I was trying to determine what ESXi Hosts and VMs in my lab had Secure Boot enabled, here's what I did. A couple caveats before we get started: ESXi Host Secure Boot property isn't available in Operations 8.18.x, it's not available until 9.0. You should confirm it's enabled in the Policy/s. VM EFI Secure Boot property is available in VCF Operations 8.18.x+, but must be enabled in the Policy/s. ESXi Host TPM Version isn't available until VCF Operations 9.0, so you won't see t

I'm running Telegraf Agents on some VMs in my environment and wanted to see their status without going to the Workload Operations - Applications - Manage Telegraf Agents page. Here's what I did. I first created a Custom Group containing all Telegraf Agents I could use with Dashboards and Views. I then created a Super Metric against Object Type Environment (same as my Custom Group) summing up the number of Healthy Telegraf Agents. It looks like this. I'm basically summing up

We introduced Diagnostics in 8.18 , improved on it in 8.18.2 , and re-imagined it entirely in VCF Operations 9! In addition to Active Findings (exportable), we have Historical Findings, and the Findings Catalog. We also introduced Log Assist , the ability to upload Support Bundles to Broadcom Support for SRs. Active Findings are based on two things: logs and properties. To trigger a log-based finding run you select the REFRESH FINDINGS button. Log-based Active Findings wil

One of the top use cases for VCF Operations is VM Rightsizing, our ability to make recommendations on the size of your VMs. We've discussed this a few times over the years: Capture VM Rightsizing Data with the Aria Operations API Rightsize with VMware vRealize Operations Exclude VMs from Rightsizing via API in VMware Aria Operations Aria Operations Rightsizing VM vCPU and Memory Recommendations from VMware Aria Operations A recent ask was to find the minimum rightsizing reco

We get the number of VM vMotions in VCF Operations, but we don't get the time they occurred, I found a way to determine that with View transformations, here's how! You can find the number of vMotions on VMs in VCF Operations here. Hovering over the metric chart will tell you when it occurred. Which is great, but I'd also like to have that in a Dashboard, so I created a View and used the Maximum Transformation along with the Absolute Timestamp to tell me when it happened. I ad

We recently released the vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations covering several use cases including ESXi Host Advanced System Settings, ESXi Host Packages, ESXi Host Licensings, ESXi NIC Status, VM Advanced Parameters, VM Options, VM SCSCI Controller Types, Windows Services, and Windows Events. The vCommunity Management Pack and these use cases were covered in detail by this blog series: vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations vCommunity Management Pack for VCF

VCF Operations 9 introduced new Compliance Packs for NIST and updated several others, here are the details. First, you'll notice the NIST Standard don't show in Security - Compliance. You'll need to download them from the Marketplace. There are two NIST-related Compliance packs, one for NIST SP 800-53 and one for NIST SP 800-171. You might also notice this is where you can find the CSA Compliance Pack that was introduced in 8.18. Once downloaded they will show in the DOWN

VCF 9.0.2 recently dropped, we already upgraded VCF Operations Fleet Manager , let's upgrade Operations and Operations for Logs next! First, we'll download the necessary binaries. Go to Operations Fleet Management - Lifecycle - Binary Management - UPGRADE BINARIES. Once you've selected both packages click DOWNLOAD. You can watch progress here. Once complete they will show like this. Back in Binary Management - UPGRADE BINARIES you'll see the new binaries. Let's upgrade! G

VCF 9.0.2 recently dropped so let's upgrade a few things, starting with VCF Operations Fleet Manager! You'll notice I'm at Fleet Manager 9.0.1. Confirm you have your Fleet Manager Depot configured, which I do. Next let's go get the 9.0.2 binaries in the Binary Management tab. Select the 9.0.2 binaries and click DOWNLOAD. You can then watch the progress on the Tasks tab. Once done back on the Binary Management tab you'll see the new 9.0.2 patch binaries you just downloaded.

This is the fourth installment of our blog series on the vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations, here are the first three: vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations Part 2 vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations Part 3 Today we are announcing support for Operations 8.18 and another use case focused on ESXi Host NIC Status. You can download the latest version of the Management Pack here . Support for Operations 8

In VCF Operations 9 we introduced a feature called Log Assist which allows you to upload Support Bundles to Broadcom Support from VCF Operations itself. Here's how it works. First, you must Register and License your VCF Operations instance, documentation on how to do that can be found here . Second, you must have a Unified Cloud Proxy deployed in your environment. I covered how to deploy these previously here . Be sure to confirm Log Assist is Activated on your Unified Clo

We've discussed Security and Compliance before a few times: Compliance with Aria Operations Aria Operations Custom Benchmarks Manage VMware vSphere Configuration and Compliance with vRealize Operations This blog will focus on the DISA Security Standards Regulatory Benchmark, screenshots here are taken from Operations 8.18.5. Out of the box, none of the Regulatory Benchmarks are activated. To activate them you select ACTIVATE FROM REPOSITORY which will install the Management

I'd like to sum Metrics over time in VCF Operations, but Super Metrics don't support time series calculations, so what to do? View Transformations with Intervals, here's how! The use case here is to sum ESXi Host Energy consumption over time, specifically by day. The metric itself looks like this. You'll notice the metric is Total Energy Consumed in the collection period (Wh), by default the collection period is 5m. I created a View against the Host System Object Type usin

VCF Operations 8.18 HF9 recently dropped , which can be applied to any 8.18.x environments. You can apply it directly via the Operations Admin UI or via the Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager. Let's download the PAK file and apply it directly via the Admin UI. Log into the Broadcom support portal and download this PAK File. You can also download the APUAT PAK file and apply it which will run the Upgrade Assessment Test. Let's run it. Log into the Operations Admin, go to Softwar

We've discussed both vCenter and ESXi Host Certificate visibility available in VCF Operations before, but what if you'd like to re-create the list of Certificates provided here. Note: all screenshots here are taken from VCF Operations 8.18.5. Clicking on VIEW CERTIFICATES shows the details. We can export these via the EXPORT to CSV button, but what if we want to see them in a Dashboard. We already have a way to do that for the vCenter TLS/STS/Root Certificates , but what

We introduced the vCommunity Management Pack here . We discussed the second batch of use cases it addresses here . In Part 3 of this series, we will introduce more Content: Dashboards, Views, and Alerts. You can get the latest version of the vCommunity Management Pack here . The first Dashboard we built was for ESXi Hosts, highlighting Advanced System Settings and Packages being captured by the vCommunity Adapter Instance/s. It looks like this. Across the top you have bar

I borked the admin@local password on my VCF Operations Fleet Manager, so had to reset it. Found this KB which got me going. root@vcfops-bpeterson [ /opt/vmware/share/vami ]# ./vami-vlcm-passwd-reset Enter new password: Confirm Password: retrying--- count for get password: 1. Sleeping for 10 seconds retrying--- count for get password: 2. Sleeping for 10 seconds retrying--- count for get password: 3. Sleeping for 10 seconds As you can see, that didn't work. Since I don't ha

In our last blog we introduced the vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations. We went into detail around installation, configuration, and the first four use cases ESXi Advanced System Settings, ESXi Software Packages, VM Advanced Parameters, and VM Options. Today we will discuss the next two use cases: Windows Services and Events. If you recall, the vCommunity Management Pack comes with several configuration files, as shown here. The windows_service_list.xml configurati

Broadcom Technical Account Manager Onur Yuzseven has been leading the development effort of a Management Pack for VCF Operations called the VCF Operations vCommunity Management Pack . You can find his blog here . The goal here is to augment what comes out of the box with Operations, providing additional Metrics, Properties, Dashboards, and more. It was developed with the Operations Integrations SDK as opposed to the Management Pack Builder . You can get the vCommunity Ma

The VCF Operations API surface exposes metrics, for reference here are a few blogs related to this: Pulling Super Metric Values from the VCF Operations API Pull Cluster Capacity Remaining % via Aria Operations API Pull vSphere World Metrics from the VCF Operations API Today we'll discuss how to capture Datastore metrics, let's go. First, let's authenticate. I'm going to authenticate with local credentials, but there are other ways to do this as well. Once authenticated you

VCF Operations has several Capacity related features, including the ability to reclaim Powered Off VMs and Idle VMs, remove VM Snapshots, and find Orphaned Disks. In product it looks like this (all screenshots in this blog are taken from 9.0.1). You can export the list of Orphaned Disks via EXPORT ALL, but you can also find these in the VCF Operations API. In this case we'll be using the Internal API surface, which you can find here. Top right select Internal APIs and go t

I was recently setting up Log Forwarding in VCF Operations 8.18.3, which looks like this. Documentation for these fields can be found here . One thing to note is that the Host field expects the IP of your external log server, in my case the VCF Operations for Logs Primary Node IP. The other interesting field here is Cluster Name, which is the VCF Operations Cluster Name. If you're ever wondering what your VCF Operations Cluster Name is, you can query the CASA API like this.

If you've been using VCF Operations for a while you've likely come across the Workload Widget in a Dashboard, it looks like this. It will provide the CPU Workload % and Memory Workload % of the Object it's configured to show. Here I've told mine to show CPU and Memory Workload Metrics for Cluster vcfops01 . As shown, beyond that, there is nothing else to configure. If you look at the Cluster itself, you can see the metrics being displayed. As shown, CPU Workload % is at 11.

VCF Operations Fleet Manager 9 is up and running and I'd like to deploy Operations for Networks. Here's how I did it. First, let's download the necessary binaries. Log into VCF Operations, go to Fleet Management - Lifecycle - Binary Management. Select the checkbox for operations-networks and click DOWNLOAD. You'll notice a green check banner indicating your download is in progress. Once downloaded, you'll see them in the INSTALL BINARIES tab. Notice I downloaded the most