vROPS vs vCOPS

[FJ1200]

Morning All

Having failed my first pass at the VCP 5 last week  - thb I didn't really expect to pass but was disappointed nonetheless - I'm rebuilding my lab to include the missing knowledge areas, mainly vCOPS.  I've used vROPS briefly, is there a huge difference between them for lab and learning  purposes?  vCOPS takes a huge amount of system resources being a 2-vm vApp, but I have the vROPS appliance running happily.

I have an old Ebay Dell server (a bit loud) that I'm planning on using.  It has 32GB RAM and 3 x 1TB 7200rpm Seagate Baracudas just to cope with vCOPS, but my primary lab runs under Workstation 11 on my Lenovo W540 with i7 and 32GB.  FWIW the whole lab runs off a Crucial M4 USB 3.0 500GB SSD  with little to no loss of performance.  However with a 900GB storage requirement and 16GB memory just to run vCOPS, I'm a bit resource-starved!  after all I have the overheads of the OS, Workstation 11, browser et al.  Thinking of upping the memory on the server to 64GB to help it along.  I have tried loading it into WS11 but it fails every time.

I have a VMUG Advantage subscription so have a long-term lab to learn with.

Currently lab consists of:

• 2 x ESXi 5.5 hosts - 2 x XP vms on each.
• vCenter 5.5 Appliance
• OpenFiler with iSCSI and NFS storage
• W2008 R1 DC
• vMA
• vROPS Appliance

Whole thing takes 19.8GB RAM and at idle 4%-5% laptop CPU and a big chunk of that is Firefox.

To be implimented:

1 x ESXi 4.1 / 5.0 host - compatibility testing - questions on it in the exam

[RyanH84]

Hi,

Unlucky on failing the VCP, it kinda sucks but you'll be more ready next time!Your home lab looks good in terms of hardware and being able to simulate examples for study.

vCOPS and vROPS are quite similar in my eyes in terms of usability, features are obviously different and there are some fundamental changes in it's architecture and the way it is deployed. As I'm sure you know, vCOPS became vROPS in version 6. The main difference in my eyes is that is is now deployed as a single node (basic) and not as two seperate UI/Analytics VM's in a vAPP. It will consume a fair amount of system resource, but perhaps only run it for testing the sections in the blueprint and get the feel of the product. Your lab isn't huge so it shouldn't struggle too much with resources, it's not like you are monitoring an enterprise infrastructure with it!

I think if you are worried about vCOPS, make sure you are comfortable with section 7.3 of the VCP5.5 blueprint. ‌ Ensure you can tick the boxes off on all of those sections. The 5.5 blueprint mentions vCOPS so make sure you are learning a version that is 5.x!

Happy  to help further if you need?