vRealize Operations communicates with all management components to collect metrics that are presented through various dashboards and views.

The deployment of vRealize Operations is a single instance of a 3-node analytics cluster that is deployed in the management cluster along with a two-node remote collector group.

Figure 1. Logical vRealize Operations Design
Logical vRealize Operations Design

The analytics cluster of the vRealize Operations deployment contains the nodes that analyze and store data from the monitored components. You deploy a configuration of the analytics cluster that meets the requirements for monitoring the number of VMs.

Deploy a three-node vRealize Operations analytics cluster that consists of one primary node, one replica node, and one data node to enable scale-out and high availability.

This design uses medium-size nodes for the analytics cluster and standard-size nodes for the remote collector group. To collect the required number of metrics, add a virtual disk of 1 TB on each analytics cluster node.

You can use the self-monitoring capability of vRealize Operations to receive alerts about issues that are related to its operational state.

vRealize Operations displays the following administrative alerts:

  • System alert: Indicates a failed component of the vRealize Operations application.

  • Environment alert: Indicates that vRealize Operations stopped receiving data from one or more resources. This alert might indicate a problem with system resources or network infrastructure.

  • Log Insight log event: Indicates that the infrastructure on which vRealize Operations is running has low-level issues. You can also use the log events for root cause analysis.

  • Custom dashboard: vRealize Operations shows super metrics for data center monitoring, capacity trends, and single pane of glass overview.

Table 1. Recommended vRealize Operations Design

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

Deploy vRealize Operations as a cluster of three nodes:

  • one primary node

  • one replica node

  • one data node

  • Provides the scale capacity required for monitoring up to 10,000 VMs.

  • Supports scale-up with additional data nodes.

All the nodes must be sized identically.

Deploy two remote collector nodes.

Removes the load from the analytics cluster from collecting application metrics.

When configuring the monitoring of a solution, you must assign a collector group.

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

Provides the scale required to monitor the solution.

ESXi hosts in the management cluster must have physical CPUs with a minimum of 8 cores per socket. In total, vRealize Operations uses 24 vCPUs and 96 GB of memory in the management cluster.

Add more medium-size nodes to the analytics cluster if the number of VMs exceeds 10,000.

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

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

  • The number of nodes must not exceed the number of ESXi hosts in the management cluster minus 1. For example, if the management cluster contains six ESXi hosts, you can deploy up to five vRealize Operations nodes in the analytics cluster.

Deploy the standard-size remote collector virtual appliances.

Enables metric collection for the expected number of objects.

You must provide 4 vCPUs and 8 GB of memory in the management cluster.

Add a virtual disk of 1 TB for each analytics cluster node.

Provides enough storage for the expected number of objects.

You must add the 1 TB disk manually while the VM for the analytics node is powered off.

Configure vRealize Operations for SMTP outbound alerts.

Enables administrators and operators to receive email alerts from vRealize Operations.

vRealize Operations must have access to an external SMTP server.