The analytics cluster of the VMware Aria Operations deployment contains the nodes that analyze and store data from the monitored components. You deploy a configuration of the analytics cluster that satisfies the requirements for monitoring up to the number of virtual machines in scope of the design objectives.

Deployment Type

For scale out and high availability, the analytics cluster consists of one primary node, one primary replica node, and one data node. Deploy a three-node VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster on the cross-instance NSX segment.

In this validated solution, you deploy the VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster nodes in the default management vSphere cluster in the first VMware Cloud Foundation instance. Also, you deploy a group of VMware Cloud Proxies for VMware Aria Operations in the default management vSphere cluster in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance. With this configuration, you can centrally manage monitoring across the entire SDDC.

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

You place the VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster in the first VMware Cloud Foundation instance on a cross-instance NSX segment. This configuration provides a consistent deployment model for the management applications and supports growth to a multi-instance design.

To accomplish this design objective, you deploy or reuse the following components to deploy this intelligent operations management solution for the SDDC:

  • SDDC Manager

  • VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle

  • NSX load balancer for VMware Aria Operations

  • Clustered Workspace ONE Access

  • Supporting infrastructure services, such as Active Directory, DNS, and NTP.

Table 1. Design Decisions on Deployment of VMware Aria Operations

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-001

Deploy VMware Aria Operations as a cluster of three nodes - one primary, one primary replica, and one data node, in the default management vSphere cluster.

  • Provides the scale capacity required for monitoring of up to 12,000 virtual machine or objects.

  • Supports scale-out with additional data nodes.

You must size all nodes identically, which increases the resource requirements in the SDDC.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-002

Deploy two VMware Cloud Proxy appliances in the default management vSphere cluster.

Removes the load from the analytics cluster from collecting metrics from local-instance applications.

You must assign a collector group when configuring the monitoring of a solution.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-003

To deploy VMware Aria Operations , use the VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle instance in the corresponding VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

  • VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle manages the VMware Aria Operations product binaries. The version of VMware Aria Operations is determined by the VMware interoperability matrix and SDDC Manager.

  • When VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle is in VMware Cloud Foundation mode, during the deployment, SDDC Manager configures the load balancer for the analytics cluster.

You must deploy VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle by using SDDC Manager.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-004

Protect all VMware Aria Operations nodes by using vSphere High Availability.

Supports the availability objective for VMware Aria Operations without requiring manual intervention during an ESXi host failure event.

None.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-005

Apply a vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) anti-affinity rule to the VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster.

Using vSphere DRS prevents the VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster virtual machines from running on the same ESXi host and risking the high availability of the cluster.

  • You must perform additional configuration to set up an anti- affinity rule.

  • If additional data nodes are added, you must update the anti-affinity rule.

  • For a default management vSphere cluster that consists of four ESXi hosts, you can put in maintenance mode only a single ESXi host at a time.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-006

Apply a vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) anti-affinity rule to the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances.

Using vSphere DRS prevents the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances from running on the same ESXi host and risking the high availability of the cluster.

You must perform additional configuration to set up an anti-affinity rule.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-007

Place the VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster virtual machines in a dedicated virtual machine folder.

Provides an organization of the VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster virtual machines in the management domain inventory.

You must create the virtual machine folder during or after the deployment.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-008

Place the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances in a dedicated virtual machine folder.

Provides an organization of the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances in the management domain inventory.

You must create the virtual machine folder during or after the deployment.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-009

Enable data persistence on all VMware Aria Operations Cloud Proxy appliances.

Provides the ability to store data in case of connectivity issues.

Storage availability on each VMware Cloud Proxy appliance must be monitored.

Deployment for Multiple Availability Zones

In an environment with multiple availability zones, the VMware Aria Operations nodes run in the first availability zone. If a failure occurs in the first availability zone, the VMware Aria Operations nodes are failed over to the second availability zone.

Table 2. Design Decisions on Deployment of VMware Aria Operations in Multiple Availability Zones

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-010

When using two availability zones, add the VMware Aria Operations virtual machines to the first availability zone VM group.

Ensures that, by default, the VMware Aria Operations virtual machines are powered on within the first availability zone hosts group.

If VMware Aria Operations is deployed after the creation of the stretched cluster for management domain availability zones, you must update the VM group for the first availability zone virtual machines to include the VMware Aria Operations virtual machines.

Deployment for Multiple VMware Cloud Foundation Instances

In an environment with multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instances, you deploy a group of VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

Table 3. Design Decisions on Deployment of VMware Aria Operations for Multiple VMware Cloud Foundation Instances

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-011

In an environment with multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instances, deploy two VMware Cloud Proxy appliances 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.

Removes the load from the analytics cluster from collecting metrics from local-instance applications.

You must assign a collector group when configuring the monitoring of a solution.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-012

In an environment with multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instances, place the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances in each instance, in a dedicated virtual machine folder.

Provides an organization of the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances in the management domain inventory.

You must create the virtual machine folder during or after the deployment.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-013

In an environment with multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instances, apply a vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) anti-affinity rule to the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances.

Using vSphere DRS prevents the VMware Cloud Proxy for VMware Aria Operations appliances from running on the same ESXi host and risking the high availability of the cluster.

You must perform additional configuration to set up an anti-affinity rule.

Sizing Compute and Storage Resources

You size the resources that you must provide for VMware Aria Operations to accommodate the analytics operations for monitoring the SDDC and the expected number of virtual machines in the SDDC. As a best practice, you use the configuration that has the least number of nodes. For example, if the number of data center objects is 120,000, configure the cluster with three extra-large nodes instead of seven large nodes. For information on the VMware Aria Operations sizing guidelines, see https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2093783.

Deploying three medium-size nodes satisfies the requirement for retention and monitoring the number of objects and metrics based on the following design objectives.

Table 4. Design Objectives

Number of Virtual Machines

Maximum Number of Data Center Objects

10,000

12,000

You allocate storage capacity for analytics data that is collected from the management products and from the number of virtual machines that are defined in the design objectives.

This validated solution uses medium-size nodes for the analytics cluster and small-size nodes for the VMware Cloud Proxies. To collect the required number of metrics, you must add a virtual disk with the size of 700 GB to each analytics cluster node.

Table 5. VMware Aria Operations Analytics Cluster CPU, Memory, and Storage Resources

Attribute

Per Appliance

Cluster Deployment

Appliance size

Medium

-

vCPUs

8

24

Memory

32 GB

96 GB

Initial Storage

274 GB

822 GB

Additional Storage

700 GB

2.1TB
Unlike the analytics cluster nodes, the VMware Cloud Proxies have only the collector role. Deploying two VMware Cloud Proxies in the VMware Cloud Foundation instance does not increase the capacity for monitored objects.
Table 6. VMware Aria Operations Cloud Proxy CPU, Memory, and Storage Resources

Attribute

Appliance

Appliance size

Small

CPU

2 vCPUs

Memory

8 GB

Additional Storage

N/A
Table 7. Design Decisions on Sizing of VMware Aria Operations

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-014

Deploy each node in the analytics cluster as a medium-size appliance.

  • Provides enough capacity for the metrics and objects generated by up to 12,000 objects while having high availability in the analytics cluster activated. Metrics are collected from the following components:

    • vCenter Server instances

    • ESXi hosts

    • NSX components

    • VMware Aria Automation

    • VMware Aria Operations for Logs

  • If you use fewer large-size VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster nodes, you must increase the minimum host memory size to handle the increased performance that is the result from stretching NUMA node boundaries.

  • The ESXi hosts in the default management vSphere cluster must have physical CPUs with a minimum of 8 cores per socket. In total, the VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster uses 24 vCPUs and 96 GB of memory in the default management vSphere cluster.

  • When you exceed 12,000 objects, you must scale up the analytics cluster nodes size by using VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-015

If the number of SDDC objects exceeds 12,000, scale out the analytics cluster nodes size by using VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle.

Ensures that the analytics cluster has enough capacity to meet the SDDC object and metric growth.

  • The capacity of the physical ESXi hosts must be enough to accommodate virtual machines that require 32 GB RAM without bridging NUMA node boundaries.

  • The default management vSphere cluster must have enough ESXi hosts so that VMware Aria Operations can run according to the vSphere DRS anti-affinity rule.

  • The number of analytics cluster nodes must not exceed the number of ESXi hosts in the default management vSphere cluster minus one. For example, if the default management vSphere cluster contains six ESXi hosts, you can deploy up to five VMware Aria Operations nodes in the analytics cluster.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-016

Increase the initial storage of each VMware Aria Operations analytics cluster node by 700 GB.

  • Supports the storage requirements for monitoring up to 12,000 objects.

  • Supports projected growth of 20%.

  • Supports data retention of six months.

None.

IOM-VAOPS-CFG-017

Deploy each VMware Cloud Proxy appliance as a small-size appliance.

  • Provides metric collection for maximum of 8,000 objects per VMware Cloud Proxy appliance in the SDDC when at full capacity.

  • VMware Cloud Proxy appliances do not perform analytics operations or store data on disk, therefore no additional storage is required.

You must provide 2 vCPUs and 8 GB of memory in the default management vSphere cluster in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance for each VMware Cloud Proxy appliance.