but I just typed them in to the ssh console.

There should now be a key file and cert request in the folder.

Copy the .csr file as this will be used to generate the cert from the internal CA.

To generate the certificate logon on to the Microsoft CA web enrollment page.

Click submit and advanced certificate request.

Click submit a certificate request

Open the .csr file in a text editor and copy the content to certificate request box and select the certificate template to be used.

Click submit and the certificate should be generated. The cert needs to be downloaded as base 64.

Save the cert. The root CA cert also needs to be downloaded

Once all the cert files and key file are created, they now need to be combined to a .PEM format as that is the required format for vrops.

To combine the cert using Windows using the type command. The order the of the cert needs to be server cert, then key file, intermediate cert (if there are any in my case I only have the root cert) , root cert and then the PEM output.

type server_cert.cer key_filename.key cacerts.cer > vrops.pem

The .PEM file should now be created and is ready to be applied to vROps.

The last step is to apply the certificate, logon to the vROps admin page and go to the certificate icon in the top right.

Click Install new certificate.

Click browse and select the pem file we created. If there are no issue with verifying the pem file it should show as ready to install.

Click install to complete. The page should now reload and when we check the cert it should now be using the custom cert.

In the next post we will go through installing the Windows vROps agent and configuring the Windows management pack.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 6 Upgrading vROps

In the previous five post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source, create custom alerts and notifications and creating dashboards.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 4: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 5: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 5 Create a Dashboard – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be going through upgrading the vROps appliance to the latest version 8.3. Keeping appliances up to date is good from a security standpoint and also allows for new features and fixes to be applied.

To confirm if the upgraded version of vROps is supported by the existing vCenter version use the VMware interoperability matrix site.

Product Interoperability Matrix (vmware.com)

Once this has been confirmed as supported we will need to download the .pak file that will be used to update the appliance.

To download go the following URL

https://my.vmware.com/en/group/vmware/downloads/info/slug/infrastructure_operations_management/vmware_vrealize_operations/8_3

Select the version and edition required in my case it Enterprise

Select upgrade type we will be upgrading from 8.2 so we will use 8.x, there is also a upgrade assessment tool that can be run to do a pre check.

Once the .pak files has been downloaded we are ready to start the upgrade. We will run the assessment first and view the report then process with the full upgrade.

To access the admin page use /admin at the end of the vROps URl. We can check the current version on the system status page.

https://vropsserver/admin

Go to software update and click install a software update.

Click browse and select the .pak file and click upload

Once the file is uploaded click next

Accept the end user agreement.

Next you can review the update info and the last screen is to install.

The installation should now start, it took about 10 minute to complete.

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Once the assessment is completed, we need to go to the support tab and select support bundles. Click on the download icon to download the zip file.

To view the report click the download and extract the zip file go to \apuat-data\report and click on the index.html.

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If there are no issue reported in the pre assessment we can go ahead with the upgrade.

It is recommend to take a backup of the appliance before upgrading in case there are any issue during the install.

First part of the upgrade is to take the cluster offline, go to the system status page

Once the cluster is offline we can uploaded and apply the .pak file similar to the assessment tool.

Go to software update > Install a software update, select the upgrade pak file and upload.

Follow the wizard to start the upgrade.

The upgrade took 30 minutes to complete and the cluster to come back online. Once fully back online we can confirm that the version is now upgraded to 8.3.

In the next post we will go thorough configuring a custom SSL cert to replace the self singed cert to give better security.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 5 Create a Dashboard

In the previous four post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source and create custom alerts and notifications.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 4: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be creating a custom dashboard. Dashboard can be used to visual your VMware infrastructure, view performance issue and capacity planning / right sizing. Dashboards are made up of views and widgets.

We can create custom dashboards or clone and existing dashboard and modify that to add addtional view or widgets.

To create a new dashboard logon to the vROps web client > Dashboards > Dashboards > Create Dashboard

Give the dashboard a name and we can toggle between view and widgets using the below button.

Start adding the required views / widgets for the dashboard in this dashboard we are looking for performance related.

First we will add a view list that we will use to create an relationship with the other widgets.

Give the view a name and select if the content should be refreshed or not. Since I want to specify the cluster I will be setting self provider to On. If this is not set to on input data object will be greyed out

Next we need to specify the object under the inventory tree. We will be using vSphere Host and Clusters and the object will be vSphere World.

Under output data we will use cluster utilization.

Click save and output should look like the below.

Once we have the view we can add the addtional widgets and start creating the interactions.

No data will be showing till the Interactions are in place.

After adding in the required widgets and click on show interactions.

Now we just connect the LAB_Cluster view to the other widgets we just added.

Now if we select the cluster view we will have alert volume, health data, scoreboard and object relationship information returned.

If we want to share the dashboard with other users we can select share icon

Click on groups and select the group to be included.

Now share icon should show beside the name of the dashboard.

If there are pre existing dashboard that we want to customize we can clone these by going to Dashboards >> Manage Dashboards, select the dashboard you want to clone, click on the three dots and select clone.

Give the dashboard a name and we can then start to modify.

In the next post we will go through scheduling reports and updating vROps appliance

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications

In the previous three post we went through installing and configuring the vROPs virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server and configuring Window Active directory as an identity source.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be going through the different alert types and configuring actions bases on certain alerts.

Alerts:

Below are the three types of alert in vROPs:
Health Alerts:
The health alert list is all the generated alerts that are configured to affect the health of your
environment and require immediate attention. You use the health alert list to evaluate,
prioritize, and immediately begin resolving the problems.

Risk Alerts:
The risk alerts list is all the generated alerts that are configured to indicate risk in your
environment. Address risk alerts in the near future, before the triggering symptoms that
generated the alert negatively affect the health of your environment.

Efficiency Alerts:
The efficiency alerts list is all the generated alerts that are configured to indicate problems
with the efficient use of your monitored objects in your environment. Address efficiency
alerts to reclaim wasted space or to improve the performance of objects in your environment.

Each alert type has four different severity types, info, warning, immediate and critical. The can all be configured

To create a custom alert logon to vROPs web client > alerts > Alert Definitions

Click Add, give the alert a name

We will be using virtual machine so we will

select base object type and select vCenter Adapter > virtual Machine

We want to alert on Capacity so click on advanced.

Impact = Health

Criticality = Symptom based

Alert Type & Subtype = Virtualization/Hypervisor : Capacity

Next we need to add the a symptom that will be used to trigger the alert. If there is no symptom that matches what we want to alert on we can create a new symptom. For snapshot there is only greater than 2 days so we will create a new symptom.

We will be using Virtual Machine: Disk space > Snapshot > Age (Days) and set the value to greater than 5 days.

We can set a recommendation that already exists to not keep snapshots over 72 hours or create a custom recommendation.

We can also apply a policy we will use the default policy.

Complete the wizard to create the new alert.

Next we will configure an email notification instance to allow alerts to be emailed.

Go to Administration > Outbound Settings > Add

Added in the email servers settings.

Click test to validate the mail flow is working.

Click save to to complete.

Once we have the outbound email instance configured, we can setup alerts to send emails notifications.

I created a new alert for Powered off VM so it would be easier to get a alert to trigger to test the email notification.

Go to Alerts > Notification

Next add in the details and select the email instance we setup earlier. I will be alerting for when LAB-Linux01 is powered off so will use object and specify the VM name and alert definition.

Click save to create the notification.

Now once the VM is powered off we will get an notification.

In the next post we will be going through creating a dashboard.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication

In the previous post in this series we went through installing vROps virtual appliance and connecting to vCenter. In this post we will go through adding an AD authentication source and configuring access groups.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

There are 5 different authentication sources that can be added to vROps.

SSO SAML: An XML-based standard for a web browser single sign-on that enables users to perform single sign-on to multiple applications.
VMware Identity Manager: A platform where you can manage users and groups, manage resources and user authentication, and access policies and entitle users to resources.
Open LDAP: A platform-independent protocol that provides access to an LDAP database on another machine to import user accounts.
Active Directory: Specifies the use on Active directory to be used to import users accounts or groups.
Other: Specifies any other LDAP-based directory services, such as Novel or OpenDJ, used to import user accounts from an LDAP database on a Linux Mac machine.

First we need to logon to the vROps web client > Administration > Authentication Sources

Click Add and select the source type required. We use Microsoft AD so we will be using Active Directory.

Give the identity source a display name I usually use the domain name as this make it simpler when view settings. Use basic as this auto-discovers the DC and DN (Distinguished Name).

Add the user account that will be used to for the LDAP connections to the domain. This account should only need to have domain users rights.

I also always create a specific service account to be uses for each application AD integration. I would also recommend using SSL/TLS where possible as this will encrypt the LDAP requests between the appliance and the domain controller.

Click on details to view the auto discovered host and

Click test verify all settings are correct, if set to use SSL there will be a prompt to accept the certificate.

Once the test is successful we can complete adding the authentication source.

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Once completed the AD source should show.

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Next we will configure the groups in AD that will be used to assign access roles in vROps.

To add the groups they need to be imported from AD and then assign the required role.

Go to Administrator > Access Control > import

Use the search string to check for the groups.

Select the role that will be assigned to the group

Assign the other required roles and select the object that are required for the group.

To test we can open a new session and select the AD authentication source instead of local user.

We can check the domain controller security event logs to confirm the authentication.

Based on the roles assinged the user will only have limited access.

In the next post we will go through configure alerting and create some capacity planning reports that can be used to plan for future compute requirements.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter

In part one of the blog series on installing and configuring vROps we deployed the virtual appliance. In this post we will be adding our vCenter server to vRops.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

There are a few different types of accounts that can be added.

vCenter
VMC
AWS
Microsoft Azure

To add vCenter we need to logon to the vROps web client and go to Administration > Cloud Accoutns > Add Account

Select the account type for vCenter

Give the cloud Account a name, description and the vCenter DNS address and a logon credentials.

Click the validate connect to confirm the details are correct. If the certificate is not trusted you will be asked to review and confirm the certificate.

Once successfully completed we can then added vCenter.

The connection will now be setup and once completed will show under cloud accounts.

To view if information on the vCenter server is being collected we can go to Environment > vSphere Hosts and Clusters > vSphere World.

vROps can take a little time before metrics and alert start to show.

In the next post we will go through configuring AD Authentication and configuring group based access control.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1

In the next set of post’s we will be going through installing and configure vRealize Operations manager (vROps). I haven’t had to install or configure vROps in a few years so want to go back over it before we replaced our existing deployment.

vROps is a application from VMware that can be used to monitor, optimize and manage VMware management tools like vCentre, ESXi..

There are 3 different editions of vROps.

Standard: Allows management of vSphere only.

Advanced: Adding VMware cloud (AWS / Azure), Operating system monitoring and dashboards.

Enterprise: Give all the advanced features but also allows for application / database monitoring and third party management packs.

vROps Editions: Series Overview – VMware Cloud Management

We will be using Enterpirse edition.

vRops can be used for performance monitoring, over or under provisioned VM’s, capacity planning and trend analysis.

In this post we will be going through the initial virtual appliance deployment.

First step is to check what size appliance is going to be required.

We can use the sizing guidelines to select the right appliance size for the environment.

vRealize Operations 8.2 Sizing Guidelines (80893) (vmware.com)

Or use the VMware sizing tool

vRealize Sizing Tool (vmware.com)

Select the version you are installing and then add in the number of vCenter, host, datastores and VM that will have data collected and this will then give you the recommended sizing for your vROps deployment.

In my case it was extra small deployment.

What I always do before deploying any VMware appliance is create a static DNS record. This makes it easier to connect to the appliance after it’s deployed and for some appliance (like vCenter server its a requirement or the deployment will fail.)

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To download the required vROps appliance go to my VMware and select the required version.

Download VMware vSphere – My VMware

To deploy the OVA create a new VM in VMware and select deploy VM from OVF or OVA file.

Give the appliance a Name and either drag and drop the OVA file or browse to the location and select.

Select a datastore

Agree to the end user license agreement.

Select a network, deployment type size, disk provisioning (thin or thick) and if VMware will be powered on automatically. Since this is only a single vCenter setup we will be using a small deployment type.