vROPs – What’s new in 6.1

By | September 9, 2015
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Once again, Mike Eisenberg did a great job showing off the new features of vROps (vRealize Operations Manager). Version 6.1 has been slated to be released “Q3, 2015” and he teased the new maxes, but otherwise some very solid information.

See the whole thing here, below are the highlights (notes taken during the presentation):

  1. Security & Architecture
    1. Read 6.1 Release notes, docs & KB articles (Available “Q3 2015”).
    2. Increased sizes for (undefined amount for now J ):
      1. Max Cluster Size
      2. Max # objects
      3. Max Concurrent Users
      4. Increased # of Remote Collectors (RCs)
        1. RC resiliency with Remote Collector HA groups, which is independent of vROps cluster HA!
    3. SSO integration!
      1. Need to have PSC running (i.e. vSphere 6) – this will be an issue until we upgrade
      2. Single PSC domain – not an issue based on our envisioned design
    4. Data Protection / Backup & restore finally J
      1. DR via SRM now supported
      2. Backup via vDP or Symantec Netbackup
    5. Telemetry (application feedback) now baked in so that VMware can see how/what we’re using vROPs
      1. Not automatic, need to sign up for it
      2. Data is encrypted before it’s shipped to VMware
  2. Capacity Planning Enhancements
    1. Custom Profiles: can create more than just “Small, Med, and Large” vm profiles to determine how many of X will fit into an environment.
      1. User defined workload criteria (i.e. SQL Server Profile, Exchange, etc…)
    2. Can now reserve capacity for an upcoming project (Commit a project)
    3. Custom Data Center (New type of Group)
      1. To understand capacity across vCenter boundaries
      2. Combine Hosts, Clusters and DCs to see a holistic view of an entire (physical) Data Center
    4. Visualize CDC distribution levels of the infrastructure.
      1. Can partition CDC into “Zones”
  3. Automation Framework, APIs and Actions
    1. “Lights off” Automation for Self-Healing SDDC
    2. Intelligently move VMs
      1. Without causing performance problems
      2. Supports cross-cluster moves
      3. Obeys anti-/affinity rules
      4. Initial Workload Placement API
      5. Workload balance plan
  4. Management Pack Updates
    1. MPs for Storage/Network/Cloud
    2. SDDC Storage = MP for Storage Devices
    3. vSAN 6 support!
    4. NSX for vSphere MP
    5. All available on Solutions Exchange
  5. Dashboards & Reporting
    1. Custom widget layout resizing
    2. Visual look & feel improved
    3. Dashboards can now be added to reports (drag & drop)
    4. Can choose portrait or landscape for reports
  6. End Point Operations
    1. Extends monitoring to OS and applications
    2. Find out how much memory that JVM is actually using
  7. Log Insight 3.0
    1. Masterless Query – any node can manage and return a query now.
    2. 2x ingestion and 2x cluster size
    3. Rolling Upgrades & Rollback for cluster nodes
    4. Support SSL for syslog destinations
  8. Misc
    1. Enhanced Symptom Compare – quickly compare 2 metrics
    2. HOLs – 1401, 1601, 1602, 1610