IT Control meets Developer Agility

If you are a VMware fan or working with VMware products I’ll bet you heard of vRealize Operations with Endpoint Operations for application monitoring. But did you know that VMware also has an application monitoring & analytics tool running in the cloud? This cloud-hosted service is called Wavefront. Where vRealize Operations is best fit for private cloud monitoring from a infrastructure angle. Wavefront is build in and made for the cloud, using real-time analytics, highly scalable and developer optimized. As both products have their own advantages why not use both?

Four simple steps to integrate

In the latest release of vRealize Operations, version 6.7, VMware has made it very easy to integrate Wavefront for application monitoring.

1 – Login to the vROps console using an admin account.

2 – Select the “Application Monitoring (Wavefront)” link from the left menu in the Home screen.

Application Monitoring - vROps

In the Application Monitoring with VMware Wavefront screen you’ll see the four steps for setting up Wavefront and integrating it with vRealize Operations.

Application monitoring - vROps

Step 1 – Create a Wavefront account

1 – In the Application Monitoring with VMware Wavefront screen, select the “Create Account” link.

2 – Enter your name, company and a valid email address. Click “Sign Up Now“.

Application monitoring - Wavefront

3 – Check your email to activate your account.

Application monitoring - Wavefront

4 – Once activated, login to Wavefront.

Application monitoring - Wavefront

5 – On the right side of the screen, click on the gear box. Select your username (email address) to edit your profile.

6 – Select the correct “Preferred Time Zone“. This must match the time zone of your vRealize Operations environment.

Application monitoring - Wavefront

7 – Select “API Access” and generate a token. Copy this token to your clipboard.

Application monitoring - Wavefront

8 – Go back to the vROps Application Monitoring with VMware Wavefront screen. Enter your Wavefront URL, in this case https://longboard.wavefront.com (trial environment). Paste your API token and click “Save“.

Application monitoring - vROps

Step 2 – Install & Configure a Application Proxy

For your on-prem application Virtual Machines to communicate with Wavefront you need to install and configure an Application Proxy.

1 – In the Application Monitoring with VMware Wavefront screen, select the “Download” link in Step 2.

2 – Login to vCenter Server with an admin account and deploy the Application Proxy OVA.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

Application monitoring - App Proxy

3 – Select the configuration size of the Application Proxy, “Small” or “Medium“.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

4 – Enter a password for the API Admin user.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

5 – Enter IP and DNS information.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

6 – After a successful deployment, start the Application Proxy VM.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

7 – Login to the Application Proxy console using SSH and change the Root password.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

8 – Go back to the vROps Application Monitoring with VMware Wavefront screen. Select the “Configure VMware Application Proxy” tab and click “+Add an Application Proxy“.

9 – Enter the FQDN of your Application Proxy, API Admin user (admin) and the password used during deployment of the Application Proxy OVA. Click “Next“.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

10 – Select your vCenter Server(s) to be used with this Application Proxy. Click “Next“.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

11 – Review and click “Finish“.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

12 – Wait a couple of minutes to view the state of your Application Proxy.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

13 – Login to Wavefront, select “Browse” and click “Proxies” to verify the state of your Application Proxy.

Application monitoring - App Proxy

Step 3 – Install & Configure agents

Once your Application Proxy is up and running you can install agents on your Virtual Machines to automatically discover applications and send application metrics to Wavefront.

1 – Go back to the vROps Application Monitoring with VMware Wavefront screen. Select the “Agent Management” tab. Select a Virtual Machine using the Virtual Machine Filter. Click on “Manage Agent” and select “Install“.

Application monitoring - Agents

2 – Select how to provide credentials. In my case, select “Common username & password“. Click “Next“.

Application monitoring - Agents

3 – Enter Username and Password of the Virtual Machine OS to install the agent. Click “Next“.

Application monitoring - Agents

4 – Review and click “Deploy Agent“.

Application monitoring - Agents

Application monitoring - Agents5 – When the agent is deployed successfully it wil show “Agent Running”.

Application monitoring - Agents

6 – After a couple of minutes the agent will show the application services discovered on the Virtual Machine.

Application monitoring - AgentsHere’s a list of applications that will be automatically discovered by the agent:

Apache HTTP Apache Solr Consul Elastic Search JBoss MongoDB
MS SQL MS Exchange MS IIS MySQL Nginx Pivotal Server
Postgres Riak RabbitMQ Tomcat Varnish  Weblogic

7 – Select the Virtual Machine and click “Manage Service“. Select “Tomcat“.

8 – Enter the Tomcat Base URL and Installed Path. SSL information is optional. Click “Confirm“.

Application monitoring - Agents

9 – Tomcat application metrics are now collected and send over to Wavefront. To verify, login to Wavefront, select “Browse” and click “Sources“. Enter your Virtual Machine name in the Search bar.

Application monitoring - Agents

Step 4 – Use Wavefront to view your application metrics

For all of the automatic discovered applications, Wavefront has a built-in pre-configured dashboard available. These dashboards are easy to copy, customize and share with other users.

1 – Login to Wavefront, select “Dashboards” and click “All Dashboards“.

2 – Search for the “Linux Host” and “Apache Tomcat” dashboard. Click on the star icon to add them to your Favorites.

Application monitoring - Dashboards

3 – Select the “Linux Host” dashboard to view all kind of Linux OS metrics of your Virtual Machine.

Application monitoring - Dashboards

4 – Select the “Apache Tomcat” dashboard to view specific application metrics about Tomcat.

Application monitoring - Dashboards

With the application metrics collected and the dashboards in place you are now able to quickly triage infrastructure versus application issues. But Wavefront can do so much more. So go, explore and be amazed!