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TheVMinator
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Should I use SuperMetric or a Custom View

I need to look at some aggregated features across resources such as total of IOPs of all VMs in a vCenter, and average storage latency of all VMs in a vCenter.  What are the pros and cons of using a custom View vs a supermetric to do this?  Is there a 3rd way to do it (using version 6.4)?

(What is the difference between posting a vROps question here in the developer forums vs. the normal communities)?

Thanks!

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ooajala
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Let me try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge.

A SuperMetric will introduce metrics that are not usually out of the box, you can generate some aggregated metrics that can be used to correlate with other metrics.

A custom group is useful when trying to a custom list to help create dashboards, views and reports. For example, you probably don't need to use a Custom Group for all VMs in your vCenter, but you might want one for maybe all VMs that are used in the Accounting department. Version 6.4 does not really offer a new way of creating a custom group or supermetrics. In summary, Custom groups and super metrics are different in the way you think about it, their functions are entirely different.

Generally, what you would want to do is probably create a super metric comprising of OOB metrics to calculate IOPs and aggregate storage latency of all VMs. Then, you can just create a View out of it which you can then generate a dashboard or a report from.

Posting a vROps question here would give you much more educated quick responses to your questions vs. the normal communities that are not streamlined to particular product.

I hope this helps you.

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*** If you like my response, please click "Like" below, if you think I answered your question to the best of my abilities, please mark post as Correct Answer ***

3x vROps Environments implemented across my organization. VDI vROPs 8.4 ::: Epic vROPs 8.4 ::: Shared vROPs 7.0
vROPs Adapters in use: EpicCare & Horizon View Adapter 2.1

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ooajala
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Let me try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge.

A SuperMetric will introduce metrics that are not usually out of the box, you can generate some aggregated metrics that can be used to correlate with other metrics.

A custom group is useful when trying to a custom list to help create dashboards, views and reports. For example, you probably don't need to use a Custom Group for all VMs in your vCenter, but you might want one for maybe all VMs that are used in the Accounting department. Version 6.4 does not really offer a new way of creating a custom group or supermetrics. In summary, Custom groups and super metrics are different in the way you think about it, their functions are entirely different.

Generally, what you would want to do is probably create a super metric comprising of OOB metrics to calculate IOPs and aggregate storage latency of all VMs. Then, you can just create a View out of it which you can then generate a dashboard or a report from.

Posting a vROps question here would give you much more educated quick responses to your questions vs. the normal communities that are not streamlined to particular product.

I hope this helps you.

--
*** If you like my response, please click "Like" below, if you think I answered your question to the best of my abilities, please mark post as Correct Answer ***

3x vROps Environments implemented across my organization. VDI vROPs 8.4 ::: Epic vROPs 8.4 ::: Shared vROPs 7.0
vROPs Adapters in use: EpicCare & Horizon View Adapter 2.1
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carvaled
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Use the API and crunch the data in Excel, that's my preferred method of doing these kinds of things as its faster to manipulate the data.

Once you have the data the way you want in Excel (formula) then try to replicate this in vRops...

My blog had a post called stats on steroids with a powershell script to get out the metrics from the API.

Cheers

sxnxr
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A great example on the difference between a custom view and a super metric is.

I create a custom view that has a list of all my Vms and the memory usage. The view will let me select the units to report in ( KB, MB, TB) which is great but when i create a dashboard and put in an object list that shows me all my VMs ( I may want to use this as a source to another widget to show VM specific data and you cant use a view as an input to another widget) i can add in the same memory metric as in the view to the object list to save space on the dashboard but i cant select the units to report in and it defaults to KB. This is where a super metric comes in. I can create a SM to convert the KB memory to MB or TB as needed. Once this super metric is created i can the use it in the vm specific data or anywhere else i need to.

here is an example of the SM

SM memory.png

Oulyanov
VMware Employee
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Basically, it's as follow:

if you need to use calculated metric for further calculation (like custom capacity management) - SM is the way to go,

If you need just to have report where you are looking for simple operations on metrics - view is you choice

One of big advantages of views is that you can apply transformation to historical data, SM will be effective from the time of enabling in policy only. You can save historical graph as screenshot from the SM creation wizard, but nothing else

Regards, Oleg

TheVMinator
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Great input - thanks again!

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