How do I recreate a missing vCOps vApp?

[hennish]

Hi. I have two customers that somehow have deleted their vCOps vApps from vCenter Server. I assume this is not supported, and I suspect that this will lead to some kind of problems with getting the IP settings from the IP Pool and/or the vApp metadata. They are both running vCOps 5.8.

One of the customers say they aren't having any problems at all, but I'm not sure they have restarted their vCOps VMs since removing the vApp.

The other customer I'm at right now, and their UI VM seems to be having problems starting up properly. It seems to find the Analytics VM on port 22, but then gets stuck on repeatedly trying "Waiting for the service to come up" for the vcopsAdminService.

My questions are:

1. Is it supported to run the UI VM and Analytics VM outside of their original vApp?

2. How would I be able to recreate the vApp if the customer has deleted it?

All I can think of is doing a new installation of vCOps, setting all the parameters, and then deleting those VMs and moving in my old UI VM and Analytics VM in instead. Has anyone tried this, and if so, do I need to change the VM names to prevent conflicts and such?

Thanks in advance!

[gradinka]

vc ops will work OK "outside" the original vApp.

there's some built-in redundancy on that as well as "repair" functionality (vcops-admin repair) so that the VMs can find each other in case their IPs got changed.

here's a KB on that: VMware KB: Managing a VMware vCenter Operations Manager 5.x deployment where the vApp is broken

Something that's worth considering is the startup/shutdown of the product, as it's recommended to follow the default order (Analytics first)http://www.bussink.ch/?p=690

That can be handled by creating a new vApp - http://www.bussink.ch/?p=690

[grasshopper]

Also check out VMware KB2013695 which shows a valid method that may have been used by the technicians deploying this to break the vApp intentionally.

do I need to change the VM names to prevent conflicts and such?

I don't think the DisplayNames matter whatsoever.  The GOS's inside each VM participating in the solution dynamically set their FQDN / hostname using DNS lookup.  For this reason I always ensure that forward and reverse lookups are clean before deploying or renaming them.  I typically use "ui" somewhere in the DNS name for the user interface, and "ai" for the analytics interface (a bit of a stretch since the latter is not an interface, but it keeps the names consistent).

PS -  If they have LogInsight 1.5, add in the free ContentPack by following KB2064455.

[garymboy]

While vC Ops will run outside of the vApp container it is best to keep it intact.  You can use VMware KB: Moving a VMware vCenter Operations Manager vApp from one cluster to another to help recreate the vApp if it no longer exists.