Introduction to VMware vCenter Operations

Martin Klaus, Group Product Marketing Manager, VMware

Kit Colbert, Principal Engineer, VMware
Agenda

 Automating Operations Management

• Effective management of highly virtualized and cloud environments
 VMware vCenter Operations Live Demo
• Interpret workload, health and capacity metrics
• Identify and resolve workload stress and population problems
• Correlate change events and performance patterns
 VMware vCenter Operations Edition Overview
 Summary & Next Steps
Cloud Characteristics Require an Integrated Approach
Performance
App = host Performance + Capacity +
Limited movement Configuration…
OPERATIONS

Capacity
Dedicated resources Resource abstraction
Pre-committed Pooling
Mobility
Configuration
Static, pre-configured Constant change
1-1 mapping Self-service

Setup Update Inventory HA

INFRASTRUCTURE

vMotion DRS Distr. S/W I/O Control

vSphere Cloud OS

Physical Datacenters Virtual Datacenters

Customers Need Better Tools to Automate Virtual Operations

Customer pain and requirements reveal the need for a more

integrated approach to operations management

Financial Services – #1 priority is Broadcasting – Want to further

better performance monitoring tools consolidate but need to
for Ops team to proactively understand capacity and
troubleshoot virtual environment performance implications.

Service Provider – Live with VCD to Bank – Building cloud with high VM
enable self service provisioning; density, but lack tools to plan
need to ensure SLA while capacity, maximize utilization
predicting near-future demand. without degrading performance.

Sources: 100+ Customers

What Gets in the Way of Solving These Challenges?

 Performance problems often occur with no real warning

• Many times end users are the first to notice problems
• Root cause determination is difficult and time-consuming
• Solving problems requires all-hands-on-deck bridge calls
 Real-time understanding of performance is lacking
• No reliable understanding of the health of IT infrastructure
• Siloed monitoring tools do not allow a common “truth”
• No correlation across IT silos
 Optimizing IT infrastructure is difficult if not impossible
• Understanding the abnormal metric behaviors that lead to degradation of Key
Performance Indicators is not possible with current tools
• Understanding the abnormal behaviors that define your worst performing
devices is not possible with current tools
• Heavy reliance on “Tribal Knowledge” of a few application experts
Monitoring Solutions Insufficient for Performance Management
1st and 2nd Generation Monitoring Tools

 1st generation – good data

collection, but alert storms
 2nd generation – rules can’t 3/4/08 16:45
process…
Host 1
n/a n/a n/a
processingTimeServ The Processing Time Service Level on

3/4/08 16:45 Host 1 Processor_Table 0 Processor 0 is at 87.0%. A CPU Bottleneck

adapt to change is…..

second…
n/a
3/4/08 16:44

3/4/08 16:30
Host 2
n/a
Host 2
0

0
Windows_System
System_Table
Windows_System
Processor_Table 1
The number of hardware interrupts per

Processor 1 is at 84.0%. A CPU Bottleneck is

…. n/a 0 Windows_System

 Result:
3/4/08 16:25 n/a responseTimeServ… The Response Time Service Level on
Toadwor.. n/a n/a n/a
3/4/08 16:20 n/a processingTimeServ.. The Processing Time Service Level on
Prospec.. n/a n/a n/a
3/4/08 16:08 Host 1 Ora_Sql_Hogs_Alert Oracle: SFPRD A CPU Hog has been
detected n/a OraSF Oracle
3/4/08 16:08 Host 1 Ora_Sql_Hogs_Alert Oracle: SFPRD SQL with high

• Performance problems often occur

with no real warning
• Performance problems require time
consuming manual effort to resolve
• Virtual infrastructure is blamed for
application performance problems
that originate elsewhere

* New Approach – uses analytics to turn a sea of data into information

VMware’s Approach to Automating Operations Management

Patented
ANALYTICS

Powerful
VISUALIZATION

Performance
Progressive
INTEGRATION + Capacity
Configuration
+

• Actionable intelligence from a sea of data

• Comprehensive visibility across the entire stack
• Rapid problem resolution for greater productivity and less cost
• Proactive approach to ensure infrastructure / app performance
How vCenter Operations Delivers a New Model for Operations
Slide 8
An integrated approach and patented analytics to transform how IT
ensures service levels in dynamic environments

 Tightly integrated with vSphere

 Self-learns “normal” conditions using
patented analytics
 Aggregates underlying metrics into
Workload, Capacity, Health scores
 Powerful visibility and drill down from
datacenter to component level
 Puts performance, capacity and
configuration data in context of the
health and performance of services
 Smart alerts of impending performance
degradation !
Customer Success Resolving Performance Issues Proactively

Before
 400 critical alerts / HOUR
 End user complaints
alerted IT to the problem
 End users impacted (avg.
2 hours / outage)
 12 Level-2 engineers on
long bridge calls to address
problem
After
 20 alerts / MONTH
 3 hours advanced
warning of slowdown
with root cause
 NO impact to end users
 1 Level-2 Engineer and 1
DBA to address problems

Learn “Normal”  Smart Alerting  Root Cause

vCenter Operations Live Demo
Kit Colbert
Which Edition is Right for You?

Automated Operations for the Private Cloud

Integrated Performance, Capacity and Configuration Management

vCenter Operations Enterprise

vCenter Operations Advanced

vCenter Operations Standard

Operations Management for Operations Management for
For VMware environments
smaller vSphere heterogeneous environments
deployments

vSphere

vSphere Environments Heterogeneous environments

VMware vCenter Operations Edition Capabilities
STANDARD ADVANCED ENTERPRISE

Workload/Health

Capacity

Configuration & Compliance

Smart Alerts

Customizable Dashboards

3rd Party Adaptors

Next Steps: www.vmware.com/go/vcops

1. Download Trial
2. Join the Community 3. Learn More
+ Eval Guide
Meet the People Behind vCenter Operations

www.myvmug.org
www.vmware.com/go/vforum
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