First Look at OpsLogix’s VMware Management Pack (beta)–Part II

After taking a first look at OpsLogix’s VMware Management Pack I’ve released I’ve missed something that I usually test with such core MPs like this one. That test is to bring the discovered objects from SCOM to SCSM as Configuration Items. It is not something hard to do and I’ve described the process before here but nevertheless I think it will good to see it visually in this blog post.

First you need to import OpsLogix IMP –Base Library MP and OpsLogix IMP – VMWare MP in Service Manager.

But before actually importing these two you need to import also their dependencies:

In my case I’ve needed to import Operations Manager Internal Library, System Center Visualization Library and System Center Image Library. All management packs can be found in the SCOM installation in the Management Packs folder. Keep in mind that for the System Center Visualization Library the MPB file have to be imported:

After successful import you need to configure your Operations Manager CI connector in SCOM to sync the VMWare MP:

Next we need to put some classes in the SCSM allow list in order to sync the instances for that classes. The classes we will find in SCOM Discovered Inventory View:

Now that we know the display names of the classes we can easily find their internal names with PowerShell.

You need to start Operations Manager cmdlet and execute the following commands:

Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware Cluster"}
Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware Datacenter"}
Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware Datastore"}
Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware ESX Server"}
Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware Network"}
Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware Resource Pool"}
Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware vCenter"}
Get-SCClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Vmware Virtual Machine"}

Basically we need the following classes:

OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Cluster
OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Datacenter
OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Datastore
OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.ESXServer
OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Network
OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.ResourcePool
OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.vCenter
OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.VirtualMachine

Now that we have the internal names of the classes we can easily put them in SCSM allow list again with PowerShell:

I am using the built-in SCSM PowerShell cmdlets and executing these commands:

Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Cluster
Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Datacenter
Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Datastore
Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.ESXServer
Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.Network
Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.ResourcePool
Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.vCenter
Add-SCSMAllowListClass -ClassName OpsLogix.IMP.VMWare.VirtualMachine

To verify that the classes are added to the allowed sync list you can use: Get-SCSMAllowList

Next you need to force sync on your Operations Manager CI connector. After the connector syncs successful you can create several views to check if the instances of these classes are synced:

The beta of the MP does not discover a lot of properties for the objects but I am hoping this will be changed in the final version or some of the next ones as proper and rich CMDB is important.

First Look at OpsLogix’s VMware Management Pack (beta)

Yep you’ve heard right OpsLogix’s team is putting their forces on creating Management Pack for monitoring VMware. This blog post will not be comparison with another well known management pack for VMware. I will try to give you overview of the VMware Management Pack that OpsLogix is cooking up. Keep in mind that the MP is still in beta. Although the MP is in beta the OpsLogix’s support was not in beta. While I was testing the MP I’ve stumbled on a bug. I’ve contacted OpsLogix’s support, granted them access to my environment and after a couple of hours I’ve received a fix. Such quick fix shows the devotion of OpsLogix on supporting their products. Another reason to try this MP is that I haven’t touched vCenter since I switched to Hyper-V and System Center (somewhere around 3-4 years ago).

Before importing the MP let’s first see the environment where I am testing:

SCOM server named SCOM01. The SCOM version is 2012 R2 Preview. The operating System is Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview.
vCenter server named vcenter. Version is 5.1. Operating system is Windows Server 2012.
Two ESXi hosts 192.168.100.150 and 192.168.100.152 that are in cluster:

First you need to import two management packs:

After successful import you need to configure the resource pool that the MP will use. On importing OpsLogix VMware MP creates its own a resource pool:

You need to make the pool manual and add the SCOM management servers that will be used for monitoring your VMware environment.

In my case I have only one SCOM management server but in real world environment you will have more than one and you can distribute your resources more equally:

It is good that the MP is taking advantage of Resource Pools to distribute the load.

Before starting monitoring of the VMware environment let’s see with MPViewer what classes, discoveries, groups, relationships, monitors and rules are offered:

Classes

Discoveries

Groups

Monitors

Relationships:

Rules:

We will go in detail how the MP works but let’s first configure it to monitor the VMware environment.

You you will need to go to Monitoring pane -> OpsLogix –> VMWare –> VMWare IMP Configuration Dashbaord:

There you need to enter the name of your vCenter server and credentials. You do not need to have SCOM agent installed on that server to activate monitoring. The credentials provided can be domain account or local account on your vCenter server you just need to grant that account read-only permissions to the root of your vCenter server:

There is a button that will allow to test your connection before adding it:

If connection is successful you a re good to go:

So how the MP works?

The MP connects to the vCenter web service. By connecting to it it will find all objects (datacenters,ESX servers, clusters, datastores, vmnetworks and etc.) in your vmware environment:

For generating alerts the MP uses the built-in functionality in vCenter to create alarms. If you create an alarm in vCenter and that alarm is triggered it will show in SCOM also.

If you close an alert in SCOM that was not resolved in vCenter that alert will appear again in SCOM. Unfortunately if you close alarm in vCenter it will not be closed in SCOM. May be in some future version of the MP we will see option to enable synchronization from both side depending on your preference.

Besides the alerts the MP also tracks state of the different object. Depending on the alarms that are generated or not generated for particular object OpsLogix VMWare MP will calculate different states (healthy, warning or critical) on small intervals.

So the MP is very customizable and customizations can be made straight from vCenter which I think is the preferable way for vmware administrators and will save money from your budget if you had to teach them to do that in SCOM.

These are the capabilities of the MP from first sight but let’s see how it can provide more value by mixing it with more SCOM magic.

What about Diagram of your VMWare environment? Something what VMM MP has.

Sure that can be done you just need to create new diagram view:

And Viola:

What about VMWare Dashboard? I want to track the state of my VMWare environment in a dashboard.

A few simple steps and you are ready:

OK we’ve showed what are the capabilities of the MP now let’s show what the current beta version cannot offer otherwise it wouldn’t be a fair review. Performance alerts can be triggered trough configuring alarms in vCenter but the MP itself does not gather performance data to put it in SCOM databases. Probably because of this no report is available also. For such capabilities you have to look for solution at vCenter side.

Summary

OpsLogix VMWare MP looks promising at its first steps and it is definitely worth trying it if you consider monitoring your VMWare environment with SCOM. OpsLogix have proven that they are good at making MPs. The MP does not have price yet as it is in beta but it is advertised by OpsLogix as MP that make sense in price and performance. If you want to try it you can find more information here.

My Point of View for the Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure of Gartner

Gartner released their Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization infrastructure and Microsoft is a leader. The bad news is that VMware are still in front. But if we look in the article we will see that Cautions mentioned for Microsoft are all addressed as features in System Center 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack. So Microsoft is already one step ahead by providing Preview for these products and releasing them before the end of the year. But what about VMware? Well from my point of view they haven’t moved significantly forward. Let’s remember this video from more than an year ago and we will see a promise that I cannot say it is fully fulfilled. I am not VMware expert but this is my point. Taking also the fact that Microsoft now has a faster release cycle I can predict if Microsoft is not first in this quadrant it will be at least head to head with “the other guys”. More on the story you can find here.

Microsoft continues the battle with VMware with more videos from MVA about SC 2012 SP1 and Hyper-V

Uploaded just a minutes ago there are new videos from MVA on TechNet. The videos compare Microsoft technologies with VMware technologies. Previous MVA released such course with videos where Hyper-V was compared with ESXi and vSphere. Now we can see the same approach with Microsoft Private Cloud over the VMware vCloud compare and by Microsoft Private Cloud it is meant freshly released System Center 2012 SP1:

Obviously Microsoft is determined to win this battle or at least to show that they are all in the Private Cloud.

More videos were added to compare Hyper-V with VMware vSphere 5.1:

System Center 2012 SP1 additional components are updated

———————More downloads were added——————————-

After the release of System Center 2012 SP1 on Technet and MSDN before Christmas which is kind of unofficial release it is time for the official one. There is a rumor that tomorrow (04.01.2013) Microsoft will officially announce Service Pack 1 for System Center 2012. As a hint for this official announcement is that several additional components for SC 2012 SP1 were updated from Beta to RTM today. Here you can find them:

Note: Some of the components may still have BETA word in their names but if you see the change log on the webpage you will see that final version was uploaded.

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