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In vROPS 6.0, new platform design was introduced by VMware to meet below listed goals.
- Treat all solutions equally and manage both VMware and third party solutions.
- Highly scalable platform with minimal reconfigurations and redesign requirements
- Monitoring solution with native high availability
Following diagram shows components of vRealize Operations Manager 6.6.
Let’s talk about each of these components in detail.
Watchdog:
- It maintains the vROPS Services/Daemons.
- Watchdog attempts to restart any vROPS daemon in case it is in failed state.
- vcops-watchdog python script runs every 5 mins to check vROPS services.
- Watchdog service checks include:
- PID file of service
- Service status
Apache2 HTTPD:
- Provides backend platform for tomcat instances which provides vROPS UIs.
User Interfaces:
- In vROPS 6.6, user interface is broken into two components
- Product UI
- Admin UI
Product UI:
- Hosted by Pivotal tc Server (Apache Web server)
- Can be accessed using https:///ui/login.action
- Except remote collector role, this UI is present in all server roles (Master, Replica, Data Collector)
- Primary purpose of product UI is to make GemFIRE calls to controller API to access data and create views, Dashboards or reports.
Admin UI:
- Hosted by Pivotal tc server (Apache Web server)
- Used to perform administrative tasks using HTTP REST calls to admin API
- Can be accessed using https:///admin
Suite API:
- It is a public facing API
- Used for Automation or scripting of common tasks.
- Also used by vROPS for administrative tasks.
Collector:
- Responsible for pulling inventory and metric data from configured sources using data adaptors.
- After collecting data, collector contacts GemFIRE locator to locate one or more Controller Cache servers.
- Then Collector connects to one or more Controller cache servers and sends collected data.
- The collector sends heartbeat to controller every 30 seconds via HeartbeatThread process (Max 25 data collection threads) which runs on collector.
GemFIRE Locator:
- Runs on Master node and Replica node.
- On data collector and remote collector, GemFIRE runs as client process.
GemFIRE:
- VMware vFabric GemFIRE is an in-memory, low latency data grid.
- Runs in same JVM as the controller and analytics.
- Scales as needed when nodes are added to cluster.
- GemFIRE allows caching, processing, and retrieval of metrics
- Dependent on GemFIRE locator
Controller:
- It’s a sub-process of analytics process.
- Monitors collector status every 1 minute.
- Controller node runs HeartbeatServer thread which processes heartbeats from collector.
- Responsible for co-ordinating activities between cluster members.
- Manages storage and retrieval of inventory objects within system.
- Leverages MAPReduce function (Google also uses same function for search results) for selective query and faster results.
Analytics:
- Analytics layer is responsible for:
- Metric calculations
- Dynamic threshold
- Alerts and Alarms
- Storage and retrieval of metrics from Persistence layer
- Root Cause Analysis
- HIS metadata calculations and object relationship data.
- Analytics works with GemFIRE, Controller and persistence layer
- Responsible for generating SMTP/SNMP alerts on Master and replica node.
Persistence layer:
- Also known as Database layer.
- This layer consists of series of databases each performing different functions as per role.
- There are five primary database services
- Cassandra DB:
- Introduced in vROPS 6.1
- It is a Apache Cassandra DB
- Replaces Global xDB in earlier versions
- Stores all settings that are applied globally (CONTENT folder).
- Designed to handle large structured data across multiple nodes.
- Provides HA with no single point of failure
- Highly scalable.
- No Sharding is used by this DB
- Stores below content
- User preferences and configuration
- Alerts Definition
- Customizations
- Dashboards, Policies and view
- Reports, licensing
- Shard maps
- Activities
- Central DB:
- It is a PostgreSQL DB
- Also called as REPL
- Sharding is used by this DB
- Exists only on Master node and Replica Node when HA is enabled
- Accessible via port 5433
- located at /storage/db/vcops/vpostgres/repl
- Stores resource inventory information only.
- Alerts/HIS DB:
- Also called as Data
- It is a PostgreSQL DB
- Stores Alerts and Alarms history, history of resource property data, and history of resource relationship.
- Exists on Master, Replica and Data nodes
- Accessible via port 5432
- Sharding is used by this DB.
- Located at /storage/db/vcops/vpostgres/data
- FSDB:
- FSDB is a GemFIRE Server which runs inside analytics JVM.
- FSDB contains all raw time series metrics and super metrics data for resources.
- It stores data collected by data adapters.
- Also stores data calculated or generated after analysis
- FSDB uses sharing for distributing data for new objects
- FSDB is available on Master, Replica and Data collector nodes in vROPS
- Sharding is used by this DB
- Cassandra DB:
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- CaSa DB:
- Also called as HSQL
- It is a small, flat, JSON-Based, in-memory DB
- Used by CaSA for cluster administration
- Sharding is not used by CaSA DB
- CaSa DB: