Before upgrading, you can gauge the impact on your system by running the VMware Aria Operations Pre-Upgrade Readiness Assessment Tool (Assessment Tool). The tool generates a report detailing the precise impact on your environment and gives suggestions for replacement metrics.

Using the Assessment Tool consists of four distinct steps:

  1. Download the corresponding version of the PAK file from Broadcom Support Portal.
  2. Run the VMware Aria Operations Pre-Upgrade Readiness Assessment Tool.
  3. Extract the report from the generated ZIP file.
  4. Click the various items in the report to link to the solutions grid.
Note: You must run the Assessment Tool on the instance of the VMware Aria Operations installation that you want to assess - typically your production system. The Assessment Tool does not alter anything in your system, and deletes itself when it has completed its run. It leaves behind only the assessment result - a support bundle that you download from the Support Bundles section of the VMware Aria Operations Administration user interface.

Prerequisites

You must have administrator privileges in your current installation of VMware Aria Operations to download and run the Assessment Tool. For more information on using the upgrade assessment tool, see the following KB article 67311.

Procedure

  1. Download the corresponding version of the Assessment Tool PAK from Broadcom Support Portal to your local machine. Search for APUAT or VMware Aria Operations - Upgrade Assessment Tool.
  2. Open a browser and navigate to theVMware Aria Operations administrator console: https://<primary_node_IP>/admin.
    Then log into the administrator user interface with the user ID admin and the associated password.
  3. In the left pane of the administration home page, click Software Update.
    The Software Update screen appears.
  4. Click Install a Software Update at the top of the screen.
    The Add Software Update workspace appears.
  5. Click the Browse link and navigate to the PAK file you downloaded in Step 1.
    A check mark appears next to the statement: The selected file is ready to upload and install. Click UPLOAD to continue.
  6. Ensure that a check mark appears next to the statement: Install the PAK file even if it is already installed.
    Leave blank the check box next to Reset Default Content...
  7. Click the UPLOAD link.
    The PAK file is uploaded from your local machine to VMware Aria Operations. Uploading may take a few minutes.
  8. Once the PAK file is uploaded, click NEXT.
    The End User License Agreement appears.
  9. Click the check box next to the statement: I accept the terms of this agreement.
    Click NEXT. The Important Update and Release Information screen appears.
  10. Review the release information and click NEXT. At the Install Software Update screen, click INSTALL.
    The Software Update screen appears again, this time with a rotating icon and an installation in progress... bar marking the progress of the PAK file and assessment as they run on your environment. The process can take from five to 20 minutes, depending on the size of your system.
  11. When the process is complete, click Support in the left pane.
    The Support screen appears.
  12. Select the Support Bundles option above the toolbar.
    The available support bundles are listed.
  13. Locate the support bundle most recently created. Click the chevron next to the bundle name to open the file and select it, then click the download link on the toolbar to save the support bundle ZIP file to your local files.
  14. To review the report, extract the files from the ZIP file and open the HTML file. (Do not open the CSV file, it is for VMware use only.)
    The report is a graphical depiction of your VMware Aria Operations UI components - dashboards, reports, management packs, alerts, heat maps, and so on - and includes the number of deprecated metrics impacting each component. For example, you might find that 10 of your 25 dashboards contain a total of 15 deprecated metrics.
  15. Click a component.
    The report details for that component are listed following the graphics, under Impacted Component Details. Taking dashboards as an example, the list provides - for each dashboard - the dashboard name, owner, widgets removed, metric-impacted views, and metric-impacted widgets. The deprecated metrics are live links.
  16. Click a live metric link.
    A browser window opens at URL http://partnerweb.vmware.com/programs/vrops/DeprecatedContent.html with the selected metric highlighted in a table of like metrics. If a replacement metric is available for the deprecated metric, it is listed in the same row by name and metric key. You might choose to install the new metric in place of the deprecated metric.
  17. Repeat Steps 15 and 16 for all your components.
    If you replace the deprecated metrics with new metrics, or update each component to provide needed information without the deprecated metrics, your system is ready for the upgrade.
  18. Rerun the entire assessment process from Step 1 to confirm that your system is no longer impacted or at least mostly not impacted by the metrics changes.
  19. Once you have upgraded to VMware Aria Operations 8.18, fix the remaining issues with replacement metrics available in the new release.

Results

Your VMware Aria Operations components are updated to work correctly in the 8.18 release.

What to do next

Once you have installed VMware Aria Operations 8.18, conduct, at a minimum, random testing to determine if system metrics are operating as you expect. Monitor the platform on an ongoing basis to confirm that you are receiving the correct data.