Virtual SAN + vRealize Operations = Effective Storage Management (Part 1)

It's no more a secret that Software Defined Storage is the way forward to craft a true Software Defined Datacenter. With the power of SPBM with VSAN and vVOLs, we can practically take away all the headaches of planning and management of storage blocks.

But once we have created a SDS layer and hit the Day 2 operation stage, there are a lot many things we may want to know about the underlying SDS layer.

The vSphere Web client has some really cool and simplified widgets showcasing data/metrics around capacity utilization and performance, but is kind off limited to that.

In some of my discussions customers has raised queries about granular monitoring of Virtual SAN subcomponents like knowing about disk group level utilization, disk (SSD/Mechanical) level utilization, granular Disk metrics etc.

In this post i would like to spend some time on how to achieve granular monitoring of Virtual SAN using vRealize Operations Manager.


VMware Virtual SAN team along with vRealize Operations team jointly developed the vRealize Operations Management Pack for Storage Devices (MPSD) available at 
Solution Exchange (here). 

The Management Pack provides us with 

• Pre-defined dashboards that allow you to track data path from VM to VSAN, and notify any problem in the path. 
• It also shows heat-maps, widgets, metrics for all the sub-components comprising your VSAN environment.

Basically it helps unveil what's happening "Under the Hood".

So without further ado, let me share steps to integrate MPSD with vRealize Operations Management.
You would be surprised to see how radically simple it is.

Its a good idea to check interoperability before we deploy it.

Once you've download the Management Pack (.pak file), Launch the vRealize Operation Manager page. In the left pane of vRealize Operation Manager, Click the Administration icon and click Solutions

On the Right pane, Click the (+) sign and launch the Wizard to upload the Management Pack

Browse to the location of Management Pack for Storage Device and proceed with Upload.
After the upload, Accept the EULA and Proceed for the Install.

Post the Installation, you should see the new Adapter added under the Solution section.

Highlight the Management Pack for Storage Devices and click the Configure button as shown below.

Provide vCenter Credentials for the adapter to connect to the vCenter server and capture the relevant Data points.


Once configured you should wait for it to start "Collecting Data".

As an end result you should see additional Dashboards added to the Home View. 

Given enough time for these Dashboards to populate, it will start reflecting some very handy details about our VM to VSAN configuration. It also provides with FC/iSCSI and NFS mounted Datastore details with metrics from SAN switches and HBA cards.

for usage of these Dashboard views, please see...
Virtual SAN + vRealize Operations = Effective Storage Management (Part 2)