VMware vRealize Operations Manager - 6.7 User Guide
vRealize Operations
Manager User Guide
vRealize Operations Manager 6.7
vRealize Operations Manager User Guide
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Contents
About This User Guide 4
Monitoring Objects in Your Managed Environment by Using
1
vRealize Operations Manager 5
What to Do When... 5
User Scenario: A User Calls with a Problem 6
User Scenario: An Alert Arrives in Your Inbox 10
User Scenario: You See Problems as You Monitor the State of Your Objects 19
Monitoring and Responding to Alerts 32
Monitoring Alerts in vRealize Operations Manager 33
Monitoring and Responding to Problems 37
Evaluating Object Information Using Badge Alerts and the Summary Tab 38
Investigating Object Alerts 41
Evaluating Metric Information 44
Capacity Tab Overview 46
Using Troubleshooting Tools to Resolve Problems 46
Creating and Using Object Details 48
Examining Relationships in Your Environment 53
User Scenario: Investigate the Root Cause of a Problem by Using the Troubleshooting Tab
Options 54
Running Actions from vRealize Operations Manager 58
Run Actions From Toolbars in vRealize Operations Manager 58
Troubleshoot Actions in vRealize Operations Manager 59
Monitor Recent Task Status 61
Troubleshoot Failed Tasks 62
Viewing Your Inventory 70
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Capacity Optimization for Your Managed Environment 71
2
Example: Reclaiming Resources from Oversized VMs 72
Example: Excluding VMs from Reclaim Action 73
What-If Analysis: Adding a Workload 74
Example: Run a What-If Scenario 75
Example: Import Workload from an Existing VM Scenario 76
Custom Datacenters in VMware vRealize Operations Manager 78
3
About This User Guide
The VMware® vRealize Operations Manager User Guide describes what to do when users experience
performance problems in your managed environment.
As a system administrator, you might become aware of a problem with an object in your environment
when vRealize Operations Manager generates an alert, or when a user contacts you. To help ensure
optimal performance, this information describes how you use vRealize Operations Manager to monitor,
troubleshoot, and take action to address problems. It also provides information on how to assess whether
problems due to over demand or lack of capacity require a system change or upgrade.
Intended Audience
This information is intended for vRealize Operations Manager administrators, virtual infrastructure
administrators, and operations engineers who track and maintain object performance in your managed
environment.
VMware Technical Publications Glossary
VMware Technical Publications provides a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to you. For
definitions of terms as they are used in VMware technical documentation, go to
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.
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4
Monitoring Objects in Your
Managed Environment by Using
vRealize Operations Manager 1
You can use vRealize Operations Manager 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 vRealize Operations Manager collects and analyzes 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, you might be able to resolve
the problem by running an action. The actions make changes to objects in the target system, for example,
the VMware vCenter Server® system, from vRealize Operations Manager. If you find the root cause of the
problem, you might be able to resolve the problem by running an action. The actions make changes to
objects in the target system, for example, the VMware vCenter Server system, from
vRealize Operations Manager.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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What to Do When...
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Monitoring and Responding to Alerts
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Monitoring and Responding to Problems
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Running Actions from vRealize Operations Manager
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Viewing Your Inventory
What to Do When...
As a virtual infrastructure administrator, network operations center engineer, or other IT professional, use
vRealize Operations Manager to monitor objects in your environment. Using
vRealize Operations Manager, you can ensure service to your customers and resolve any problems that
occur.
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Your vRealize Operations Manager administrator has configured vRealize Operations Manager to
manage two vCenter Server instances that manage multiple hosts and virtual machines. It is your first day
using vRealize Operations Manager to manage your environment.
n
User Scenario: A User Calls with a Problem
The vice president of sales telephones tech support reporting that a virtual machine, VPSALES4632,
is running slowly. She is working on sales reports for an upcoming meeting and is running behind
schedule because of the slow performance of the virtual machine.
n
User Scenario: An Alert Arrives in Your Inbox
You return from lunch to find an alert notification in your inbox. You can use
vRealize Operations Manager to investigate and resolve the alert.
n
User Scenario: You See Problems as You Monitor the State of Your Objects
As you investigate your objects in the context of this scenario, vRealize Operations Manager
provides details to help you resolve the problems. You analyze the state of your environment,
examine current problems, investigate solutions, and take action to resolve the problems.
User Scenario: A User Calls with a Problem
The vice president of sales telephones tech support reporting that a virtual machine, VPSALES4632, is
running slowly. She is working on sales reports for an upcoming meeting and is running behind schedule
because of the slow performance of the virtual machine.
As an operations engineer, you reviewed the morning alerts and did not see problems with that virtual
machine, so you begin troubleshooting the problem.
Procedure
1 Search for a Specific Object
As a network operations engineer, you must locate the customer's virtual machine in
vRealize Operations Manager so that you can begin troubleshooting the reported problem.
2 Review Alerts Related to Reported Problems
The sales vice president reports degraded performance in a virtual machine. To determine if the
virtual machine has any alerts indicating the cause, review alerts for the virtual machine.
3 Use Troubleshooting to Investigate a Reported Problem
To troubleshoot problems with the VPSALES4632 virtual machine, consider evaluating symptoms,
examining time line information and events, and creating metric charts to find the root cause.
Search for a Specific Object
As a network operations engineer, you must locate the customer's virtual machine in
vRealize Operations Manager so that you can begin troubleshooting the reported problem.
You use vRealize Operations Manager to monitor three vCenter Server instances with a total of 360 hosts
and 18,000 virtual machines. The easiest way to locate a particular virtual machine is to search for it.
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Procedure
1 In the Search text box on the vRealize Operations Manager title bar, enter the name of the virtual
machine.
The Search text box displays all the objects that contain the string you enter in the text box. If your
customer knows that the virtual machine name contains SALES, enter the string and the virtual
machine is included in the list.
2 Select the object in the list.
The main pane displays the object name and the Summary tab. The left pane displays and the related
objects, including the host system and vCenter Server instance.
What to do next
Look for alerts related to the reported problem for the object. See Review Alerts Related to Reported
Problems.
Review Alerts Related to Reported Problems
The sales vice president reports degraded performance in a virtual machine. To determine if the virtual
machine has any alerts indicating the cause, review alerts for the virtual machine.
Alerts on an object can give you an insight into problems beyond the specific problem reported by the
user.
Prerequisites
Locate the customer's virtual machine so that you can review related alerts. See Search for a Specific
Object.
Procedure
1 Click the Summary tab for the object generating alerts.
The Summary tab displays active alerts for the object.
2 Review the top alerts for Health, Risk, and Efficiency.
Top alerts identify the primary contributors to the current state of the object. Do any of them appear to
contribute to the slow response time? For example, any ballooning or swapping alerts indicate that
you must add memory to the virtual machine. Are any alerts related to memory contention?
Contention can be an indicator that you must add memory to the host.
3 If the Summary tab does not include top problems that appear to explain the reported problem, click
the Alerts tab.
The Alerts tab displays all active alerts for the current object.
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4 Review the alerts for problems that are similar to or contribute to the reported problem.
a To view the active and canceled alerts, click Status: Active to clear the filter and display active
and inactive alerts.
The canceled alerts might provide information about the problem.
b So that you can locate alerts generated on or before the time when your customer reported the
problem, click the Created On column to sort the alerts.
c To view alerts for the parent objects in the same list with the alert for the virtual machine, click
View From, then select, for example, Host System under Parents.
The system adds these object types to the list so that you can determine if alerts among the
parent objects are contributing to the reported problem.
5 If you locate an alert that appears to explain the reported problem, click the alert name in the alerts
list.
6 On the Alert > Symptoms tabs, review the triggered symptoms and recommendations to determine if
the alert indicates the root cause of the reported problem.
What to do next
n
If the alert appears to indicate the source of the problem, follow the recommendations and verify the
resolution with your customer. For an example, see Run a Recommendation on a Datastore to
Resolve an Alert.
n
If you cannot locate the cause of the reported problem among the alerts, begin more in-depth
troubleshooting. See Use Troubleshooting to Investigate a Reported Problem.
Use Troubleshooting to Investigate a Reported Problem
To troubleshoot problems with the VPSALES4632 virtual machine, consider evaluating symptoms,
examining time line information and events, and creating metric charts to find the root cause.
If a review of the alerts did not help you identify the cause of the problem reported for the virtual machine,
use the following tabs: Alert > Symptoms, Event > Timeline, and All Metrics to troubleshoot the virtual
machine history and current state
.
Prerequisites
n
Locate the object for which the problem was reported. See Search for a Specific Object.
n
Review the alerts for the virtual machine to determine if the problem is already identified and
recommendations made. See Review Alerts Related to Reported Problems.
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Environment, then click Inventory and select VPSALES4632 from the tree.
The main pane updates to display the object Summary tab.
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2 Click the Alerts tab, click the Symptoms tab, and review the symptoms to determine if one of the
symptoms is related to the reported problem.
Depending on how your alerts are configured, some symptoms might be triggered but not sufficient to
generate an alert.
a Review symptom names to determine if one or more symptoms are related to the reported
problem.
The Information column provides the triggering condition, trend, and current value. What are the
most common symptoms that affect response time? Do you see any symptoms related to CPU or
memory use?
b Sort by the Created On date so that you can focus on the time frame in which your customer
reported that the problem.
c Click the Status: Active filter button to disable the filter so that you can review active and inactive
symptoms.
It appears the problem is related to CPU or memory use. But you do not know if the problem is with
the virtual machine or with the host.
3 Click the Events > Timeline tabs and review the alerts, symptoms, and change events that might
help identify common trends that are contributing to the reported problem.
a To determine if other virtual machines had symptoms triggered and alerts generated at the same
time as your reported problem, click View From > Peer.
Other virtual machine alerts are added to the time line. If you see that multiple virtual machines
triggered symptoms in the same time frame, then you can investigate parent objects.
b Click View From and select Host System from the Parent list.
The alerts and symptoms that are associated with the host on which the virtual machine is
deployed are added to the time line. Use the information to determine if a correlation exists
between the reported problem and the alerts on the host.
4 Click the Events > Events tab to view changes in the collected metrics for the problematic virtual
machine. Metrics might direct you toward the cause of the reported problem.
a Manipulate the Date Controls to identify the approximate time when your customer reported the
problem.
b Use the Filters to filter on event criticality and status. Select Symptoms if you want to include the
filters in your analysis.
c Click an Event to view the details about the event.
d Click View From, select Host System under Parents, and repeat the analysis.
Comparing events on the virtual machine and the host, and evaluating those results, indicates that
CPU or memory problems are the likely cause of the problem.
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5 If the problem relates to CPU or memory use, click All Metrics and create metric charts to identify
whether it is CPU, memory, or both.
a If host is still the focus, begin by working with host metrics.
b In the metric list, double-click the CPU Usage (%) and the Memory Usage (%) metrics to add
them to the workspace on the right.
c In the map, click the VPSALES4632 object.
The metric list now displays the virtual machine metrics.
d In the metric list, double-click the CPU Usage (%) and the Memory Usage (%) metrics to add
them to the workspace on the right.
e Review the host and virtual machine charts to see if you can identify a pattern that indicates the
cause of the reported problem.
Comparing the four charts shows normal CPU use ion both the host and the virtual machine, and
normal memory use on the virtual machine. However, memory use on the host is consistently
elevated three days before the reported problem on VPSALES4632.
The host memory is consistently elevated, which impacts virtual machine response time. The number of
running virtual machines is well within the supported number. The cause might be many intensive process
applications on the virtual machines. Move some of the virtual machines to other hosts, distribute the
workload, or power off idle virtual machines.
What to do next
n
In this example, use vRealize Operations Manager to power off virtual machines on the host so that
you can improve performance in the running virtual machines. See Run Actions From Toolbars in
vRealize Operations Manager.
n
If you want to use the combination of charts that you created on the All Metrics tab again, click
Generate Dashboard.
User Scenario: An Alert Arrives in Your Inbox
You return from lunch to find an alert notification in your inbox. You can use vRealize Operations Manager
to investigate and resolve the alert.
As a network operations engineer, you are responsible for several hosts and their datastores and virtual
machines. You receive emails when an alert is generated for your monitored objects. In addition to
alerting you to problems in your environment, alerts can provide viable recommendations to resolve those
problems. As you investigate this alert, you are evaluating the data to determine if one or more of the
recommendations can resolve the problem.
This scenario assumes that you configured the outbound alerts to send standard email using SMTP. It
also assumes that you configured notifications to send you alert notifications using the Standard Email
Plug-In. When outbound alerts and notifications are configured, vRealize Operations Manager sends
messages when an alert is generated so that you can respond quickly.
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Prerequisites
n
Verify that outbound alerts are configured for standard email alerts. See vRealize Operations
Manager Customization and Administration Guide.
Procedure
1 Respond to an Alert in Your Email
As a network operations engineer, you receive an email message from
vRealize Operations Manager about a datastore for which you are responsible. The email
notification informs you about the problem even when you are not presently working in
vRealize Operations Manager.
2 Evaluate Other Triggered Symptoms for the Affected Data Store
Because you need more information about the data store before you decide on the best response,
you examine the Symptoms tab to see other triggered symptoms for the data store.
3 Compare Alerts and Events Over Time in Response to a Datastore Alert
To evaluate an alert over time, compare the current alert and symptoms to other alerts and
symptoms, other events, other objects, and over time.
4 View the Affected Datastore in Relation to Other Objects
To view the object for which the alert was generated as it relates to other objects, use the topological
map on the Relationships tab.
5 Construct Metric Charts to Investigate the Cause of the Data Store Alert
To analyze the capacity metrics related to the generated alert, you create charts that compare
different metrics. These comparisons help identify when something changed in your environment
and what effect it had on the datastore.
6 Run a Recommendation on a Datastore to Resolve an Alert
As a network operations engineer, you investigated the alert regarding datastore disk space and
determined that the provided recommendations can the problem. The recommendation to delete
unused snapshots is especially useful. Use vRealize Operations Manager to delete the snapshots.
Respond to an Alert in Your Email
As a network operations engineer, you receive an email message from vRealize Operations Manager
about a datastore for which you are responsible. The email notification informs you about the problem
even when you are not presently working in vRealize Operations Manager.
In your email client, you receive an alert similar to the following message.
Alert was updated at Tue Jul 01 16:34:04 MDT:
Info: datastore1 Datastore is acting abnormally from Mon Jun 30 10:21:07 MDT and was last updated at
Tue Jul 01 16:34:04 MDT
Alert Definition Name: Datastore is running out of disk space
Alert Definition Description: Datastore is running out of disk space
Object Name: datastore1
Object Type: Datastore
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Alert Impact: risk
Alert State: critical
Alert Type: Storage
Alert Sub-Type: Capacity
Object Health State: info
Object Risk State: critical
Object Efficiency State: info
Symptoms:
SYMPTOM SET - self
Symptom Name | Object Name | Object ID | Metric | Message Info
Datastore space use reaching limit datastore1 | b0885859-e0c5-4126-8eba-6a21c895fe1b |
Capacity|Used Space | HT above 99.20800922575977 > 95
Recommendations:
- Storage vMotion some virtual machines to a different datastore
- Delete unused snapshots of virtual machines
- Add more capacity to the datastore
Notification Rule Name: All alerts - datastores
Notification Rule Description:
Alert ID: a9d6cf35-a332-4028-90f0-d1876459032b
Operations Manager Server - 192.0.2.0
Alert details
Prerequisites
n
Verify that outbound alerts are configured for standard email alerts. See vRealize Operations
Manager Customization and Administration Guide.
n
Verify that the notifications are configured to send messages to your users for the alert definition. For
an example of how to create an alert notification, see vRealize Operations Manager Customization
and Administration Guide.
Procedure
1 In your email client, review the message so that you understand the state of the affected objects and
determine if you must begin investigating immediately.
Look for the alert name, the alert state to determine the current level of criticality, and the affected
objects.
2 In the email message, click Alert Details.
vRealize Operations Manager opens on the Summary tab in the alert details for the generated alert
and affected object.
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3 Review the Summary tab information.
Option Evaluation Process
Alert name and
description
Recommendations Review the top recommendation, and if available, other recommendations, to understand the
What is Causing the
Problem?
Review the name and description and verify that you are evaluating the alert for which you
received an email message.
steps that you must take to resolve the problem. If implemented, do the prioritized
recommendations resolve the problem?
Which symptoms were triggered? Which were not triggered? What effect does this evaluation
have on your investigation? In this example, the alert that the datastore is running out of space is
configured so that the criticality is symptom-based. If you received a critical alert, then it is likely
that the symptoms are already at a critical level, having moved up from Warning and Immediate.
Look at the sparkline or metric graph chart for each symptom to determine when the problem
escalated on the datastore object.
What to do next
n
If you determine that the recommendations might resolve the problem, implement them. See Run a
Recommendation on a Datastore to Resolve an Alert.
n
If you need more information about the affected objects, continue your investigation. Begin by looking
at other triggered symptoms for the datastore. See Evaluate Other Triggered Symptoms for the
Affected Data Store.
Evaluate Other Triggered Symptoms for the Aected Data Store
Because you need more information about the data store before you decide on the best response, you
examine the Symptoms tab to see other triggered symptoms for the data store.
If other symptoms are triggered for the object besides the symptom included in the alert, evaluate them to
determine what the symptoms reflect about the state of the object, and to decide whether the related
recommendations might resolve the problem.
Prerequisites
Verify that you are addressing the alert for which you received an alert message in your email. See
Respond to an Alert in Your Email.
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Alerts and select the alert name in the data grid.
The center pane view changes to display the alert detail tabs.
2 Click View additional metrics > Alerts > Symptoms and review the active symptoms.
Option Evaluation Process
Criticality Are other symptoms of similar criticality present that are affecting the object?
Symptom Are any of the triggered symptoms related to the symptoms that triggered the current alert? Symptoms related to
time remaining, capacity, or stress that could indicate storage problems?
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Option Evaluation Process
Created On Do the date and time stamps for the symptoms indicate that they were triggered before the alert you are
investigating, indicating that it might be a related symptom? Were the symptoms triggered after the alert was
generated, indicating that the alert symptoms contributed to these other symptoms?
Information Can you identify a correlation between the alert symptoms and the other symptoms based on the triggering
metric values?
What to do next
n
If your review of the symptoms and the provided information clearly indicates that the
recommendations will solve the problem, implement one or more of the recommendations. For an
example of implementing one of the recommendations, see Run a Recommendation on a Datastore
to Resolve an Alert.
n
If your review of the symptoms did not convince you that the recommendations will resolve the
problem or provide you with enough information to identify the root cause, continue your investigation
using the Events > Timeline tab. See Compare Alerts and Events Over Time in Response to a
Datastore Alert.
Compare Alerts and Events Over Time in Response to a Datastore Alert
To evaluate an alert over time, compare the current alert and symptoms to other alerts and symptoms,
other events, other objects, and over time.
As a network operations engineer, you use the Events > Timeline tab to compare this alert to other alerts
and events in your environment. This way, you can determine if you can resolve the problem of the
datastore running out of disk space by applying one or more alert recommendations.
Prerequisites
Verify that you are addressing the alert for which you received an alert message in your email. See
Respond to an Alert in Your Email.
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Alerts and select the alert name in the data grid.
The alert details appear to the right.
2 Click View Events > Timeline.
The Timeline tab displays the generated alert and the triggered symptoms for the affected object in a
scrollable timeline format, starting when the alert was generated.
3 Scroll through the timeline using the week timeline at the bottom.
4 To view events that might contribute to the alert, click Event Filters and click the check box for each
event type.
Events related to the object are added to the timeline. You add the events to your evaluation of the
current state of the object and determine whether the recommendations can resolve the problem.
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5 Click View From and select Host under Parents.
Because the alert is related to disk space, adding the host to the timeline enables you to see what
alerts and symptoms are generated for the host. As you scroll through the timeline, ask: when did
some of the related alerts begin? When are they no longer on the timeline? What was the effect on
the state of the datastore object?
6 Click View From and select Peer under Parents.
If other datastores have alerts related to the alert you are currently investigating, seeing when the
alerts for the other datastores were generated can help you determine what resource problems you
are experiencing.
7 To remove canceled alerts from your timeline, click Filters and deselect the Canceled check box.
Removing the canceled alerts and symptoms from the timeline clears the view and enables you to
focus on current alerts.
What to do next
n
If your evaluation of alerts in the timeline indicated that one or more of the recommendations to
resolve the alert are valid, implement the recommendations. See Run a Recommendation on a
Datastore to Resolve an Alert.
n
If you need more information about the affected object, continue your investigation. See View the
Affected Datastore in Relation to Other Objects.
View the Aected Datastore in Relation to Other Objects
To view the object for which the alert was generated as it relates to other objects, use the topological map
on the Relationships tab.
As a network operations engineer, you view a datastore and the related objects in a map to further your
understanding of the problem. The map view helps determine if implementing the alert recommendations
can resolve the problem.
Prerequisites
Evaluate the alert over time and in comparison to related objects. See Compare Alerts and Events Over
Time in Response to a Datastore Alert.
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Alerts, select the alert name in the data grid, and click View additional metrics >
All Metrics.
2 Click Show Object Relationships.
The Relationships tab displays the datastore in a map with the related objects. By default, the badge
that this alert affects is selected only on the toolbar. Objects in the tree show a colored square to
indicate the current state of the badge.
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3 To view the alert status of the objects for the other badges, click the Health button and then the
Efficiency button.
As you click each badge button, the squares on each object indicate whether an alert is generated
and the criticality of the alert.
4 To view alerts for an object, select the object and click Alerts.
The alert list dialog box appears, enabling you to search and sort for alerts for the object.
5 To view a list of the child objects for an object in the map, click the object.
A list of the number of children by object type appears at the bottom of the center pane.
6 Use the options to evaluate the datastore.
For example, what does the map tell you about the number of virtual machines that are associated
with the datastore? If many virtual machines are associated with a datastore, moving them might free
datastore disk space.
What to do next
n
If your review of the map provided enough information to indicate that one or more of the
recommendations to resolve the alert are valid, implement the recommendations. See Run a
Recommendation on a Datastore to Resolve an Alert.
n
If you need more information about the affected object, continue your investigation. See Construct
Metric Charts to Investigate the Cause of the Data Store Alert.
Construct Metric Charts to Investigate the Cause of the Data Store Alert
To analyze the capacity metrics related to the generated alert, you create charts that compare different
metrics. These comparisons help identify when something changed in your environment and what effect it
had on the datastore.
As a network operations engineer, you create custom charts so that you can further investigate the
problem, and to determine if implementing the alert recommendations will resolve the problem that the
alert identifies.
Prerequisites
View the topological map for the data store to determine if related objects are contributing to the alert or if
triggering symptoms indicate that the data store is contributing to other problems in your environment.
See View the Affected Datastore in Relation to Other Objects.
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Alerts, select the alert name in the data grid, and click View additional metrics >
All Metrics.
The Metric Charts tab does not include charts. You must add the charts to compare.
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2 To analyze the first recommendation, Add more capacity to the Datastore Storage, add related charts
to the workspace.
a Enter capacity in the metric list search text box.
The list displays metrics that contain the search term.
b Double-click the following metrics to add the following charts to the workspace:
n
Capacity | Used Space (GB)
n
Disk Space | Capacity (GB)
n
Summary | Number of Capacity Consumers
c Compare the charts.
For example, if the Capacity | Used Space (%) chart shows an increase in used space, but the
Disk Space | Capacity (GB) did not increase and the Summary | Number of Capacity Consumers
did not decrease, then adding capacity is a solution, but it does not address the root cause.
3 To analyze the second recommendation, vMotion some Virtual Machines to a different
Datastore, add related charts to the workspace.
a Enter vm in the metric list search text box.
b Double-click the Summary | Total Number of VMs metric to add it to the workspace
c Compare the 4 charts.
For example, if the Summary | Total Number of VMs chart shows that the number of virtual
machines did not increase enough to negatively affect the data store, then moving some of the
virtual machines is a solution, but it does not address the root cause.
4 To analyze the third recommendation, Delete unused snapshots of virtual machines, add related
charts to the workspace.
a Enter snapshot in the metric list search text box.
b Double-click the following metrics to add the charts to the workspace:
n
Disk Space | Snapshot Space (GB)
n
Disk Space Reclaimable | Snapshot Space | Waste Value (GB)
c Compare the charts.
For example, if the amount of Disk Space | Snapshot Space (GB) increased and the Disk Space
Reclaimable | Snapshot Space | Waste Value (GB) indicates an area where space can be
reclaimed, then deleting unused snapshots will positively affect the data store disk space problem
and resolve the alert.
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5 If this is a problematic data store that you must continue to monitor, you can create a dashboard.
a Click the Generate Dashboard button on the workspace toolbar.
b Enter a name for the dashboard and click OK.
In this example, use a name like Datastore disk space.
The dashboard is added to your available dashboards.
You compared metric charts to determine if the recommendations are valid and which recommendation to
implement first. In this example, the Delete unused snapshots of Virtual Machines recommendation
appears to be the most likely way to resolve the alert.
What to do next
Implement the alert recommendations. See Run a Recommendation on a Datastore to Resolve an Alert.
Run a Recommendation on a Datastore to Resolve an Alert
As a network operations engineer, you investigated the alert regarding datastore disk space and
determined that the provided recommendations can the problem. The recommendation to delete unused
snapshots is especially useful. Use vRealize Operations Manager to delete the snapshots.
If you have not enabled actions in the vCenter adapter, you can manually delete the snapshots on your
vCenter Server instance.
Prerequisites
n
Compare the metric charts to identify the likely root cause of the alert. See Compare Alerts and
Events Over Time in Response to a Datastore Alert .
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Alerts and select the alert name in the data grid. The alerts detail information
appears on the right.
2 Review the Recommendations.
Recommendations include the Storage vMotion some virtual machines to a different
datastore recommendation and the Delete unused snapshots for virtual machines
recommendation. The delete unused snapshot recommendation includes an action button.
3 Click Delete Unused Snapshots for Datastore.
4 In the Days Old text box, select or enter the number of days old the snapshot must be to be retrieved
for deletions and click OK.
For example, enter 30 to retrieve all snapshots on the datastore that are 30 days old or older.
5 In the Delete Unused Snapshots for Datastore dialog box, review the Snapshot Space, Snapshot
Create Time, and the VM Name. Determine which snapshots to delete and select the check box for
each one to delete.
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6 Click OK.
The dialog box that appears provides a link to Recent Tasks and a link to the task.
7 To verify that the task ran successfully, click Recent Tasks.
The Recent Tasks page appears. The Delete Unused Snapshots action includes two tasks, one to
retrieve the snapshots and one to delete the snapshots.
8 Select the Delete Unused Snapshot task that has the more recent finish time.
This is the delete task. The status should be Completed.
In this example, you ran an action on the datastore in vCenter Server. The other recommendations might
also be valid.
What to do next
n
Verify that the recommendations resolve the alert. Run a few collection cycles after you run the action
and verify that the alert is canceled. Alerts are canceled when the conditions that generated them are
no longer true.
n
Implement the other recommendations. The other recommendations for this alert require you to use
other applications. You cannot implement the recommendations from vRealize Operations Manager.
User Scenario: You See Problems as You Monitor the State of Your Objects
As you investigate your objects in the context of this scenario, vRealize Operations Manager provides
details to help you resolve the problems. You analyze the state of your environment, examine current
problems, investigate solutions, and take action to resolve the problems.
As a virtual infrastructure administrator, you regularly browse through vRealize Operations Manager at
various levels so that you know the general state of the objects in your managed environment. Although
no one has called or complained, and you do not see any new alerts, you are starting to see that your
cluster is running out of capacity.
This scenario refers to objects that are associated with the VMware vSphere Solution, which connects
vRealize Operations Manager to one or more vCenter Server instances. The objects in your environment
include multiple vCenter Server instances, data centers, clusters (cluster compute resources), host
systems, resource pools, and virtual machines.
As you perform the steps in this scenario, and progress through the stages of troubleshooting, you learn
how to use vRealize Operations Manager to help you resolve problems. You will analyze the state of the
objects in your environment, examine current problems, investigate solutions, and take action to resolve
the problems.
This scenario shows you how to evaluate the problems that occur on your objects, and take action to
resolve problems.
n
With the Analysis tab, you view the settings for object resources, click the links provided to further
analyze the problem, and examine the policy settings and thresholds.
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n
Using the Events tab, you examine the symptoms that triggered on the objects, determine when the
problems that triggered those symptoms occurred, identify the events associated with those
problems, and examine the metric values involved.
n
On the Details tab, you investigate the metric activity as a graph, list, or distribution chart, and view
the heat maps to examine the criticality levels of your objects.
n
With the Environment tab, you evaluate the health, risk, and efficiency of various objects as they
relate to your overall object hierarchy. You view the object relationships to determine how an object
that is in a critical state might be affecting other objects.
To support future troubleshooting and ongoing maintenance, you can create a new alert definition, and
create a dashboard and one or more views and reports. To plan for growth and account for newly
approved projects, you can create and commit capacity projects. To enforce the rules used to monitor
your objects, you can create and customize operational policies.
Prerequisites
Verify that you are monitoring one or more vCenter Server instances. See the
vRealize Operations Manager Customization and Administration Guide.
Procedure
1 Analyze the State of Your Environment
The Analysis tabs help you analyze your objects in multiple ways. As a Virtual Infrastructure
Administrator, you use the Analysis tabs to evaluate the details about the state of your objects to
help you resolve problems.
2 Troubleshoot Problems with a Host System
You use the Troubleshooting tabs to identify the root cause of problems that are not resolved by alert
recommendations or simple analysis.
3 Examine the Environment Details
Examine the status of your objects in the views and heatmaps so that you can identify the trends
and spikes that are occurring with the resources on your cluster and objects. To determine whether
any deviations have occurred, you can display overall summaries for an object, such as for the
cluster disk space usage breakdown.
4 Examine the Environment Relationships
You use the Environment Overview and List to examine the status of the badges as they relate to
the objects in your environment hierarchy, and determine which objects are in a critical state for a
particular badge. To view the relationships between your objects to determine whether an ancestor
object that has a critical problem might be causing problems with the descendants of the object, you
use the Environment Map.
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5 Fix the Problem
You use the analysis and troubleshooting features of vRealize Operations Manager to examine
problems that put your objects in a critical state, and identify solutions. To resolve the problems,
where actions exist for the object type, you select an object and an available action that is specific to
the object. Or, you can open the object in the vSphere Web Client and modify the object settings to
resolve the problem.
6 Create a New Alert Definition
Based on the root cause of the problem, and the solutions that you used to fix the problem, you can
create a new alert definition for vRealize Operations Manager to alert you. When the alert is
triggered on your host system, vRealize Operations Manager alerts you and provides
recommendations on how to solve the problem.
7 Create Dashboards and Views
To help you investigate and troubleshoot problems with your cluster and host systems that might
occur in the future, you can create dashboards and views that apply the troubleshooting tools and
solutions that you used to research and solve the problems with your host system, to make those
troubleshooting tools and solutions available for future use.
Analyze the State of Your Environment
The Analysis tabs help you analyze your objects in multiple ways. As a Virtual Infrastructure
Administrator, you use the Analysis tabs to evaluate the details about the state of your objects to help you
resolve problems.
As you browse through the inventory tree, you notice that one of your clusters, named USA-Cluster, is
experiencing capacity problems. You use the Analysis tabs to begin to investigate the cause of the
problem on USA-Cluster, and you start to see problems reported with the capacity on one of your host
systems and other objects.
Prerequisites
Verify that you understand the context of this scenario. See User Scenario: You See Problems as You
Monitor the State of Your Objects.
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Environment, then in the left pane click vSphere Hosts and Clustersand select
the object.
2 Click the Analysis tab.
You see red icons on the Capacity Remaining and Time Remaining tabs.
3 Click the Time Remaining tab.
You see that the memory allocation is severely constrained.
4 View the time remaining breakdown for the cluster.
The icons indicate that zero days remain, with no planned capacity projects considered.
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5 Scroll down until you see the Time Remaining in Related Objects pane.
The parent object is the data center, and the peer represents another cluster. The child objects
include the resource pool and host systems. The data center and one of the host systems are
experiencing critical memory problems.
6 Hover your mouse over the red parent and child icons.
The memory capacity has expired on the data center and one of the host systems.
The memory capacity problem on the cluster is affecting the memory capacity of the related objects.
What to do next
Use the Troubleshooting tab to further troubleshoot the capacity problems on your cluster and host
system. See Troubleshoot Problems with a Host System.
Troubleshoot Problems with a Host System
You use the Troubleshooting tabs to identify the root cause of problems that are not resolved by alert
recommendations or simple analysis.
To further troubleshoot the symptoms of the capacity problems that are occurring on the cluster and host
system, and determine when those problems occurred, you use the Troubleshooting tabs to continue to
investigate the memory problem.
Prerequisites
Use the Analysis tabs to analyze your environment. See Analyze the State of Your Environment.
Procedure
1 In the menu, click Environment, then in the left pane click vSphere Hosts and Clusters and select
the object. For example, USA-Cluster.
2 Click the Alerts tab and review the symptoms.
The Symptoms tab displays the symptoms that triggered on the selected cluster. You notice that
several critical symptoms exist.
n
Cluster Compute Resource Time Remaining with committed projects is critically
low
n
Cluster Compute Resource Time Remaining is critically low
n
Capacity remaining is critically low
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3 Analyze the critical symptoms.
a Hover your mouse over each critical symptom to identify the metric used.
b To view only the symptoms that affect the cluster, enter cluster in the quick filter text box.
When you hover over Cluster Compute Resource Time Remaining is critically low,
the metric Badge|Time Remaining with committed projects (%) appears. You notice that
its value is less than or equal to zero, which caused the capacity symptom to trigger and generate
an alert on USA-Cluster.
4 Click the Events > Timeline tab to review the triggered symptoms, alerts, and events that occurred
on USA-Cluster over time, and identify when the problems occurred.
a Click the calendar and select Last 7 Days as the range.
Several events appear in red.
b Hover your mouse over each event to view the details.
c To display the events that occurred on the cluster's data center, click View From, and select
Datacenter.
Warning events for the data center appear in yellow.
d Hover your mouse over the warning events.
You notice that the density is starting to get low, and that a hard threshold violation occurred on
the data center late in the evening. The hard threshold violation shows that the Badge|Density
metric value was under the acceptable value of 25, and that the violation triggered with a value of
14.89.
e To view the affected child objects, click View From and select Host System.
5 Click the Events tab to examine the changes that occurred on USA-Cluster, and determine whether a
change occurred that contributed to the root cause of the alert or other problems with the cluster.
a Review the graph.
By reviewing the graph, you can determine whether a reoccurring event has caused the errors.
Each event indicates that the guest file system is out of disk space. The affected objects appear
in the pane below the graph.
b Click each red triangle to identify the affected object and highlight it in the pane below.
6 Click the All Metrics tab to evaluate the objects in their context in the environment topology to help
identify the possible cause of a problem.
a In the top view, select USA-Cluster.
b In the metrics pane, expand Badge and double-click Badge|Capacity Remaining (%).
The Badge|Capacity Remaining (%) calculation is added to the lower right pane.
c In the metrics pane, double-click Density.
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d In the metrics pane, double-click Workload.
e On the toolbar, click Date Controls and select Last 7 Days.
The metric chart indicates that the capacity for the cluster remained at a steady level for the past
week, but that the cluster density increased to its maximum value in the last several days. The
Badge|Workload (%) calculation displays the workload extremes that correspond to the density
problem.
You have analyzed the symptoms, timeline, events, and metrics related to the problems on your cluster,
and determined that the heavy workload on the cluster has decreased the cluster density in the last
several days, which indicates that the cluster is starting to run out of capacity.
What to do next
Examine the Details views and heatmaps to interpret the properties, metrics, and alerts to look for trends
and spikes that occur in the resources for your objects, the distributions of resources across your objects,
and data maps to examine the use of various resource types across your objects. See Examine the
Environment Details.
Examine the Environment Details
Examine the status of your objects in the views and heatmaps so that you can identify the trends and
spikes that are occurring with the resources on your cluster and objects. To determine whether any
deviations have occurred, you can display overall summaries for an object, such as for the cluster disk
space usage breakdown.
To examine the problems with your USA-Cluster further, use the Details views to display the metrics and
collected capacity data for your cluster. Each view includes specific metrics data collected from your
objects. For example, trend views use data collected from objects over time to generate trends and
forecasts for resources such as memory, CPU, disk space, and so on.
Use the heatmaps to examine the capacity levels on the cluster, host systems, and virtual machines. The
block sizes and colors are based on the metrics selected in the heatmap configuration. For example, the
heatmap that shows the most abnormal workload for virtual machines is sized by the Badge|Workload
(%) metric, and is colored by the Badge|Anomaly metric.
Prerequisites
Use the Troubleshooting tabs to look for root causes. See Troubleshoot Problems with a Host System
Procedure
1 Click Environment > vSphere Hosts and Clusters > USA-Cluster.
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