Aria Operations Management Pack for VMware Cloud Foundation

Aria Operations 8.10 introduced a new Management Pack we haven't discussed yet, the Management Pack for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).

It was enhanced in Aria Operations 8.12:

Let's explore the latest, as of Aria Operations 8.16. You'll find the VCF Management Pack in Data Sources - Integrations.

Click the tile to explore details: Overview, Metrics, and Content.

The Overview gives a brief summary of VCF:

"In VMware Cloud Foundation, a workload domain is a policy-based resource construct with availability and performance attributes. It combines compute (vSphere), storage (vSAN), networking (NSX), and management (Aria) to form a single entity that creates logical resource pools across compute, storage, and networking.

A workload domain consists of one or more vSphere clusters, provisioned automatically by the Domain Manager. There are two types of workload domains: management domains and Virtual Infrastructure workload domains. The management domain contains the VCF management components: an instance of vCenter Server and a three-node NSX Manager cluster for the management domain which uses vSAN.

The Virtual Infrastructure workload domain is created for user workloads. For each of these, you can choose the storage option (vSAN, NFS, or VMFS on FC). A Virtual Infrastructure workload domain can consist of one or more vSphere clusters, each cluster must start with a minimum of three hosts and can scale up to a maximum of 64 hosts. The Domain Manager automates the creation of the workload domain and the underlying vSphere cluster/s.

For the first Virtual Infrastructure workload domain, the SDDC Manager deploys a vCenter Server and a NSX Manager cluster in the management domain. For each subsequent Virtual Infrastructure workload domain, SDDC Manager deploys an additional vCenter Server. New Virtual Infrastructure workload domains can share the same NSX Manager cluster with the existing workload domain, or deploy a new NSX Manager cluster. Virtual Infrastructure workload domains cannot share the management domains NSX Manager cluster."

The question is: how do we monitor VCF? The answer: the VCF Management Pack! To that end, the new VCF Management Pack provides dozens of new metrics, Dashboards, Views, Alerts, and more. Let's dig into them.

To gain insight into your VCF environment, let's first configure a VCF Adapter Instance by going to Data Sources - Integrations - Accounts - ADD and select the VMware Cloud Foundation tile.

Once selected give it a name, description, and point it at your VCF SDDC Manager.

Once validated and collecting data, it will auto-discover the Management and Workload Domain/s and the necessary adapters for each. Go to the Domains tab to configure monitoring for each Domain. Here's the Management Domain configuration.

The Management Domain includes a vCenter for ESXi and vSAN, and an NSX Manager for NSX. I also enabled Service Discovery.

To configure collection from the Workload Domain, select the appropriate tab and configure collection.

Now that we're collecting data, let's explore some of the content. In Aria Operations 8.14 we added a VCF Operations section to the Environment blade in the left hand pane.

At the top level, it'll show availability of Applications, VMs, and Services. Below that it'll show expired passwords and certificates, along with Active Alerts. Giving you a one-stop shop for all things VCF.

Clicking on the Management Domain below the top level VCF object, gives you a bit more detail on that domain, its VMs, Services, and more.

Clicking on the Workload Domain will give you insight into related Applications, VMs, and Services.

Back on the Home Page you'll notice there is a tile for VMware Cloud Foundation, giving you more information at a glance.

The VCF Management Pack also includes 12 Dashboards, 26 Views, 53 Alerts, and more. There are Dashboards for Capacity, Inventory, Performance, and more.