If you’ve followed my recent blog post on  Installing vRealize Operations Manager (vROps) Appliance, you are now ready to configure the built in vSphere adapter to start data collection.

Depending on how big your environment is, and IF you have remote collectors deployed, you may want to consider configuring collector groups.  A Collector group allows you to group multiple remote collectors within the same data center, and the idea is that this would allow for resiliency for those remote collectors, that way when you have the vROps adapters pointed to the collector group instead of the individual remote collector, if one of the remote collectors went down the other would essentially pick up the slack and continue collecting from that data center, so there would be no data loss.  You can also create a collector group for a single remote collector for ease of expansion later if you want to add that data collection resiliency.

Go ahead and get logged into the appliance using the regular UI <https//vrops-appliance/ui/login.action>.  From here click Administration.  If you just need to configure the vSphere adapter for data collection, you can skip ahead to Section 2.  Otherwise lets continue in section 1, and configure the collector groups.

Section 1

Click on Collector Groups

You can see that I already have collector groups created for my remote data centers, but if you were to create new, just click the green plus sign

Give the collector group a name, and then in the lower window select the corresponding remote collector.  Then rinse-wash-and-repeat until you have the collector groups configured.  Click Save when finished.  Now lets move on to Section 2.

Section 2

From the Administration area, click on Solutions

Now because this is your new deployment, you would only have Operating Systems / Remote Service Monitoring and VMware vSphere.  For the purpose on this post I will only cover configuring the VMware vSphere adapter.  Click it to select it, and then click the gears to the right of the green plus sign.

Here just fill out the display name, the vCenter Server it will be connecting to, the credentials, and if you click the drop down arrow next to Advanced Settings, you will see the Collectors/Groups drop down menu.  Expand that if you have created the custom collectors in Section 1, and select the desired group.  Otherwise vROps will use the Default collector group, which is fine if you only have one data center,  otherwise I recommend at least selecting a remote collector here if you do not have a collector group configured.  This basically puts the load onto the remote collectors for data collection, and allows the cluster to focus on processing all of that lovely data.  Click Test Connection to verify connectivity, and then click save. Then rinse-wash-and-repeat until you have all vCenters collecting.  Close when finished.

Important to note that vROps by default will collect data every five minutes, and currently that is the lowest setting possible. You can monitor the status of your solutions or adapters here.  Once they start collecting their statuses will change to green.

If you’d like to add additional solutions otherwise known as “Management PAKs”, head on over to VMware’s Solution Exchange .  I currently work for a cloud provider running NSX, so I also have the NSX and vCloud Director Management PAKs installed.  From the same solutions page, instead of clicking on the gears, click the green plus sign and add the additional solutions to your environment.  This would also be used when you are updating solutions to newer versions.  Currently there is no system to update you when a newer version is available.

Go to Global Settings on the Administration page, where you can configure the object history, or data retention policy, along with a few other settings.

Finally, Go back to home by clicking the house icon.  By now the Health Risk and Efficiency badges should all be colored.  Ideally green, but your results may vary.  This is the final indication that vROps is collecting.

 

Next Post: Add The vROps License, Configuring LDAP, and The SMTP For vRealize Operations Manager (vROps)

Recent Post: Sizing and Installing The VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) Appliance