Aggregating performance data from multiple sites

[TheVMinator]

I am running VCOPS enterprise 5.7.1 Enterprise on vSphere 5.1.  I have one vCenter with multiple datacenters representing different geographical locations. In each location I have multiple ESXi clusters.  Spread across these different clusters and sites I have 25 oracle databases on 25 VMs.  I want to look at all the data just for these 25 VMs and calculate their average performance characteristics.  Can I do this in VCOPs WITHOUT the custom UI?  Should I use a supermetric?  What is the best method for this?

Thanks!

[bouke]

You don't need custom UI for this (although you can create your own cool dashboard showing location, combined resources in one overview etc...). You can put your oracle VMs in a VM Folder in vCenter. This will be used by VCOPS as an folder as well. From there you have one overview on those Oracle VMs. Trust me, there is a lot to discover using just the vSphere UI. You'll get lists with health, workload, anomalies etc. Pretty basic, but powerful stuff.

[hank-ger]

Hi,

you can also create a "function" in the vCOPS View.

just click a the top of the page and create your own "function" / "folder". At this point you can also create a rule-set. For example: you will ad more oracle servers with a unique name these new server will also in these created "folder" / "function".

It is not necessary to create separate folders in your vCenter.

if you have questions . . let me know

[gradinka]

Or, you can create a group in the vsphere-ui and put your VMs there.

End result will be the same as if you've moved them under one folder in vCenter (like Bouke suggests)

The "group" object will be the one to look at. Not sure whether you'll get exactly what you want, but give it a try. In any case, custom-ui will give you more flexibility.

thanks,

Alexandar

[Alexander_Dimi1]

There are a couple of benefits of using groups the way gradinka suggests:

1. You can set a different policy to that groups.

2. You are not forced to change your existing vSphere infrastructure in any way.

Give it a try.

Thanks,

Alex D.

[TheVMinator]

In this case moving VMs around to different folders in vCenter Server is not possible every time I want to run a report.  Folder heirarchy in vCenter Server is created for a reason.  To change that requires change control requests.  Not only that, but administrators depend on having a predicatable placement of VMs within folders in vCenter Server.  So if I take 20 VMs in different clusters and different sites and datacenters, I cannot move them all into one folder, just so that I can run my VCOPS report and move them back again.  Suppose I want to get average performance statistics on all my SQL servers together, but they are spread in different places in vCenter, different sites, datacenters and clusters.  I can't move them into one folder, run a VCOPS report, and move them back again to their normal folder locations.  If I have to run 10 reports, I can't do this 10 times for every set of VMs.

I need a way in vCOPS to run reports on a set of like VMs across different clusters and datacenters, and give me average values for all my SQL servers, for all my Oracle Servers, for all my Exchange servers, etc.

So my question has to do with using the vSphere UI in vCOPS vs using the Custom UI.  If I'm using the Custom UI I'm assuming I would create a supermetric to accomplish this.  I would tag all of my SQL servers to be included in the supermetric, (even though they are in different clusters/datacenters) then I could start to look at their average performance characteristics.

Hank-Ger - thanks for suggestion on creating a function - would that give me all the functionality of a supermetric in the custom UI and would the same data and info be available or how would the two options differ if at all?

Gradinka - Would the creation of a "group" in the custom UI affect the existing display in the vCOPS vSphere UI?  Would the stats available on the VMs in the "group" be as extensive as those available using a supermetric in the custom UI?

Thanks all for your input

[hank-ger]

I think you will be able to get your custom reports for every function.

The best way I think you can do is to give these VMs a "TAG / FLAG" in the vcenter webclient. so you will be able to find every group of your exchange server / oracle db etc..

I cant answer you question abut the functionality or the difference of a supermetric vs. folder in the UI. I use Groups in the custom UI for my reports and the dashboards.