First of all, thank you for the feedback on the first edition. You will see that this second edition goes above and beyond the feedback. It actually has more new content than the existing content, enabling us to cover the topic deeper and wider.
The strongest feedback Packt Publishing and I got was to make it more pleasant to read as infrastructure is a dry topic. The topics we cover in the book are complex in nature, and the book goes deep into operationalizing performance and capacity management.
Another common feedback was to give more examples on the dashboards. You want more practical solution that you can implement. You want the book to guide you in your journey to operationalize your IaaS platform.
These two feedback plus other feedback and goals made the publisher and me took a fresh look on the topic. You will find the 2nd edition more complete, yet easier to read.
In terms of ease of read, we have made the writing style more conversational. It should read less like a formal technical whitepaper and more like a spoken conversation among colleagues. We've also made the pictures clearer and added more diagrams to explain the topics better. We use more bullets and tables to improve the layout. We use shorter sentence, hence, we only use she instead of she/he in the book. It applies to both genders.
In terms of completeness, you will find that the topics are expanded significantly. For example, the 2nd edition has five chapters on dashboards, compared with just one chapter on the 1st edition. Chapter wise, the book now has 15 chapters instead of 8 in the 1st edition.
Content wise, the book is now distinctly split into three main parts. Each part happens to have five chapters each:
Part 1 provides the technical foundation of SDDC management. It aims to correct deep-rooted misunderstanding of knowledge that is considered basic. Terms such as VM and SDDC will be redefined, and we hope that you will gain new perspective. Part 1 is also written for VMware specialists who need to explain these topics to their peers, customers, or management.
Part 2 provides the actual solution that you can implement in your environment. We provide the reasons behind each dashboard, so you get the understanding on why it is required and what problem it solves.
Part 3 acts as a reference section. If you need to know the meaning behind a specific counter and how it relates to other counters, Part 3 has over 100 pages on this topic.
Chapter 1, VM – It Is Not What You Think!, aims to clear up the misunderstandings that customers have about virtualization. It explains why a VM is radically different from a physical server.
Chapter 2, Software-Defined Data Centers, takes the concept further and explains why a virtual data center is fundamentally different from a physical data center. You will see how it differs architecturally in almost all aspects.
Chapter 3, SDDC Management, covers the aspects of management that are affected with the new architecture.
Chapter 4, Performance Monitoring, takes the topic of the previous chapter deeper by discussing how performance management should be done in a virtual data center. It introduces a new paradigm that redefines the word Performance.
Chapter 5, Capacity Monitoring, complements Chapter 4 by explaining why capacity management needs to take into account performance before utilization. This chapter wraps up Part 1 of the book.
Chapter 6, Performance-Monitoring Dashboards, kicks off Part 2, where we cover the practical aspects of this book, as they show how sample solutions are implemented. We start by showing the steps to implement dashboards to monitor performance.
Chapter 7, Capacity-Monitoring Dashboards, takes the dashboards in Chapter 6 further by adding capacity monitoring requirement. You will see how they are closely related.
Chapter 8, Specific-Purpose Dashboards, complements those dashboards by covering specific use cases. They are often used by specific roles, such as network team, storage team, and senior management.
Chapter 9, Infrastructure Monitoring Using Blue Medora, takes the dashboards beyond VMware. It covers non-VMware components of your IaaS. Blue Medora is contributing their expertise here.
Chapter 10, Application Monitoring Using Blue Medora, completes our scope by going above the infrastructure layer. It covers commonly used applications in your VMware-based SDDC. This chapter also wraps up Part 2 of the book.
Chapter 11, SDDC Key Counters, sets the technical foundations of performance and capacity management by giving you a tour of the four infrastructure elements (CPU, RAM, network, and storage). It also maps these four elements into all the vSphere objects, so you know what is available at each level.
Chapter 12, CPU Counters, covers CPU counters in detail. It is the first of four chapters that cover the core infrastructure element (CPU, RAM, network, and storage). If you do not fully understand the various counters in vSphere and vRealize Operations, how they impact one another, and what values you consider healthy, then these four chapters are good for you. They dive deep into the counters, comparing the counters in vCenter and vRealize Operations. Knowing the counters is critical, as choosing the wrong counters or interpreting the values wrongly will lead to a wrong conclusion.
Chapter 13, Memory Counters, continues the deep dive by covering memory counters. It explains why memory is one of the most complex area to monitor and troubleshoot in SDDC.
Chapter 14, Storage Counters, continues the deep dive by covering storage counters. It explains the multiple layers of storage that occur as a result of virtualization. It also explains that distributed storage requires different monitoring approach.
Chapter 15, Network Counters, completes the deep dive by covering network counters and wraps up the book.
We assume that you have the products installed and configured. VMware vSphere, vRealize Operations, and Log Insight are the products used in this book. There are many blog articles and YouTube videos on design, installation, configuration, and product overview. Some of the bloggers, such as Sunny Dua, have many other materials, which will complete your learning. At a personal level and as a father of two young kids, I'm not keen on killing trees unless it's really necessary.
The book takes advantage of all relevant new features in the latest release. That means vSphere 6.0 Update 2, vRealize Operations 6.2, and Log Insight 3.3. As this is not a product book, almost all the content of the book can be implemented using earlier release. To assure you that you can do that, we've kept screenshots from older versions whenever possible.
The detailed steps of implementation will certainly vary if you are using the older release. For example, instead of using the View widget in vRealize Operations 6, you will have to use the Metric Graph and XML in vRealize Operations 5.8.
If the solution cannot be implemented with the previous release, we'd highlight it. For example, the data transformation feature in the View widget is hard to replicate in vRealize Operations 5.8.
This book is for VMware professionals. This can be a VMware administrator, architect, consultant, engineer, or technical support. You may be working for VMware customers, partners, or VMware itself. You may be an individual contributor or a technical leader.
This book is an intermediate-level book. It assumes that you have hands-on experience of vSphere, vRealize Operations, and Log Insight, and you are capable of performing some level of performance troubleshooting. You also have good overall knowledge of vCloud Suite, Virtual SAN, Horizon View, and NSX. Beyond VMware, you should also have intermediate knowledge of operating systems, storage, network, disaster recovery, and data center.
This book is also for IT professionals who deal with VMware professionals. As such, there is a wide range of roles, as virtualization and VMware cover many aspects of IT. Depending on your role, certain chapters will be more useful to you.
This book is a solution book, not a product book. It uses vRealize Operations and Log Insight to apply the solution. You can probably use other products to implement the dashboards.
Because it is not a product book, it does not cover all modules of vRealize Operations Suite. vCenter Infrastructure Navigator and VMware Configuration Manager are not covered. If you need a product book, Scott Norris and Christopher Slater have published one. There are also many blogs that cover installation and configuration.
The book focuses on the management of the SDDC. It does not cover the architecture. So no vCloud Suite design best practices are present in this book. It also does not cover all aspects of operation. For example, it does not cover process innovation, organizational structure, financial management, and audit. Specific to management, the book only focuses on the following most fundamental areas:
Performance
Capacity
This book does not cover other areas of management, such as configuration, compliance, and availability management.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: This includes the drive where the OS resides (the C:\ drive in Windows systems).
A block of code is set as follows:
max(${adaptertype=VMWARE, objecttype=VirtualMachine, attribute=cpu|capacity_contentionPct, depth=2})
max(${adaptertype=VMWARE, objecttype=VirtualMachine, attribute=cpu|capacity_contentionPct, depth=2})
max(${adaptertype=VMWARE, objecttype=VirtualMachine, attribute=mem|host_contentionPct, depth=2})
Max(${adaptertype=VMWARE, objecttype=VirtualMachine, attribute=virtualDisk|totalLatency, depth=2})
Max(${adaptertype=VMWARE, objecttype=VirtualMachine, attribute=net|droppedPct, depth=3})New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: A popular technology often branded under virtualization is hardware partitioning.
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