License vCenter Operations
vCenter Operations Manager looks to vCenter
to supply a license. Therefore, the next procedure is to ensure a
license key is installed in vCenter so that when you register vCenter
Operations to the vCenter Server, it is properly enabled. To add a
vCenter Operations License to vCenter, complete the following steps:
1. From the vSphere client, connect to vCenter.
2. From Home, select Licensing under the Administration section.
3. Select Manage
vSphere Licenses (Note: It is the blue “Manage vSphere Licenses”
hyperlink on the right of the screen to the left of the Refresh and
Export links), as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9. Select Manage vSphere Licenses.
4. Enter the license key in the Enter new vSphere License Keys section and provide a label such as vOPs. Click Next.
5. Under Assign Licenses, click the Solutions tab and select Show All (see Figure 10). Select your vCenter Operations, select the license key, and click Next.
Figure 10. Apply Licenses.
6. If you want to remove any license keys, do so; otherwise, click Next and Finish on the confirmation page to apply your license changes.
After it is installed, configured, and
licensed, you can enable the plug-in to view the components of vCenter
operations. To do this within your vSphere Client, select Plug-ins and Manage Plug-ins and enable the vCenter Operations Manager (see Figure 11).
Figure 11. Install the plug-in.
To access vCenter Operations Manager, open your vSphere client, and from the Home tab, click vCenter Operations
under the Solutions and Applications pane. You can also access vCenter
Operations by browsing directly to the IP of the UI appliance, which
can be quicker. It is important to realize that there is a relationship
between the Hosts and Clusters tree view on the left and the display
panels on the right. Certain objects in the tree on the left don’t
display certain properties because they are not relevant to what you
have selected. For example, virtual machines that are gray in color are
typically not powered on. To get a high-level view of general health,
select your datacenter on the left and ensure the dashboard is visible
on the right (see Figure 12).
Figure 12. Select your datacenter and view your dashboard on the right.
Notice that the datacenter has three high-level ratings more commonly referred to as badges
in vCenter Operations. Each of these major badges is made up of a
combination of minor badges to help you get a good picture of the
environment. In general, Health is largely made up of real-time
metrics, Risk looks at capacity and how long over a period of time the
VMs may be stressed or struggling for resources, and Efficiency looks
at how well you are currently using the environment. Efficiency
includes a reference for optimal configurations such as your host-to-VM
ratio or CPU-to-VM ratio.
The Health badge is a combination of
Workload, Anomalies, and Faults. Workload measures the four pillars of
performance in virtual infrastructure: CPU, Memory, Disk I/O, and
Network I/O (see Figure 13). A high workload number indicates resources that are heavily utilized.
Figure 13. The Workload badge.
