Recently I was tasked to get myself up to speed with vCenter Operations Manager and Configuration Manager as part of the vCenter Management Suite for a client delivery we’re doing at Xtravirt. So due to this I have been collecting all the resources I could to help me do this and thought I may as well do a blog posting on it for anyone also looking to implement the suite soon or who are just interested in learning about it. I will be constantly updating this and plan to do two separate postings on the tips and tricks I learnt after deployment for each of the products and my opinions of each.

VMware Operations Manager 5.x

• The below videos are a great introduction to the product done by VMware via their YouTube channel

• As is standard there are the Administration and Installation Guides which I would highly recommend reading through especially the Getting Started Guide to help you prepare before you deploy it.

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vcops-pubs.html

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vcops-5-installation-guide.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vcops-5-getting-started-guide.pdf

• You can download an evaluation of VCOPS for your own testing and to let you play around with it and learn how it all works. I’ve already done this as actually deploying and working with the solution helps me understand a hundred times better than reading documents on it.

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/index.php?p=vcenter-ops5&lp=default

• The communities are a great place to read a few people problems and make sure you don’t make the same mistakes/prepare so you don’t hit the same hurdles:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vcenter/vcops

• Eric Sloof posted about a vCenter Operations 5 – Level 300 training slidedeck done by Iwan ‘e1’ Rahabok (virtual-red-dot.blogspot.com) which gives a really great in-depth look at VMware vCenter Operations 5 and some amazing resources.

• VMware have done a webcast on Automating Infrastructure and Operations Management with VMware vCenter Operations Management Suitewhich gives a great overview of the whole Operation Management Suite and Operations Manager capabilities:

http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=397322&s=1&k=22E3A47A4D3EEC4794EEEAD75C1BC6E7&partnerref=WEB

VMware vCenter Configuration Manager

• VMwareTV have also done a video covering vCenter Configuration Manager and the change management capabilities of the product. The video gives you a really good overview of the layout of the product too and the extensive amount of data and information you can find and create.

• VMware vCenter Configuration Manager 5.5 has just been released and the best place for all the information is the Documentation Resources page for the product here:

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vcm_pubs.html

• The communities are a great place to read a few people problems and make sure you don’t make the same mistakes/prepare so you don’t hit the same hurdles.

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vcenter/vcm

• I’m very fortunate to work for a VMware partner and so there are a whole load of really great resources for VCM. The ones I have used and would recommend to people who also work for VMware partners are:

VMware vCenter Configuration Manager Essentials [V5.X]

vmLIVE – What’s New with vCenter Configuration Manager 5.5

Both give you a good overview of the product, it’s layout and what it is capable of and with the vmLIVE presentation you will be able to update your knowledge for the latest release.

• The VMware Operations Management team were nice enough to ReTweet this posting and advised me that there is an official course called VMware vCenter Configuration Manager Fundamentals that has been upgraded to version 5.5 . The course looks to cover everything you could possibly need and I’m hoping I can get myself added onto it as it is self-paced which is perfect for consultant like myself who can’t take the time away from the client to attend a course.

Fellow vExpert and #LonVMUG attendee Ed Grigson has done an amazing blog posting all about Using vCenter Operations v5 – Introduction and deployment and has linked to loads of top VMworld Sessions and podcasts that I had no idea were out there. Make sure you have a look at his posting and keep an eye out for his future two postings on the subject.

vCenter Operations Manager for View

• VMware vCenter Operations Manager for View – Introduction
• VMware vCenter Operations Manager for View – View User Troubleshooting
• VMware vCenter Operations Manager for View – Alert-Driven View Troubleshooting
• VMware vCenter Operations Manager for View “Heatmap” – Visual Monitoring of Large-Scale View Deployments

 

Hopefully these will help people looking to learn about the Suite and as I stated at the beginning I plan to update this with more resources as I come across them. If you know of any other resources out there please do leave a comment or drop me a tweet on twitter on @greggrobertson5

Gregg