It is available from VMware’s web site. The foundation edition is included with vSphere, and the other editions can be purchased as necessary. It is also available as part of the vCenter Operations Management Suite
vCenter Configuration Manager
This tool allows for configuration management and monitoring of both physical or VM-based OSs (including Windows, Linux, and UNIX) and virtual infrastructure (including vSphere, vCenter, vCloud Director [vCD], and vShield) environments. Compliance can be audited, monitored, and remediated against industry or regulatory standards (including DISA, NIST, PCI, SOX, and HIPPA), vendor best practices (both VMware and Microsoft), and/or internal company policies. Any changes detected can be correlated with changes in performance or other events (such as CPU or memory utilization) with the link to vCOPS. In addition, it can be used to deploy patches, distribute applications (Windows only), and provision supported OSs itself, either physically or virtually. When patches or applications are deployed, they can take a snapshot (on VMs) to allow quick rollback to the previous configuration if necessary.
vFabric Hyperic
This part of the monitoring stack goes all the way to the application / service level to automatically inventory the hardware, OSs, applications, and services in the environment and the relationships between them. It can collect over 50,000 metrics on 75+ technologies, and can be extended to support just about any platform or technology. It gathers and reports on performance and availability in real time. In addition, it can gather baseline performance data to better understand what “normal” is and to assist in setting SLAs. Among the supported platforms and services are:
- Virtualization platforms: vSphere, vCenter, vCD, and Xen
- Operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, UNIX, HP/UX, AIX, and Cisco IOS
- Databases: SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, GemFire, MySQL, DB2, and Sybase
- E-mail platforms: Exchange, Zimbra, Lotus Domino, and Sendmail
- Web / Proxy servers: Apache, IIS, and Squid
- Directory services: Active Directory and OpenLDAP
- Application servers: Tomcat, WebLogic, WebSphere, and JBoss
- Application platforms: .NET, JEE, J2EE, LAMP, and Spring.
- Miscellaneous: Bugzilla, Microsoft Terminal Services, SNMP, SMTP, IMAP, POP, DNS, DHCP, SSH, and SQL queries
vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN).
This tool provides simple application to OS-to-host visualization capabilities, with data and views that can be exported. Inside the tool, VMs can be grouped together to view relationships and these application groups can be viewed and reported on in the native vCOPS interface, bringing application monitoring and management into the same UI framework.
vCenter Chargeback Manager.
This product is designed to allow IT departments to assign costs for IT resources (CPU, memory, network, disk space and I/Os, license costs, etc.) so that when you create or run a VM , the cost of doing so can either be shared with business units, departments, etc., or they can be charged back, making IT another business unit, not just a cost center. Costs can be fixed (e.g., software costs, licensing costs, administrative overhead), based on how much is allocated (e.g., vCPUs or memory assigned or storage space consumed), and/or utilization based (e.g., CPU cycles consumed, disk or network I/O bandwidth consumed, etc.). People tend to think more carefully when there is a cost associated with their actions (such as creating VMs with less resources) versus when they are free. Why not take all you can? Reporting to and accountability by departments, administrators, developers, etc. is thus engendered.
The vCenter Operations Management Suite is also included as part of the vCloud Suite, which adds:
vSphere
This suite includes vSphere Enterprise Plus as well as vCenter Standard.
vCloud Director (vCD)
This tool transforms the basic vSphere virtualization platform into a cloud-based one, leveraging vSphere, vCenter, etc., to create what VMware calls “the software-defined datacenter.” The basic virtualization of storage, networking, CPU, and memory provided by vSphere is enhanced with self-service provisioning (with a variety of roles to provide the right combination of privileges and security), automation, and strong security boundaries to allow multiple departments, divisions, or even companies to coexist on the same physical hardware without knowing any of the others exist, or having any access to them (unless allowed by an administrator, for example within a company). Thus, IT can create Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds. Quotas on space consumption and leases can be created to control resource utilization and ensure that provisioned resources are actually used.
vCloud Connector
This tool comes in Core and Datacenter Extension (DCE) editions; DCE is included with the vCloud Suite. Both allow the connection of an unlimited number of private and/or public clouds together with a single, unified view of them all to manage VMs, vApps, and templates. DCE also adds the ability to move between clouds without reconfiguring networking settings. Content Sync is also available with the vCloud Suite, allowing templates added to a source catalog in a source cloud to be synchronized with other clouds, making new templates quickly available throughout the infrastructure.
vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS)
One of the foundations of large clouds, especially public clouds, is a secure, scalable network infrastructure. While VLANs can be used, their scalability is limited (only 4,094 are possible when used with the virtual networking capabilities of vSphere). VXLAN overcomes this limitation with essentially unlimited networks possible, scalable across hosts, clusters, even vCenter instances, all without requiring the physical networking infrastructure to be reconfigured with each change. This tool also provides NAT, firewall, VPN, and load-balancing functionality. You can use this tool with vSphere / vCenter alone or in conjunction with vCD. It can also be used with VMware View to deploy and protect a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM)
SRM provides the ability to quickly recover from site-level disasters (such as earthquakes and fires), resuming operations at a secondary facility. It can also do this as part of a datacenter migration and/or consolidation initiative. It can use the native replication capabilities built into vSphere5 to replicate at the VM level, or it can replicate at the storage-array level, utilizing the native capabilities of the array to replicate LUNs. It automates both failover and failback, with a complete history of actual failovers as well as a list of non-disruptive trial failovers, proving that the system works, without interrupting production during the tests, making frequent tests possible.
vFabric Application Director
This tool is aimed at providing the basis for Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) infrastructures by providing a simple, easy to use interface to link parts of an application together for deployment purposes in conjunction with self service provisioning by developers. Scripts (including those based on PowerShell and Perl) can be integrated as well to make deployment simple and repeatable. While optimized for the vFabric suite of products, it supports any app (including both prepackaged apps [such as any Microsoft application] and custom apps built in .NET, Java, etc. on any cloud or combination of clouds, including Amazon’s E2C, making cloud computing without regard to virtualization platform much easier.
vCloud Automation Center
This tool is designed to quickly provision physical and/or virtual infrastructures across hypervisors (including vSphere, Hyper-V, and Xen Server) and clouds, whether or not they are based on VMware technologies (including Amazon’s E2C and Microsoft’s Azure), as well as physical servers. It can be used to deploy desktops as well as servers, unlike many other tools that are primarily focused on servers. It can be used to deploy IaaS, PaaS, and/or DaaS (Database-as-a-Service) cloud platforms. The automation capabilities are designed to span tools and technologies to make management and deployment as simple as possible. It is designed with policies in mind to meet business and user requirements and corporate governance needs.
There are three editions of the vCloud Suite: Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise. All include vSphere, vCD, vCloud Connector, and vCloud Networking and Security. Advanced adds vCOPS Advanced, and Enterprise upgrades vCOPS to Enterprise and adds the remaining products listed above.
Reproduced from Global Knowledge White Paper: vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS): What it is and why you should use it
Related Courses
VMware vCenter Operations Manager: Analyze and Predict [V5.0]