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The VMware vCenter Operations Manager Suite is a powerful collection of products for help in monitoring and management tasks in a virtual (and not only) environment.

Actually is also included in some vSphere 5.5 bundle and there is the foundation edition available for free with each vSphere.

But the main issue of this set of products is the complexity of some of them (like the Configuration Manager) or the powerful of some specific features (like the custom UI of Operations Manager). Official documentation could be fine, but only starting and not for understanding some concepts or going deep with some advanced features.

The suite itself is composed by several different products:

  • VMware vCenter Operations Manager: provides comprehensive visibility into the performance, capacity and health of your infrastructure, operating systems and applications
  • VMware vCenter Configuration Manager: automates configuration management across virtual and physical servers, and continuously assesses them for compliance with IT policies, regulatory and security compliance
  • VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator: automatically discovers (using VMware Tools) and visualizes application components and infrastructure dependencies
  • VMware vCenter Chargeback Manager: enables accurate cost metering, analysis and reporting of virtual infrastructure
  • VMware vCenter Hyperic: monitors physical hardware resources, operating systems, databases and applications.

There are some VMware courses that can help in better understand of those products:

And there is also a book: VMware vCenter Operations Manager Essentials.

This book describe in a simple and clear way most of the VMware vCenter Operations Manager Suite components. Unless is not updated to vSphere 5.5 and version 5.8 of the suite (is still on 5.7 version) most of the concepts and examples are still valid also with latest version. And all vSphere related screenshot are already with the vSphere Web Client (appreciable choice).

This book is for everybody that does not know anything (of only few concepts) about the VMware vCenter Operations Manager Suite and is really useful for starting from the installation to the common usage of the products.

The troubleshooting chapter is really valuable (also per people that already know the product) and could be used as an example for the methods that can be used with this tool.

It’s mainly on vCenter Operations Manager component of the suite with several chapter about it, but there are individual chapters also for vCenter Configuration Manager, Log Insight, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator, VMware Horizon View Integration with vCenter Operations Manager and a final chapter with an example of 3rd part plugin (in this case with EMC plugin). Although it cover all the topics and the features of the products it does not go deeply (for example the custom UI part is really limited), but this is also according with the purpose of this book to give an Essential overview of the products.

Actually the best way to undestand the product features is just use them, but note that you well need a reasonable lab and enought time in order to gain interesting data. Another option is use the VMware Hands on Labs, but those are more on specific topics and user cases, so if you need an overview just use the suggested book and/or the free courses.

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.