Getting Opvizor Working – and is it interesting or what!

Hi there,

As part of the vExpert program I got an NFR license from Opvizor and I am quite interested in it.  If you watch the video on their home page you will see what I did and perhaps be as interested as I was.  Essentially their product compares your environment against best practices from VMware and or NetApp and then will let you know how your environment differs and provide you with the info to fix it.  Sounds interesting.  They have a variety of editions but the install info here will get any of them working.  What differs is the level of info you get.

Preparation

There are a number of things to have ready.

• You need a VM (or physical) that has two vCPU and at least 4 GB of RAM with a 60 GB disk – I use 60 GB as that is my standard.  Opvizor does not have a big disk footprint so a smaller size is supported so use what you like.
• You will will need a service account that has no Domain Admin rights, and yet has Admin rights to vCenter.  I don’t think it will really need admin level access to vC but that is what I have at this time.
• You should update the MS patches to current as I did.
• You need to install the latest Java – Update – the application will install it if required.
• You need to install the latest Flash – Update – if you prefer to not use Flash then the application will switch to HTML5 if no Flash is present.
• Download the bits – which you can get via the from their web site after logging in.
• Documentation – which I forgot to use – is here.

• BTW, if you are a vExpert you can get an NFR copy using this link.  But you will need to prove you are a vExpert.

Installation

Once you have the bits on your Win2K12 VM and you start the install it is pretty easy. Until you get to this screen.

The confusion for me was the language.  What was the opvizor Platform Username?  Turns out it is easy, as it is the email address you registered with Opvizor with.

Before you know it you see the files copied.

Once you are finished the install we need to configure things!

Configuration

While we are still on the console of the VM where we have installed opvizor service we need to start up the config UI.

Once we double+click on the proper icon we see something interesting.

I suggest you add your password and try out the VMware Test Run.  After all it is best to know now that the app can talk to vC!  Good thing I did as I suggested to you!

Note (update 2/17/15): see the Anonymize option?  By default when that is enabled you will see ^^number^^ for names when working in the Opvizor UI outside your company, but when starting the Opvizor UI from the machine where it is installed (inside your company) you will see proper names.  So I have deselected the check-box so I can see real names no matter what.

So I entered the account for vc as account and maybe I should enter it as domain\account or maybe the password was wrong.  Nice I can re-enter the data easily.

if you enter the password at the top of the screen, and select the Configure vCenter button near the middle of the screen you will see this screen.

Turns out I misspelled my vC FQDN so correcting it and doing the VMware Test Run again worked.

We can see the crawl of the info in vCenter.  Then we see green.

Now we need to make sure that we have something sooner to look at in the dashboard instead of waiting for the next upload.  So use the Analyze & Upload Now button.

You will see something like below.

This will take a little bit.  We can see above the status that every 24 hours a full upload will occur, and that every 1 hour an incremental upload will occur.

When we look at the UI at opvizor we see this.

However, once that upload is finished we see something more interesting.  We do also get an email notification that the upload is finished.

Now what?

It looks like I have really a lot of issues in my lab.  I know of one – my dvSwitch has only one physical connection per host rather then 2.  But what are all of the other issues?  BTW that came from vR Ops which is also in this lab.

I am hungry, and since it is Saturday, I am also looking forward to a drink or two, so I am going to finish for now and will investigate the issues and let you know what I find!  After all it is Valentine’s Day!

Update:

• 2/17/15 – thanks to Roger Lund I learned about dealing with the ^^numbers^^ and chased more info.
• 2/15/15 – thanks to Brian I learned that Java is install automatically, and that if no Flash is present HTML 5 will be used.

Comments are always welcome!

Michael

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