The above would have been the title of the book. That was what I proposed to the Publisher, as it is not actually a product book. It is more of an architecture and best practice book, focus on performance and capacity. Out of the 260 pages, the bulk of the book is not about vRealize Operations. Product wise, the book covers vSphere 5.5 more than it covers vRealize Operations 6. So it’s actually still relevant if you just want to master those vSphere counters.
Because it is not a product book, you can in fact apply a lot of the concept even if you do not have vRealize Operations. If you are looking for a product book, the best one is here.
I guess the title was too long, since SDDC needs to be spelled out π On hindsight, I should have simply called it VMware Performance and Capacity Management.
You can buy the book at the publisher site. The direct link is here. You can also buy it at other online stores such as Amazon.
I have published all the materials that the publisher allows me to publish. The links are all below. The rest of the materials are only available in the book, hence there is no link. I’d appreciate you notify the publisher if you notice it’s pirated. I’ve added material that isΒ not in the book as I wanted to keep the book light and did not want to kill too many trees.
In addition to my materials, I’m adding links to complementary materials from fellow bloggers such as Sunny Dua, Lior Kamrat, Duncan Epping, Ivan Pepelnjak, and Frank Denneman, and Manny Sidhu. They have published good materials, and it is good to read these blog articles as they complement the book well. I’ve also added contents from blogs.vmware.com that complements the book.
Front Matters
- The reasons behind the book
- Foreword by Peter Zeglis
- Foreword by Ramin Sayar
- Technical Reviewers
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
Chapter 1: A Virtual DC, it is not a Physical DC virtualized!
- Journey into the virtual world.
- A common misperception on what exactly virtualization is.
- Virtual Machine β it is not what you think!
- Software-Defined Data Center
- A virtual data center versus a physical data center
- Management disciplines impacted by virtualization
- Additional contents to complement the chapters:
- The hypervisor is no longer a commodity because it is no longer a hypervisor. It’s SDDC. Read the analysis here.
- The rise of SDDC Architect. A new role is born
- Why a VMware Architect needs to business savvy. A story of a chef and his cooking.
- What you architect will result in a lock-in. Review the new definition of lock-in here.
- Practical tips on how to operate an SDDC. Written by your peers.
- DR 2.0: a new paradigm in Disaster Recovery.
- A Chargeback model that balances simplicity with accuracy.
Chapter 2: Capacity Management
- Shift in capacity management
- Capacity management at the VM level
- Capacity management at the infrastructure level
- Additional contents to complement the chapters:
- A capacity management solution that is based on business policy (with performance SLA)
Chapter 3: Mastering the Key Metrics
- First things first β the purpose of all these metrics
- Compute related counters
- Network related counters
- Storage related counters
- vRealize and vCenter comparison. How they deal and present metrics.
- When is a peak not a true peak? It is not what you think!
- Counters in vCenter and vRealize Operations. This particular example will reveal that your ESXi RAM may have been over provisioned.
Chapter 4 – 7: Counters deep dive
- This content is not available freely.
- Additional contents to complement the chapters:
- Why Right Sizing Windows RAM is impossible unless you have visibility inside.
Chapter 8: Use Cases and Sample Dashboards
- This content is not available freely.
- Additional contents to complement the chapters:
- Standard super metrics that I normally create as part of initial installation.
- Find out if any VMs is abusing your infrastructure by doing excessive usage.
- Duncan Epping wrote a blog on my customer Indonesian Cloud, which uses vRealize Operations and Log Insight. Neil Cresswell, the CEO, has given permission to share one of their dashboard. I document it here.
- VM oversized is a common bad practice. To see how bad the situation in your environment, see this dashboard.
- If your ESXi is overheating, it can be a sign of DC cooling quality has gone down. Track the temperature or fan speed across many ESXi here with a super metric.
Additional Contents
These contents are not in the book as I wanted to keep the book light and did not want to kill too many trees. They are typically about product installation & configuration. They also contains contents that becomes available after 26 December 2014 (publication date).
- vRealize Operations 6: Installation & Configuration
- Express installation
- Standard installation
- vRealize Operations 6: Upgrade
- Upgrade consideration by Manny
- vRealize Operations 6: Features
- How I use the Top-N widget. It is different to how the default dashboard uses it.
- Location of the XML file by Lior.
- How to create super metrics.
- How to redirect to syslog server.
- How to set the root password.
- Why you need a Full HD monitor.
- Configuration Management
- Finding out who makes what changes when in vCenter.
- Out of the box capability in vRealize Operations for configuration management.
- Log Analysis
- Why you need an enterprise grade log management platform.
- How to get insight into Network log via Log Insight.
- Infrastructure Navigator
Management Packs: Blue Medora NetApp
- NetApp DFM installation is a pre-requisite
- NetApp DFM configuration, after you install it.
- Blue Medora β Management Pack installation
- Blue Medora β Management Pack configuration
- Blue Medora β Management Pack β first impression
- Blue Medora β Management Pack – a deeper dive [23 Feb: coming by end of month]
Management Packs:
- A great article on Arista content pack.
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