Operations management architecture overview

Operation management flows

The following diagram shows the key interaction and integration of the operations management tools.

The IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions operations management consists of the following steps:

• Monitoring - VMware Aria® Operations™ Manager tracks and analyzes the operation of multiple objects in the IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions architecture by using analytic algorithms. These algorithms help VMware Aria Operations learn and predict the behavior of these objects. System administrators access this information by using views, reports, and dashboards.

  When an issue occurs in the environment VMware Aria Operations generates alerts of three impact types:

  • Health alerts - indicate issues that affect the health of the environment and require immediate attention.
  • Risk alerts - indicate issues that are not immediate threats but need to be addressed soon.
  • Efficiency alerts - information to improve performance or reclaim resources.

  VMware Aria Operations Alerts are events that occur on the monitored objects when data analysis indicates deviations from normal metric values, or when an issue occurs with one of the monitored components. VMware Aria Operations alerts are assigned to one of these categories:

  • Critical - must be acted upon immediately.
  • Immediate - must be acted on as soon as possible.
  • Warning - must be checked when time allows.

• Logging - VMware Aria Operations™ for Logs provides real-time log management and log analysis with machine learning-based intelligent grouping, high performance searching, and troubleshooting across the physical and virtual objects in the IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions architecture. VMware Aria Operations for Logs collects data from vSphere hosts by using the syslog protocol. It also collects events, tasks, and alarm data for other VMware products, like vCenter Server. It integrates with VMware Aria Operations to send notification events and enable launch-in-context. Other objects in the IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions architecture that can send syslog data are pointed to VMware Aria Operations for Logs. Optionally, the client can configure any system that can send syslog data to forward this data to VMware Aria Operations for Logs.

• Network Health - VMware Aria Operations™ for Networks is an analytics tool that is focused on proactively enabling:

  • Network health and performance monitoring.
  • End-to-end troubleshooting.
  • 360° visibility and analytics.
  • Micro-segmentation-based compliance management.

• Patching and Upgrading - vSphere Update Manager (VUM) provides centralized, automated patch and version management for VMware vSphere hosts and virtual machines (VMs) (not OS and apps).

Operation management networking

The following diagram shows the network overview.

• A tooling private portable subnet is provisioned to provide IBM Cloud IP address space that is used for the initial provisioning of the tooling VMs. After provisioning, it becomes the responsibility of the client to manage the IP address space for scale-out of the tooling. VMs on this subnet require access to the components hosted on the Management and Internal Management subnets.
• Tooling VXLAN subnet is used to provide BYOIP IP address space that is used for the initial provisioning of the tooling VMs but then becomes the responsibility of the client to manage the IP address space for scale-out of the tooling. VMs on this subnet require access to the components hosted on the Overlay subnets. The ESG provides NAT between the IBM Cloud and BYOIP address spaces.
• The VMware Aria Operations Remote Collectors are deployed by the client if they would like to take advantage of the VMware Aria Operations to monitor their compute VMs.
• The VMware Aria Operations for Logs Forwarders relay log messages from overlay components to the VMware Aria Operations for Logs cluster. The client can also configure their compute VMs to use these forwarders, if required.
• VMware Update Manager (VUM) provides updating of vSphere hosts and VM hardware and tools. VUM uses the Proxy to gain access to the internet repositories.

VMware Aria Operations collects data from objects in the environment. Each piece of data that is collected is called a metric observation or value. VMware Aria Operations uses the vCenter adapter to collect raw metrics from vCenter. In addition to the metrics it collects, VMware Aria Operations calculates capacity metrics, badge metrics, and metrics to monitor the health of your system. Alert definitions are a combination of symptoms and recommendations that identify problem areas and generate alerts on which you act for those areas.

Monitored components

System requirements

The design uses the following quantity and size of appliances:

Software versions