We introduced vCenter Configuration Drift in Aria Operations 8.18, allowing users to detect when vCenters configurations have drifted from established standards.
All screenshots in this blog will be taken from Operations 8.18.2. Upon login, you'll notice a section under the map called Appliances Health and Management, which includes Findings, Configuration Drifts, and Certificates. We've discussed Findings and Certificates previously, today we'll discuss Configuration Drifts. Clicking VIEW DRIFTS gives us insight into our 4 vCenters.
Ah ok, need vCenter 8.0.3 or later and the vCenter Adapter Instances need to be collecting through a Cloud Proxy (CP). What do mine look like?
Ok, none of them are collecting through a CP, we'll adjust.
Now that data is being collected through a CP you can see our vCenters have gone from Not Supported to Unknown on the Home - Overview page.
Let's click VIEW DRIFTS for more details.
I know that at least one of my vCenters is 8.0.3 or beyond, so let's create a vCenter Configuration Template by selecting the CREATE CONFIG TEMPLATE. For reference, here's a list of all necessary prerequisites. The creation of my Configuration Template looks like this.
The third step of Configuration Settings allows you to select the configurations you'd like to have in your Template. The fourth step of Assignment allows you to assign the Configuration Template to a Policy and visualize your settings on the right, which were pulled from the Configuration Source vCenter in step 2. Once done click CREATE.
We now have a Config Template, you can have multiple Config Templates if you'd like, maybe one for development/test and one for production. Back in the Overview and Drifts tabs you'll notice we're now waiting on a run.
You can kick off a run by selecting a vCenter/s from the Drifts tab and click DETECT DRIFT.
Which in my case came back with a Drift Status of Non-Compliant, which will also be reflected on the Overview tab and back on the Home - Overview tab.
Now, to see the details around what is Non-Compliant as compared to your Template, you'll want to select the Non-Compliance vCenter in the Drifts tab.
The lines that aren't the same are highlighted, which in this case makes sense as they are network configurations which you'd expect to be different. I included network configurations to show this, but I'll likely remove them from subsequent templates as they will always be different.
You can't edit Config Templates, rather you have to delete and re-create them today. You also can't generate Alerts based on Config Drift or use Drifts in Dashboards/Views/Reports. I'm told these items (and others) are on the roadmap, stay tuned.
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