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edgrigson
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Can you partially licence vCOPS?

As per this VMware communities post in the CapacityIQ forum, is it possible to partially licence vCOPS? We have roughly 800 VMs but of those around 550 are for test and dev and we're less interested in monitoring them.

Does anyone know how this works, if at all? Can we licence certain hosts, clusters etc?

thanks,

Ed.

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vmroyale
Immortal
Immortal

Hello.

The workaround for the moment seems to be buying the 25-pack licenses you need and then restrict access to certain resources with the user accounts that vCenter Operations uses.  You need to be very careful in how you set this up though, as you don't want an incomplete picture of what is going on.  I had a site with one vCenter server that has two clusters.  I restricted permissions to one of the clusters, as to avoid using licenses there.  You wouldn't want to restrict access to certain hosts in a cluster, again as this approach would limit you from seeing the full picture of what is going on.

Good Luck!

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
edgrigson
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for that Brian. Is that's the official supported answer from VMware or just a usable workaround? I believe we've got a conference call lined up with VMware around vCOPS so I can always put the question to them direct as well.

Regards,

Ed.

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vmroyale
Immortal
Immortal

Oh it definitely falls under the "usable workaround" and is based off of some other discussions in this forum and my personal experience.  I don't think there is an official answer, like a KB article or other, from VMware on this.

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Yes, this is the officially supported way to maintain license compliance.   It is best to set you restrictions at the highest level possible within your virtual center. As Brian said, a single cluster or datacenter should be used to control access.   If you try to controll access lower in the hierarchy, your results may not be accurate.

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tlyczko
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

If I have 25 licenses and 37 VMs in ONE datacenter with 3-4 hosts, how would I restrict which VMs are or are not monitored by vCOPs??

Thank you, Tom

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

What VMs are included are dependent on the authoization of the user used to perform the collection.  The easiest (and supported way) to do this is to create a user in VC that can see (view, read-only is good enough) only the VMs that you want to include using vCenter authorization, and use that user as the "Collection" user within the product.

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CMCC
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

"to create a user in VC that can see (view, read-only is good enough)  only the VMs that you want to include using vCenter authorization, and  use that user as the "Collection" user"

So, if I see only the VMs I licensed, I still get the completed info about my cluster and hosts?

I've found this kb either http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1036195&sl...

But I'm afraid of loosing the completed info

Celia.-
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critical3rr0r
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Give read only access at the top level (vCenter server) and restrict access at lower levels. As thearticle says you must be careful not to remove to much.

In our environment we have 1 cluster under each datacenter that contains VMs we do not want to monitor. I can either add my collector account as read only at each level and not propagate excluding the clusters I do not want to monitor or create an explicit "no access" permission for that user on that cluster (explicit permissions at lower levels trump). Basically, try and work your way down ... not up.

If your VMs and Templates views are not organized it can become granular and cumbersome to manage.

Also, not that I recommend it, keep in mind that if you are under licensed vCops will not stop functioning. It simply places a very annoying wall paper on all your screens / views reminding you of the fact. vCenter will also generate license alerts at the rate of 1 per hour per vCenter server to remind you that you are not compliant as well but all functionality continues.

"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be."
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