Business Applications were introduced back in Aria Operations (vRealize Operations) 8.6. They are a container construct for VMs, Hosts, Datastores, Services, Databases, any Aria Operations aware object type, in an effort to collectively define a potential Business Application. Similar to Customer Groups, but more powerful, with the ability to in fact contain Custom Groups. Documentation can be found here, let's explore.
Go to Environment - Business Applications - ADD.
Give your Business Application a name, then start adding tiers by selecting TIER top right. I think of tiers as parts of your Business Application, they can be anything from web servers, to Apache Services on the front end, to middleware servers, to backend database servers, database instances, and databases themselves. You can get as granular as you like.
We'll create a Business Application for our Operations Cluster itself, including the Primary Node, Cloud Proxys, Datastores, ESXi Hosts, and more. I've started by adding a Tier for each group of VMs, and dragged the VMs from the right pane into their respective Tier.
Let's enhance that by adding the related ESXi Host/s, Datastores, and more.
As you can see, I've added several more objects, including things like OS and Apache discovered by Telegraf on these VMs. The ability to add any Operations aware object here, gives us virtually unlimited customization possibilities to define our Business Application. One done click SAVE.
Back on the Business Applications page you'll see your new Business Application, its Health, Descriptions, Criticality, and more. You can set these upon creation. Business Application Health is based on the Health of the objects in it. You can create Alerts/Symptoms for Business Applications, like you can for any other Aria Operations aware object.
From the Business Applications homepage you can see your Business Applications, including those discovered by Aria Operations for Networks and imported into Aria Operations by the Management Pack for Aria Operations for Networks. You can also go directly to the Troubleshooting Workbench or Details.
Giving you visibility into the Business Application: Alerts, infrastructure, and more. The use cases are endless, giving you the ability to define whatever you'd like, and provide visibility to application owners, infrastructure engineers, and more. Check out the VMware Cloud Management YouTube channel for more!