VMware Aria Operations uses collectors like cloud proxies or remote collectors to manage cloud account processes such as gathering metrics from objects. You can select a collector or a collector group when configuring an cloud account.

If there are remote collectors or cloud proxies in your environment, you can create a collector group, and add the remote collectors or cloud proxies to the group. When you assign an account to a collector group, that account can use any collector in the group. Use collector groups to achieve resiliency in cases where the collector experiences network interruption or becomes unavailable. If this occurs, and the collector is part of a group, the total workload is redistributed among all the collectors in the group, reducing the workload on each collector. For more information, see the 'About VMware Aria Operations Remote Collector Nodes' topic in the Getting Started with VMware Aria Operations Guide and 'Configuring Cloud Proxies in VMware Aria Operations' topic in the Configuring VMware Aria Operations Guide.

You can add, edit, or remove collector groups in VMware Aria Operations, and rebalance your cloud accounts.

Rebalancing a Cloud Account

Rebalancing of your cloud accounts is not intended to provide equally distributed cloud accounts across each collector in the collector group. The rebalancing action considers the number of resources that each cloud account collects to determine the rebalancing placement. The rebalancing happens at the cloud account, which can result in several small cloud accounts on a single collector, and a single huge cloud account on another collector, in your VMware Aria Operations instance.

Rebalancing your collector groups can add a significant load on the entire cluster. Moving cloud accounts from one collector to another collector requires that VMware Aria Operations stops the cloud account and all its resources on the source collector, then starts them on the target collector.

If a collector fails to respond or loses connectivity to the cluster, VMware Aria Operations starts automated rebalancing in the collector group. All other user-initiated manual operations on the collector, such as stopping or restarting the collector manually, do not result in automated rebalancing.

If one of the collectors fails to respond, or if it loses network connectivity, VMware Aria Operations performs automated rebalancing. In cases of automated rebalancing, to properly rebalance the collector group, you must have spare capacity on the collectors in the collector group.

Where You Manage Collector Groups

From the left menu, click Data Sources > Cloud Proxies, and then click the Collector Groups tab.

Table 1. Collector Group Summary Grid
Options Description
Collector Group toolbar To manage collector groups, use the toolbar icons.
  • Add. Add a collector group
  • Click the Vertical Ellipses to perform any one of the following actions:
    • Edit. Modify the collector group by adding or removing cloud proxies. You can also edit a collector group to activate or deactivate application monitoring high availability.
    • Delete. Remove the selected collector group.
    • Rebalance collector group. Rebalance one collector group at a time. If you have permission to manage clusters, you can rebalance the workload across the collectors and the cloud proxies in the collector group. The rebalance action moves objects from one collector group to another to rebalance the number of objects on each collector in the collector group. If a disk rebalance is already in progress, the collector rebalance does not run
    • Retry collector group configuration: In case the application monitoring high availability activated collector group configuration fails, you can retry the configuration.
    • The actions are disabled when the application monitoring high availability activated collector group configuration is in progress. Once the cofiguration is complete you can perform the actions.
Name The name given to the collector group when the collector group is created or updated.
Collector Group ID The collector group ID created when the collector group is created.
Description Description given to the collector group when the collector group is created or updated.
Application Monitoring HA Displays the application monitoring high availability status of the collector group.
  • Activated. The collector group can be used for application monitoring.
  • Deactivated. The collector group cannot be used for application monitoring.
Note: For default collector groups, high availability for application monitoring is deactivated by default.
HA Status Displays the application monitoring high availability of the collector group.
  • OK. The collector group high availability configuration is successful.
  • In Progress. The collector group high availability configuration is in progress. This status is displayed when adding, deleting, updating, or deactivating the collector group.
  • Empty. If high availability is not configured, no status is displayed.
Note: If the high availability status of the cloud proxy fails, the HA status of the failed cloud proxy is displayed. In case there are multiple cloud proxies in a collector group with failed HA status, the first failed message is displayed in the Collectors Group page.
Virtual IP Virtual IP address of the collector group.
Note: Pick the Virtual IP address that any of the cloud proxies in a collector group can own and receive traffic from. The Virtual IP address must be in the same subnet as the physical address of the cloud proxies. After you configure the Virtual IP address, ping it from a different network to ensure that it is routable.
Filters Search the list of collector groups according to the following criteria:
  • Name
  • Description
  • Collector Name
  • Collector IP Address
  • Application Monitoring HA
  • HA Status
  • Group Virtual IP
  • Collector Group Id

Click a collector group to view the collector group details.

Table 2. Collector Group Details Grid
Detail Grid Options Description
Collector Group Name Displays the name of the collector group. Click Edit to modify the collector group details. Click View Description to view the collector group description.
Application Monitoring High Availability Status Displays the status of the application monitoring high availability.
Virtual IP Displays the virtual IP added during the collector group creation.
Name Name given to the cloud proxy when the cloud proxy was created. Click the name to view the cloud proxy details.

. For more information on cloud proxies, see the "Monitoring the Health of Cloud Proxies" topic in the Configuring VMware Aria Operations Guide.
IP Address IP address of the cloud proxy
Status Status of the cloud proxy: online or offline.
HA Status Displays the cloud proxy high availability status.
  • OK. The cloud proxy application monitoring high availability configuration is successful.
  • Activation In Progress. Displayed when the cloud proxy is added to a application monitoring HA activated collector group or when the creation of a new application monitoring HA activated collector group is in progress.
  • Deactivation In Progress. Displayed when the deactivation of a application monitoring HA activated collector group is in progress.
  • Removal In Progress. Displayed when the removal of a cloud proxy from a application monitoring HA activated collector group is in progress.
  • Group Delete In Progress. Displayed when the deletion of the entire application monitoring HA activated collector group is in progress.
  • Empty. If the cloud proxy is not part of a collector group with high availability, no status is displayed.
  • If the cloud proxy high availability configuration fails, the failure reason is displayed. For example, "Keepalived is failed" or "Apache south is failed".
Type

Displays whether it is a remote collector or cloud proxy. For more information on remote collectors, see the 'About VMware Aria Operations Remote Collector Nodes' topic in the Getting Started with VMware Aria Operations Guide.
Number of Objects Displays the number of objects collected by the cloud proxy.
Number of cloud accounts Displays the number of cloud accounts using the cloud proxy.