First Look: VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.6

By: Brock Peterson

VMware recently announced its latest version of vRealize Operations Manager (vROps) 6.6.  In this latest release, VMware transitions to an HTML5 code base with an adjusted user interface (UI).  It employs a clean and efficient approach to troubleshooting your virtual infrastructure.  For a detailed summary of the new features in vROps 6.6 please see Sunny Dua’s series of blog posts.

All 41 Blue Medora management packs have been tested and are supported on vROps 6.6.  They add insight into your applications and database platforms above your virtual infrastructure and surface potential problems in the compute, network, and storage layers below your virtual environment. Let’s take a look!

Right away, the user is presented with a different authentication page.  This is indicative of the clean and minimal UI vROps 6.6 presents:    

Once authenticated, the user is presented with an entirely new home page:

As before, the home page gives the user insight into their virtual infrastructure, including vCenter servers, datacenters, host systems, virtual machines and datastores.

The new home page will also show the user home, dashboards, alerts, environment and administration options across the top.  As the user selects an option the sub-menus are dynamically populated in the left-hand pane. For example, when home is selected, the user can see the recommended action, operations overview, capacity overview, workload balance, log insight and business management as shown above.  These options provide the user with insight into their environment from various perspectives, including those from operations and/or capacity teams, both new features in vROps 6.6.

The Operations Overview provides a detailed summary of the user’s virtual infrastructure:

Across the top the user is presented with a quick Environment Summary detailing the number of each resource.  Below that, the user can select the specific datacenter (DC) of interest which leads to dynamic population of the other widgets.  The Operations Overview is an intuitive and efficient way for Operations teams to monitor their infrastructure.

The Capacity Overview dashboard is another out of the box dashboard provided in vROps 6.6.  As expected, this dashboard surfaces resources with a focus on capacity as shown here:

Across the top the user will see total environment capacity, with the ability to select a virtual resource in the widget below that to observe more detailed metrics for each environment.

Workload Balance is the next dashboard in the list of options from the home page.  This is a new dashboard in vROps 6.6 focused on balancing workloads across your virtual infrastructure, specifically by datacenter.

Explore the Log Insight and business management integrations at your leisure and see how they can help drive better productivity within your environment. In addition, learn more about the Blue Medora True Visibility Suite and how it can maximize your vROps investment.