Intro

As you may have found the existing official documentation on vROPS Remote collectors is pretty thin. As I was involved in a project to get this all going in a Enterprise setting I thought I would share some documentation with you.

First of all here is the official doco: http://pubs.vmware.com/vrealizeoperationsmanager-6/index.jsp#com.vmware.vcom.core.doc/GUID-83164C8C-45FA-41C2-B4E0-F0BE86CF4B34.html

And here is a good post about some questions you may have: http://virtsanity.com/2015/05/vrealize-operations-manager-6-remote-collector-information/

If you have not worked with vROPS 6 yet there is a good book I would recommend: https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/mastering-vcenter-operations-manager

Architecture background

The deployment we are looking at is a vROPS 6.0.2 with vRIN 5.8.4 (vRealize Infrastructure Navigator formally vCenter Infrastructure Navigator, VIN) and with SRM integration of vRIN.

The idea is to have a central vROPS cluster and then use remote collectors to get data from other vCenters that are disbursed throughout the word.

The main site consists of an vROPS Master, a replica and a Data node. vROPS is connected to the local vCenter (Protected site) as well as to the VRIN that is paired with the same vCenter. vRIN is configured to collect information form the VMs as well as from SRM.

Each remote site has a remote collector that is paired with the remote vCenter (Protected Site) as well as the vRIN instance. vRIN is configured to collect information form the VMs as well as from SRM.

vCOPS/vRIN and SRM

Using vROPS and SRM together is something that needs to be discussed. Some people have the idea that they like to monitor the VMs that fail over from the protected vCenter to the recovery vCenter and that it all then magically works. This is not the case.

Each VM (or actually every object) in vCenter has its unique moref (managed object reference) and even if a VM has the same name in the Protected vCenter as in the Recovery vCenter it’s a different object. When SRM protects a VM it will create a placeholder VM on the recovery site. This placeholder VM is basically only the VMX file and has no VMDKs attached to it. SRM will furnish the VMs with VMDKs at the time of recovery.

So if you are connection a vROPS instance to the Proetced and the Recovery site, VROPS will see two different VMs (each with the same name). One will be active monitored and the other one is powered off. However you just wasted a vROPS VM licence for an essentially dead VM. The placeholder VM on the protected site shouldn’t be on, if it is...you are in a DR scenario.

So what would be the benefit of an vROPS in DR?

The only thing would be the ability to use all the data that is collected from the point on that the placeholder VM is started. You could use the troubleshooting options as well as some of the views etc. But all forecasts will be unusable. Please remember that vROPs needs at least 3 weeks of data collection to make accurate future predictions.

In my personal opinion vROPS in DR is just a waste of licensing and space. I can not see any real benefits. Please feel free to correct me.

VRIN - SRM integration

For VRIN to be integrated in SRM the user must have permission on the PAIRED SRM instance. Meaning the users needs to have permissions on vCenter as well as on the SRM instance that this vCenter is paired with. As for the role…that’s a bit tricky there isn’t really any great doco about it I successfully used for vCenter the read rights plus Virtual machine | Interaction | Console interaction | Guest operating system management by VIX API. For SRM I haven’t really tested it that much and used the Admin role…properly there is a better solution.

Open Ports

The following figures show all the Network ports that need to be in place for vROPS & vRIN in regards to the above scenario.

Deployment

The are heaps of posts about how to deploy and configure vROPS and vRIN so I will not cover this.

We will focus on deploying and configuring the remote collectors.

Deploy VROPS Remote collector

• Deploy the vROPS OVA using vSphere Web Client (The Fat client can be used, but you shouldn’t)
• Fill out the deployment tool as usual
• Choose the Remote Collector (Standard or Large) for deployment
• Choose TimeZone where the remote collector is placed
• Deploy and power on the VM
• Wait for VM to be ready (the VM Console shows the IP etc)

Adding Remote collector to Cluster

• Open Web Browser and connect to IP or FQDN of the Remote collector
• Click on Expand Existing Installation
• Enter the nodes name (maybe create a Naming Standard!)
• Select Remote Collector
• Enter the FQDN of master node and click on Validate
• Accept The Certificate
• Enter the vROPS Admin password
• Wait until the config is done…THIS may take some time (10 minutes plus).
• Click on “finish adding Nodes” the Remote collector should now show Online and poweredOn
  You can do that step also thought the /admin interface on the Master node.
• Logout

Add remote sources to Solutions

• Login to the vROPS UI
• Go to Solutions and mark VMware vSphere then click on the Gears Icon (configure)
• Mark vCenter Adapter and then select the green + to add a new instance
• Give it a Display name and description. Make sure that you have a good Naming Standard as its important that you can identify which instance is connected to what using which remote collector.
• Enter the FDQN of the of the vCenter as: https://[vCenter FQDN]/sdk
• We need to select how we connect to this instance. Expand Advanced settings and select the remote collector that you want to use to connect to this instance of vCenter.
• You may want to create new Credential for this connection
• Click on Test.  if that works click on save Settings
• Accept the SSL certs
• Repeat the same for the Python Adapter (also using the remote collector in the advanced settings)
• Repeat the above for the vRealize Infrastructure Navigator Solution (also using the remote collector in the advanced settings)