I'm planning a vROps deployment to cover 2 physical active/active data center locations. I cant decide between the 2 options below:
1) Single instance at DCA with a collector at DCB
Pro:
This would allow me to build application groups for apps that span the DC's.
Single point for everything.
Con:
If we lose DCA, then we have no monitoring.
2) Separate instances at each DC
Pro's / Con's opposite of above.
Each location has around 2 vCenters each and I need vROps to cover them all. I'm not planning to use the built in HA for reasons listed here and will rely on on vSphere HA and backup instead.
Is there anything i am missing here? are these really my only options?
For the minimal deployment in that scenario, you'd have minimally 1x remote collector at the remote site and possible 1x remote collector at the local site to offload the vCenter data collection from the analytics cluster. If monitoring load (objects/metrics) is very low, you can consider running those adapter instances on the analytics clusters.
On the active/active configuration, vR Ops doesn't have a solution other than vROps HA, which only protects against a single node failure. Further, you could consider using SRM to protect the vR Ops analytics clusters to recover at the secondary site.
That being the scenario, you consider doing a vR Ops solution A and vR Ops solution B, with essentially the solution mirrored and centralized at opposite sites (basically 2x deployments that are identical other than node placement).
Most customers will find that active/active simply isn't necessary. Many say they want active/active for an organization availability standard, but again this often isn't justified from an opex/capex perspective. Most don't consider it a BCA. If you do consider it a BCA, consider using SRM as per the above comment. If you consider it a BCA, but don't have SRM, consider the A/B scenario of the solutions.
Thanks Mark,
We don't consider vROps critical which is mainly why i'm not going to configure the HA nor do we have SRM as an option.
I'm leaning towards a deployment per site. The only downside I see it not being able to create the application groups for any application stack that has servers across sites. It could almost do with a "Linked Mode" for vROps. Is there any other options here?
Federations between vR Ops deployments does not exist today (v6.2.1).
If possible, I'd lean towards having a single vR Ops Analytics clusters with RCs at the remote cites. Besides having a single pane of glas for vR Ops, some products only integrate with a SINGLE vR Ops instance, namely vReaize Log Insight. So, you'd be creating a single Analytics cluster not just for the single POV, but also because of integration constraints around other products (unless you want to deploy those at every site as well, which would prob be overkill and difficult to manage).
I'd go for Option 1, based on the following input and limitations of v6.3
Hope that helps
e1
virtual-red-dot.info
You've convinced me... option 1 it is.
Now to find some usage stats for the expected cross DC data!
24 bytes per metrics from remote collectors to Analytics nodes, every 5min (5min is the collection interval).