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Real-time monitoring is a key aspect of Software Defined Data Center operations. Once an SDDC has been deployed, its ongoing performance and health must be continually monitored, and administrators must be notified any time problems develop. In the VMware Validated Design, this is achieved using vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Operations.
In this interactive simulation we will review the deployment and configuration of vRealize Log Insight based this comprehensive SDDC architecture.
VMware vRealize Log Insight provides centralized log aggregation and log analytics, increasing the operational visibility and facilitating troubleshooting and root cause analysis. The VMware Validated Design for SDDC deploys a separate vRealize Log Insight cluster in each region.
Begin by logging into the vRealize Log Insight Administration.
Each cluster is comprised of one master and two worker nodes. The design leverages the capabilities of the software-defined networking by establishing virtual networks for this SDDC operations solution. These networks are referred to as application virtual networks.All nodes are configured with an integrated load balancer. This design allows for continued availability and increased log ingestion rates.
Once the vRealize Log Insight cluster has been deployed, the various components of the Software Defined Data Center are configured to forward logs to the cluster where they are processed and analyzed.
Role Based Access Control provides a powerful way to control access to events within vRealize Log Insight. Not only does it make it possible to support multiple users and groups within the product, it also makes it possible to restrict access based on job function using roles and data sets
Administrators can view each host or device that has at least one local event in the cluster. In addition to the hostname you can determine the last time vRealize Log Insight received an event.
vRealize Log Insight provides the ability to use and agent to collect logs from clients. The agent supports sending events over syslog, abiding by the syslog RFC, and over the solution's ingestion API - this means the agent will work with any remote syslog destination. The agent supports both Linux and Microsoft Window.
Review Agents Listed.
Review the vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller Appliances Sending Syslog Data.
Here we can see another custom group has been created for all of the Microsoft Windows-based IaaS instances for vRealize Automation.
Review the vRealize Automation Window-based Systems Sending Syslog Data.
vRealize Log Insight has tight integration with other VMware products. One of the out-of-the-box integrations is with VMware vSphere. This integration allows Log Insight to perform two operations:
* Collect events, tasks, and alarms from the vCenter Server database and ingest them as log messages and
* Configure ESXi hosts to forward syslog events
Review Registration of the Two vCenter Server Instances with the Cluster. Also Collecting Events, Tasks and Alarms Data.
vRealize Log Insight integrates directly with vRealize Operations to provide insight between the structured and unstructured data. For example, inventory mapping, alert integration, and a two-way launch in context. With this integration you get a single pane of glass from which to ensure the health of your environment, get notified of detected issues, automatically respond to issues detected and perform complete troubleshooting and root cause analysis.
Review that vRealize Log Insight is Integrated with vRealize Operations and Uses it Load-balanced IP. Alerts Integration and Launch in Context are Also Enabled.
vRealize Log Insight content packs are immutable, or read-only, plugins that provide pre-defined provide knowledge about a specific set of events in a format easily digestible by administrators, engineers, monitoring teams, and executives.
A content pack marketplace is natively available within the product and is available from the Content Packs page. This provides you with immediate access to content packs without the need of leaving the product.
Review Content Pack Marketplace.
Review the Content Packs that are Installed with the VVD for SDDC Architecture.
By default, vRealize Log Insight ships with the vSphere content pack, but additional content packs can be imported as needed.
Out-of-the-Box content packs.
Here we can see additional content packs that are deployed and configured in the VMware Validated Design for SDDC. These include packs for: Virtual SAN, NSX, vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations and vRealize Orchestrator.
The following have been installed.
A content pack is made up of information that can be saved from either the Dashboards or Interactive Analytics pages in Log Insight. These include:
The dashboards page as an overview section. It contains mostly chart widgets and allows you to quickly digest log data and determine potential issues in your environment.
Review General Overview Dashboards.
Review some of the dashboards that come with the vRealize Automation content pack included in the architecture.
Dashboard widgets help you visualize information.
Review dashboard VMware - vSphere to look at some of the dashboards that are included by default with the out-of-the-box vSphere content pack.
Content Pack dashboards cannot be modified, but you can clone these dashboards to your Custom Dashboards space and modify the clones. A clone has been made and named 'MyDashboards'.
You can add, modify, and delete dashboards in your Custom Dashboards space.
Review that the Item Has Been Added to the Dashboard
Log Insight provides high performance search and visualization of log data for efficient troubleshooting across heterogeneous environments with its Interactive Analytics.
There is no need to learn a proprietary query language. Simply start typing to get result and the search query and results will auto-populate.
Here in this example, we are troubleshooting a storage performance issue over the last 24 hours.
Change the Scope of Time to 'Latest 24 Hours of Data'
Review Results
Adding filters enables us to easily refine search criteria to specified threshold and constraints.
Chart graphs can be modified based on visual preference. Change chart graph.
These visualizations and queries can then be saved to a custom dashboard with a customer name and description.
Notice that the custom dashboard has been added to My Dashboards. Let's now delete.
This concludes the review of deployment and configuration of vRealize Log Insight in the VMware Validated Design for SDDC.
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