If you’ve been following the VLC-Build it for me posts you should have VRSLCM up and running. As promised this exercise will be quite a bit shorter due to the work we put in getting VRSLCM built. vRealize Operations gives a view into operations management of both applications and infrastructure and, in the context of VCF, as you grow your solution help you plan, scale, and easily connect new Workload domains and their resources to be included in vROps pervue.

There are only a few prerequisites for deploying vRealize Operations into your environment.

• License Key
  • This can be a vRealize Operations or vRealize Suite key
  • You need to enter this in the licensing section of VCF *before* starting the vROps deploy wizard.
• DNS and IP allocation
  • IP and domain name for the vRealize Load Balancer
  • IP and domain name for the vRealize Operations cluster
  • IP and domain names for each vRealize Operations node
    • We’re only doing a single node
• All the routing to work, but we did that in the VRSLCM post!

Configuring the DNS for vRealize Operations on Cloudbuilder
SSH to Cloudbuilder (10.0.0.221 user:admin pass:VMware123!) and make a backup copy of the the /etc/maradns/db.vcf.sddc.local file, then open it with your favorite editor and add the following lines to the bottom of the file and save it.

vrslb.vcf.sddc.local. FQDN4 192.168.11.11
vrops.vcf.sddc.local. FQDN4 192.168.11.12
vrops-1.vcf.sddc.local. FQDN4 192.168.11.13

Then restart the maradns service

systemctl restart maradns

In the SDDC Manager UI we’ll need to add the license key, that can be done by clicking Licensing -> + Licence Key on the left menu bar. Then select the product name, enter your key and a description, then click Add.

Now all the prerequisites are set, so go ahead and click vRealize Suite in the left menu bar, then vRealize Operations and lastly Deploy.

You can tick the Select All box as we’ve just completed setting those up, as you move to the next page we can see that the license we just entered is in the drop down, select that and click next.

*Note: For this exercise we’ll leave the other settings as default, however notice you can change the size and node count here. After deployment you will be able to scale by adding additional vROps nodes, but only at the same size you specify in this wizard.

On the Network Settings page of the wizard you’ll simply review and click next.

Then on the FQDN page we’ll need to enter the FQDN’s we put in the DNS just a bit ago and click next

Next, you’ll need to enter a password, this password is for the admin (UI) and root (SSH) users and will need to meet complexity requirements. Minimum length 8 characters, one upper and one lower, and special characters. VMware123! is what we use in the lab. Click next after entering the password twice.

Then review the summary on the next page and click finish. You will see a task appear in the tasks pane at the bottom of the screen that you can click on and track the subtasks as it deploys. The deployment takes about an hour in my lab. After the task is successful navigate back to the vRealize Suite -> vRealize Operations menu and you’ll see a hyperlink next to the Active check mark, as well as a button to expand.

Clicking the hyperlink “vRealize Operations” will open a new tab and take you to the log in screen of vRealize Operations. Go ahead and click this, and then Log in using the Admin user and the password you set. Once the initial “Quick Start” dashboard loads click in the Operations Overview to see more!

As you expand your VCF footprint adding additional workload domains you’ll be able to connect them to vROps with just the click of a button.

Congratulations on deploying vROps!