Deployment Model of VMware Aria Operations for Networks for Intelligent Network Visibility for VMware Cloud Foundation

VMware Aria Operations for Networks deployments contain VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform nodes, that analyze and store the data from data sources sent from VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector nodes.

Deployment Type

VMware Aria Operations for Networks nodes require reservations of CPU and RAM. When sizing the VMware Aria Operations for Networks environment, you must balance between the CPU/RAM reservations and the need to support a reasonable scale capacity. This solution initially deploys a single, non-clustered VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node and keeps the option to extend the deployment to a cluster if necessary.

In this validated solution, you deploy the VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node in the default management vSphere cluster in the first VMware Cloud Foundation instance. Also, you deploy one or more VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector nodes in the default management vSphere cluster in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance. With this configuration, you can centrally manage network visibility across the entire SDDC.

The SDDC can comprise of multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instances and multiple availability zones.

You place the VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node in the first VMware Cloud Foundation instance on the cross-instance NSX segment. This configuration provides a consistent deployment model for the management applications and supports growth to a multi-instance design that supports disaster recovery of the platform nodes.

To accomplish this design objective, you deploy or reuse the following components to deploy this Intelligent Network Visibility for VMware Cloud Foundation validated solution for the SDDC:

SDDC Manager
VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
Supporting infrastructure services, such as Active Directory, DNS, and NTP.

Table 1. Design Decisions on Deployment of VMware Aria Operations for Networks
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
INV-VAON-CFG-001	Deploy VMware Aria Operations for Networks as a non-clustered, single platform node in the default management vSphere cluster.	Provides capacity for monitoring of up to 10,000 virtual machine or objects. Supports scale-out with additional VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform nodes to a platform cluster.	A 100% reservation for CPU and RAM for the deployed VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node will be applied.
INV-VAON-CFG-002	Deploy a single VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node in the default management vSphere cluster.	A minimum of one VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node is required to provide the VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node with network monitoring data.	A 100% reservation for CPU and RAM for the deployed VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node will be applied.
INV-VAON-CFG-003	To deploy VMware Aria Operations for Networks, use the VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle instance in the corresponding VMware Cloud Foundation instance.	VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle manages the VMware Aria Operations for Networks product binaries. The version of VMware Aria Operations for Networks is determined by the interoperability matrix and SDDC Manager. VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle automates the deployment of VMware Aria Operations for Networks.	You must deploy VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle by using SDDC Manager.
INV-VAON-CFG-004	Protect all VMware Aria Operations for Networks nodes by using vSphere High Availability.	Supports the availability objective for VMware Aria Operations for Networks without requiring manual intervention during an ESXi host failure event.	You must ensure sufficient spare capacity for vSphere High Availability failover operations.
INV-VAON-CFG-005	Place the VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node(s) in a dedicated virtual machine folder.	Provides an organization of the VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node(s) in the management domain inventory.	You must create the virtual machine folder in vCenter Server.
INV-VAON-CFG-006	Place the VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node(s) in a dedicated virtual machine folder.	Provides an organization of the VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node(s) in the management domain inventory.	You must create the virtual machine folder in vCenter server.

Deployment for Multiple Availability Zones

Table 2. Design Decisions on Deployment of VMware Aria Operations for Networks in Multiple Availability Zones
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
INV-VAON-CFG-007	When using two availability zones, add the VMware Aria Operations for Networks virtual machines to the first availability zone VM group.	Ensures that, by default, the VMware Aria Operations for Networks virtual machines are powered on within the first availability zone hosts group.	After the implementation of the second availability zone for the management domain, you must update the VM group for the primary availability zone virtual machines to include the VMware Aria Operations for Networks virtual machines.

Deployment for Multiple VMware Cloud Foundation Instances

Table 3. Design Decisions on Deployment of VMware Aria Operations for Networks for Multiple VMware Cloud Foundation Instances
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
INV-VAON-CFG-008	In an environment with multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instances, deploy the VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node(s) in the default management vSphere cluster in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance by using the same VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle instance and environment in the first VMware Cloud Foundation instance.	Ensures a consistent deployment in each VMware Cloud Foundation regarding network data collection. It is assumed that each VMware Cloud Foundation instance introduces a sufficiently high number of virtual machines, so that the deployment of dedicated VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector nodes is justified.	Each VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node must be registered with a VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node.
INV-VAON-CFG-009	In an environment with multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instances, place the VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node(s) for each instance in a dedicated virtual machine folder.	Provides an organization of VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector nodes in the management domain inventory.	You must create the virtual machine folder in vCenter Server.

Sizing Compute and Storage Resources

You size the resources for VMware Aria Operations for Networks to accommodate the analytics operations for the number of virtual machines, and total flows in the SDDC. For further information on sizing resources see Design Objectives for Intelligent Network Visibility for VMware Cloud Foundation.

For information on the VMware Aria Operations for Networks sizing guidelines, see VMware Aria Operations for Networks System Recommendations and Requirements.

Table 4. Design Decisions on Sizing of VMware Aria Operations
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
INV-VAON-CFG-010	Deploy a VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform node with an Extra Large brick size.	Provides enough capacity for the metrics and objects generated by up to 10,000 virtual machines and 8 million flows. The features "Network Verification and Assurance" and "Flow based Application Discovery" are only available with brick size "Extra Large".	You must consider the additional resources required by VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform nodes when sizing the management vSphere cluster.
INV-VAON-CFG-011	If the number of virtual machines exceeds 10,000 or if any other object scale limitations are reached, scale out to a platform cluster deployment by adding additional VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform nodes using VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle.	Ensures that the VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform cluster has enough capacity to meet the SDDC object growth.	You must consider the additional resources required by VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform nodes in the management vSphere cluster when scaling out to a platform cluster.
INV-VAON-CFG-012	Deploy a VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node as a large size appliance.	One VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node provides sufficient capacity for collecting flows from the supported number of VMs as stated in the design objectives. If the scale capacity exceeds the number of VMs as stated in the design objectives, additional VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector nodes can be deployed.	You must provide 8-10 vCPUs (depending on the CPU speed, see the official VMware Aria Operations for Networksdocumentation) and 16 GB of memory in the default management vSphere cluster in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance for each VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector node.