VMware Aria Operations consists of one or more nodes, in a cluster. To create nodes, you use the vSphere client to download and deploy the VMware Aria Operations virtual machine, once for each cluster node.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that you have permissions to deploy OVF templates to the inventory.
  • If the ESXi host is part of a cluster, activate DRS in the cluster. If an ESXi host belongs to a non-DRS cluster, all resource pool functions are deactivated.
  • If this node is to be the primary node, reserve a static IP address for the virtual machine, and know the associated domain name, domain search path, domain name servers, default gateway, and network mask values.

    Plan to keep the IP address because it is difficult to change the address after installation.

  • If this node is to be a data node that will become the HA/CA replica node, reserve a static IP address for the virtual machine, and store the associated domain name, domain search path, domain name servers, default gateway, and network mask values for later use.

    In addition, familiarize yourself with HA node placement as described in About VMware Aria Operations High Availability and CA node allocation as described in About VMware Aria Operations Continuous Availability .

  • Plan your domain and machine naming so that the deployed virtual machine name begins and ends with an alphabet (a–z) or digit (0–9) characters, and will only contain alphabet, digit, or hyphen (-) characters. The underscore character (_) must not appear in the host name or anywhere in the fully qualified domain name (FQDN).

    Plan to keep the name because it is difficult to change the name after installation.

    For more information, review the host name specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force. See www.ietf.org.

  • Plan node placement and networking to meet the requirements described in General VMware Aria Operations Cluster Node Requirements and VMware Aria Operations Cluster Node Networking Requirements.
  • If you expect the VMware Aria Operations cluster to use IPv6 addresses, review the IPv6 limitations described in Using IPv6 with VMware Aria Operations.
  • Download the VMware Aria Operations .ova file to a location that is accessible to the vSphere client.
  • If you download the virtual machine and the file extension is .tar, change the file extension to .ova.
  • Verify that you are connected to a vCenter Server system with a vSphere client, and log in to the vSphere client.

    Do not deploy VMware Aria Operations from an ESXi host. Deploy only from vCenter Server.

Procedure

  1. Select the vSphere Deploy OVF Template option.
  2. Enter the path to the VMware Aria Operations .ova file.
  3. Follow the prompts until you are asked to enter a name for the node.
  4. Enter a node name. Examples might include Ops1, Ops2 Ops-A, Ops-B.
    Do not include nonstandard characters such as underscores (_) in node names.
    Use a different name for each VMware Aria Operations node.
  5. Follow the prompts until you are asked to select a configuration size.
  6. Select the size configuration that you need. Your selection does not affect the disk size.
    Default disk space is allocated regardless of which size you select. If you need additional space to accommodate the expected data, add more disk after deploying the vApp, see Add Data Disk Space to a VMware Aria Operations vApp Node.
  7. Follow the prompts until you are asked to select the disk format.
    Option Description
    Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed Creates a virtual disk in a default thick format.
    Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

    Creates a type of thick virtual disk that supports clustering features such as Fault Tolerance. Thick provisioned eager-zeroed format can improve performance depending on the underlying storage subsystem.

    Select the thick provisioned eager-zero option when possible.

    Thin Provision Creates a disk in thin format. Use this format to save storage space.
    Snapshots can negatively affect the performance of a virtual machine and typically result in a 25–30 percent degradation for the VMware Aria Operations workload. Do not use snapshots.
  8. Click Next.
  9. From the drop-down menu, select a Destination Network, for example, Network 1 = TEST, and click Next.
  10. Under Networking Properties, in case of a static IP, specify the associated Default Gateway, Domain Name, Domain Search Path, Domain Name Servers, Network 1 IP Address, and Network 1 Netmask values. In case of DHCP, leave all the fields blank. The primary node and replica node require a static IP. A data node can use DHCP or a static IP.
  11. In the Timezone Setting, leave the default of UTC or select a time zone.
    The preferred approach is to standardize on UTC. Alternatively, configure all nodes to the same time zone.
    Note: You cannot configure nodes to different time zones.
  12. (Optional) In Properties, under Application, select the option for IPv6 .
  13. (Optional) If you want to deploy a FIPS activated VMware Aria Operations setup, in the FIPS setting, select the Activate FIPS Mode check box.
  14. Click Next.
  15. Review the settings and click Finish.
  16. If you are creating a multiple-node VMware Aria Operations cluster, repeat through all the steps to deploy each node.

What to do next

Use a Web browser client to configure a newly added node as the VMware Aria Operations primary node, a data node, or a high availability primary replica node. The primary node is required first.

Note: For security, do not access VMware Aria Operations from untrusted or unpatched clients, or from clients using browser extensions.