VMware vCenter Operations
Management Suite
Product Evaluation Center

Overview

Welcome to the VMware vCenter™ Operations Management Suite™ Evaluation Center!

vCenter Operations Management Suite simplifies and automates operations management of your virtual and cloud infrastructure with an analytics-based, integrated approach.

We have organized the Evaluation Center in Beginner, Advanced and Expert levels to help you quickly get a sense of how vCenter Operations Management Suite can help you manage your environment as well as explore some of the more advanced capabilities for performance, capacity and configuration management, depending on your time and interest.

• Beginner: Get insights into the workload and health of your vSphere infrastructure.
• Advanced: Discover application dependencies, capacity optimization and vSphere hardening opportunities
• Expert: Proactively manage Microsoft and Oracle application performance, change events and cost metering reports.

Each section includes installation videos and use cases to help you get started. As you familiarize yourself with the key capabilities, we recommend that you complete one level before moving on to the next level in the suite.

Thank you for your interest. We hope you'll enjoy evaluating the vCenter Operations Management Suite.

Sincerely,
The VMware vCenter Operations Team

Beginner Level

In this entry-level step of the vCenter Operations Management Suite evaluation, you will get insights into the workload and health of your vSphere infrastructure.

You need to install the following component: vCenter Operations Manager.

There are three use cases in this section:

• vSphere Monitoring
• Operations Dashboard
• Root Cause Analysis

What Will You Need?

vCenter Operations Manager Foundation

vCenter Operations Manager is the core component of the vCenter Operations Management Suite. It provides the operations dashboards, performance and capacity optimization capabilities.

Expected Time: 15 - 30 minutes*

Key Component: vCenter Operations Manager

Use Cases

vSphere Monitoring

Get visibility into your vSphere infrastructure. Monitor health and performance of your virtual environment using self-learning Performance Analytics.

Operations Dashboard

Understand environmental health, risk and efficiency using patented analytics and an integrated approach to performance, capacity and configuration management.

Root Cause Analysis

Receive pro-active smart alerts related to the health of your environment. Quickly drill down to identity potential problems.

*Disclaimer: This is an estimate. The actual time may change based on pre-requisite, environment size, and complexity of IT infrastructure. In addition, vCenter Operations needs sufficient time to collect metrics data and generate corresponding analytics.

Advanced Level

In this Advanced level of the vCenter Operations Management Suite evaluation, you will learn how to discover application dependencies, and optimize the capacity of your vSphere resources.

You need to install the following components:

• vCenter Infrastructure Navigator
• vCenter Operations Manager

There are three use cases in this section:

• Application Discovery and Mapping
• Custom Operations Groups
• Capacity Optimization

What Will You Need?

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

Automatically discover application services, visualize relationships and map dependencies of applications on virtualized compute, storage and network resources.

Expected Time: 15 - 30 min*

Key Component: vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

Use Cases

Application Discovery and Mapping

Enable application-aware management of infrastructure and operations. Automatically discover application services, visualize relationships and map dependencies of applications.

Custom Operations Groups

Creating Intelligent Operations Groups based on user defined criteria. Groups can be based on line of business applications, department or location specific resources.

Capacity Optimization

Analyze capacity shortfall issues in your environment, identify opportunities to optimize capacity and remediate capacity issues using automated workflows.

*Disclaimer: This is an estimate. The actual time may change based on pre-requisite, environment size, and complexity of IT infrastructure. In addition, vCenter Operations needs sufficient time to collect metrics data and generate corresponding analytics.

Expert Level

In this Expert level of the vCenter Operations Management Suite evaluation, you will learn how to monitor the performance of virtualized Microsoft and Oracle applications, and create cost metering reports.

You need to install the following components:

• vCenter Hyperic
• vCenter Chargeback Manager

There are three use cases in this section:

• Application Monitoring and Dashboard
• Cost Metering with Chargeback Manager
• vSphere Hardening Guidelines Checker

What Will You Need?

vCenter Hyperic

vCenter Hyperic monitors physical hardware resources, operating systems, middleware and applications. Because vCenter Hyperic is tightly integrated with vCenter Operations Manager, you can manage both virtual and physical infrastructure and business critical applications with a single suite.

Expected Time: 1 - 2 hours*

Key Component: vCenter Hyperic

vCenter Chargeback Manager

vCenter Chargeback Manager enables accurate cost measurement, analysis and reporting of virtual machines, providing visibility into the actual cost of the virtual infrastructure required to support business services.

Expected Time: 1 - 2 hours*

Key Component: vCenter Chargeback Manager

Use Cases

Application Monitoring and Dashboard

Monitor applications using vCenter Hyperic and build custom dashboards. Find, fix and prevent performance problems in multi-tier enterprise applications.

Expected Time: 4 - 8 hours*

Key Component: vCenter Hyperic

Cost Metering with Chargeback Manager

Enable business unit owners to obtain cost transparency and yield greater accountability. Drive better utilization of resources with more accurate visibility into the true costs of virtual infrastructure.

Expected Time: 4 - 8 hours*

Key Component: vCenter Chargeback Manager

vSphere Hardening Guidelines Checker

Compliance Checkers are being provided in lieu of vCenter Configuration Manager. Compliance Checkers are free, downloadable utilities to manage configuration compliance and demonstrate a small part of vCenter Configuration Manager's capabilities.

Expected Time: 15 - 30 Minutes*

Key Component: vCenter Configuration Manager

Download: VMware Compliance Checkers

*Disclaimer: This is an estimate. The actual time may change based on pre-requisite, environment size, and complexity of IT infrastructure. In addition, vCenter Operations needs sufficient time to collect metrics data and generate corresponding analytics.

How to Buy

The rich capabilities of VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite are packaged into editions and licensing options to fit the needs of your organization.

Choose Your License Model

The VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite is available with two license models to fit your needs:

Per Processor with Unlimited VMs

For virtual environments with high consolidation ratios or if you want a simple, per processor licensing model, consider purchasing vCenter Operations as part of the VMware vCloud Suite.

Per Virtual Machine or Physical Server

For virtual environments with low consolidation ratios or environments with a mix of virtual and physical servers, the vCenter Operations Management Suite is also available a la carte in 25-VM or OS instance license packs.

Choose Your Edition

The licensing costs may be lower when vCenter Operations is purchased with per processor licensing as part of the VMware vCloud Suite.