vROPS – survive the Kraken – Endpoint Operations Example

Guess who’s back, back again…

Next to doing End User Computing engagements, where user experience, performance and capacity management is also an integral part, I occasionally am involved in separate operations management engagements. And with VMware often vRealize Operations Manager, or vROPS, shows its face. As some would have noticed I mentioned vROPS in articles on this blog before. This time I am going to dive a little into growing some more tentacles and getting some more insights besides our old vSphere friend.

Show how does this getting more insights work again?

Great you asked! First get your vROPS up and running, configured, customized and showing the insight information from vSphere you wanted to see shown up in the right places. Not there yet? Well stop reading here and directly go to jail. Do not pass go. Stop it and slowly turn away from the keyboard. As mentioned, it can be very helpful to have more insights before you create something that jumps back at you and eats you…

Still reading, okay I guess your ready, just curious or thinking ahead. Like the vSphere adapter that is standardly included into vROPS, you can add solutions (or adapters) from management packs or are they called extensions (still following?) to collect information from other sources. Most of the time ‘the other’ data sources are management components for these specific components or layer. For example, getting EUC information from Horizon into vROPS, use vROPS for Horizon and connect to a broker agent on the connection server (management layer) and an agent in the desktop or published application. And what that name does not show on first glance, vROPS for Horizon can also bring insights from XenApp and XenDesktop.

Anyhow, why would I need this isn’t the vSphere adapter showing everything from my virtual infrastructure you ask. Well no, not everything. The vSphere adapter creates visibility for the vSphere layer, and that is the hypervisor and management. And information from the hypervisor and management about storage, networking and virtual machines BUT only from the view of vSphere. Storage, yes datastore but not how your storage infrastructure or vSAN are behaving, networking, yes vSwitches but not how your network devices or NSX are behaving and VM’s yes virtual machines but not what is happening in guest. And so on. You can, but you need solutions for that. And size accordingly. And customized dashboards or reports that actually show something of interest. And o yes the correct vROPS edition license.

Getting in guest insight via Endpoint Operations Management

In the old days or before vROPS 6.1 when you wanted to get in guest metrics for applications, middleware and database you could get the Hyperic beast out. With the 6.1 release of vROPS, VMware merged some of the Hyperic solution into vROPS. This would make it a lot easier to get a view through vROPS management interface all the way up or down to services, processes and the application layer. However, you would still have to do a lot of customizing to show something interesting.

Fortunately the solution exchange shows more and more applications services being integrated with vROPS via the Endpoint agent, for example:

• Active Directory
• Exchange
• MSSQL Server
• IIS
• Apache Tomcat
• ProgresQL
• vCenter

Visit VMware solution exchange for the latest versions. Note that the vCenter Endpoint Operations Solution shows up as a standard management pack, but vROPS needs an advanced edition license to get Endpoint integration shown, it is not quite open on that.

Yeah Yeah enough show an example please and getting me some in guest metrics recipe

What ingredients do we need?

1 tablespoon of vROPS evaluation or a minimum of advanced edition
1 teaspoon of Endpoint Operations Management Solution
2 drops of Endpoint Agent deployed on a virtual machine
1 gr of user with permission to registered configured on vROPS
100ml of Solution Exchange Application layer something specific (or your own build something specific)

Stir and let it rest for a while.

vROPS you probably have in a test setup or can deploy as an ova in a PoC. Just a little warning upfront if you are not in a test or PoC setup, solutions/management packs are added to vROPS easily. Removing them is not an easy task.

You will need a minimum of one node, a remote collector as a data node is preferable. The Endpoint Operations Management solution is installed with vROPS and needs no specific configuration of the solution itself. The agents are downloaded at my.vmware.com. There are Linux and Windows platform versions, with or without JRE, installation packages or just the data bundles. Use what you like or fits with your application provisioning. I go for the JRE bundles.

And yes I hear you, another agent?!? Yes unfortunately currently you still need the Endpoint Agent. A big ass agent/VMware tools integration is not yet there, we need a little patience for that.

For the user create an Endpoint Management role with permissions in Administration – Manage Agents and Environment – Inventory Trees. Add this role to the user you are planning to use. The user is added to every agent.

If you have a firewall or other ACL’s in between your endpoint agents and the vROPS remote collector or data node(s), open up HTTPS (443) from endpoint group range to the remote collector or data node(s).

Manually Installing vRealize End Point Operations Agent

Manually installing and updating the vRealize End Point Operations Agent only is needed for VM’s that are not deployed via automation, where there is no application provisioning like SCCM or have an issue where a reinstall is needed. Yes you can also use the MSI or RPM, but with the files you will get a little insight (you see what I’m doing?) on how the agent works.

Note: Preferable the agent is not installed in a template. When a need arises that EP Ops Agent is installed in a system that is cloned, do not start EP Ops or remove EP Ops token and data/ prior to cloning. If started a client token is created and all clones will be the same object in vROPS.

Windows 64-bit Agent

You will need an installation user with permissions to put files, change owner/permissions on the server, install a service and start the service.

Copy the following files from a central file repository:

• Copy and extract the softwarepackages/vRealize-Endpoint-Operations-Management-Agent-x86-64-win-.zip. Place the files in for example D:\Program Files\epopsagent
• Edit the agent.properties file in the /conf and put in the following as a minimum:
  • setup.serverIP=data node or LB VIP to connect to
  • setup.serverLogin=User with role to register agent on vROPS
  • setup.serverPword=Password
  • setup.serverCertificateThumbprint=SSL Certificate thumbprint of the node to connect to (the one you entered above)

Note on the Password: this password can be added plaintext. When the agents is installed and started for the first time. The password is encrypted. The key is stored in the agent.scu file in the conf/ directory. You can use the agent.properties and the scu file to distribute from a central location and copy these in the conf/ directory. (Linux uses a different scu file, but the agent.properties can be the same)

• open Command Prompt
• go to /bin
• run epops-agent.bat install
• run epops-agent.bat start

Linux Agent

For the Linux agent use the same flow as the Windows Agent. Just a few differences:

• Copy and extract the tarbal to the extract location, for example /opt/vmware/epops-agent
• Copy the files to conf/
• Go to bin/
• ep-agent.sh start (no need for install)

Monitoring specific Windows Service or Linux Process

Current configuration of the agent does not include an autodiscovery of Windows Services or Linux Processes.

The reason this is not done is that there currently that all services is certainly not an option from a monitoring standpoint. It has more use to monitor specific groups of Windows services or processes that actually contribute or have a direct relation with a hosted service that is needed to be monitored.

Follow these steps to monitor specific Windows Service/Linux Multiproces:

• go to environment – Operating Systems – Operating System World – Windows / Linux
• Select VM hostname
• Actions – Monitor OS Object – Monitor Windows Service
• Fill in the details, the service_name must match the Windows Server name.

Note: for autodiscovering services when agent.properties value autodiscovery is true, services are discovered by their Windows service name. As the services don’t have a servername in there, all service that are the same are named the same but in will the inventory hierarchy will have a different node. In the services view all services are without the node hierarchy: for example when monitoring Windows Time Service from 3 hosts will create three times a Windows Time Service is this view. You can change the service before services are discovered so that the servername is included in the display name. Please see Microsoft documentation on changing service names.

Adding a monitoring Solution

And installing a solution that monitors a service via the Endpoint Agent will show you a combination of nice metric additions. Or at least some additional pointers on how to get and in some cases display application insights you can use for your own.

All these packs can be downloaded from the solution exchange and are *.pak files. These are installed in vROPS Administration – Solutions – Add Solution and follow the details there.

Be sure you download the for operations packs, there are also for Hyperic versions still around. The latter you don’t need.

– Happy fishing

Sources: pubs.vmware.com, blogs.vmware.com, solutionexchange.vmware.com