Dell EMC VxRail Management Pack for vROps

The VxRail Management Pack for vROps has been released. This post is a quick overview of what this provides and how to install it.

This is a zero-cost Management Pack, or ‘Free’ in old-speak, which supports vROps (v7.5, v8.0) Advanced or Enterprise with all VxRail systems from 4.5.300 onwards and all VxRail 4.7 systems.

Update 29/09/2020 – Mgmt Pack v1.1 is released

This post is based on vROps v7.5 and VxRail v4.7.300, using VxRail MP v1.0

The Management Pack consists of an adapter that collects 65 distinct VxRail events, analytics logic specific to VxRail, and three custom dashboards. These VxRail events are translated into VxRail alerts on vRealize Operations to help customers understand health issues and get recommended courses of resolution. (Description taken from Release Notes)

Update: Mgmt Pack v1.1 contains 205 Alert Definitions, as shown below:

more details on VxRail Alerting here

Once installed, the VxRail Management Pack provides the following VxRail Dashboards:

• VxRail Capacity Overview
• VxRail Operations Overview
• Troubleshoot VxRail

… and the following VxRail Reports:

• VxRail Capacity Summary Report
• VxRail Capacity Report
• VxRail Executive Summary Report
• VxRail Utilization Report
• VxRail Utilization Summary Report

Some screenshots to give you an idea of how these VxRail Dashboards and Reports look:

Dashboard – VxRail Capacity Overview

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Dashboard – VxRail Operations Overview

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Dashboard – Troubleshoot VxRail

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VxRail Reports

More information about the VxRail Reports can be found here.

For a complete list of all items/content provided by the VxRail Management Pack, such as Alert Definitions, Views, Recommendations, etc, go to Administration > Solutions > Configuration > VxRail Management Pack > Content as shown below:

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Installation of VxRail Mgmt Pack in vROps

Installation and configuration of the VxRail Management Pack is quite quick and straightforward.

First download the Mgmt Pack

• From VMware
• From DellEMC
• or easiest of all, from the VxRail Marketplace

VxRail Marketplace

… and copy it to a local in order to upload it to accessible from the vROps UI, for example in our lab https://vcf2vrops.cse.lab/ui/

Browse to Administration > Repository > Other Management Packs and click Add a Management Pack, as shown below

Add a Management Pack

Browse to and upload the .PAK file as shown below

Upload PAK file

Accept the EULA and proceed to Install, and when complete you will see the VxRail Management Pack installed, but not configured, so go ahead and click the blue Not Configured hyperlink

This brings you to the Adapter configuration panel, where details of the VxRail vCenter Server Name, FQDN/IP, Credentials should be entered. In this instance we used administrator@vsphere.local as our admin user

Enter the relevant details, click TEST CONNECTION, remediate if and as required, and once successful, click SAVE SETTINGS and CLOSE. This should then give us a fully configured adapter, as shown below. Give it a few mins for the Data Collection/Receiving to kick in properly.

For vROps v7.5, ensure that the vSphere and vSAN Management Packs are fully configured and operational for the VxRail.

For vROps v8.0, ensure that the vCenter Cloud Account is configured for the VxRail and that vSAN is enabled on the vCenter.

The VxRail Management Pack is now fully configured. All VxRail related dashboards, as shown earlier, can be located from the main Dashboards > All Dashboards drop-down menu. Recently accessed dashboards are subsequently display in the Navigation Panel on the left, as highlighted below:

And here’s a quick demo of how this looks in our test environment …

See the following for information on leveraging this VxRail Management Pack for custom VxRail Widgets and Dashboards:

• Custom VxRail Versions Widget for vROps
• Custom VCF on VxRail vROps Dashboard

And that’s that. I hope that helps.

Steve