Finally it is here ! The Great American Eclipse day… we found a spot just over the Kentucky border … weather still good. Few clouds. Praying …
Stay tuned ! For those in BELGIUM we have Boudewijn van Spilbeeck with us and we will be on the 19h news !
New MySQL management pack release from @bluemedora
The MySQL management pack for VMware vRealize Operations Manager is one of the most populair ones at Blue Medora. It gives you monitoring of your MySQL 5.6.x and 5.7.x databases -including queries – and capaciteit planning, right Inside vROps. The latest release of vRealize Operations MP for MySQL is now generally available.
https://bluemedora.com/downloads/vrops_mp_for_mysql
As with all Blue Medora management packs, the dashboard above shows you that we detect all relations from the database to the VM and beyond. Notable Features in this Release Include:
• Implemented overall performance improvements and query optimization
• Removed MySQL on OS, MySQL IOPS, MySQL on VM, and MySQL Top-N Queries Dashboards
• Added MySQL Usage, MySQL Query Analysis, and MySQL on VMware Dashboards
• Removed Memory Capacity for MySQL instances
• Added new Views and Reports
As with all new releases it includes the great new HTML Documentation.
Important! With this product we have implemented the new versioning scheme, which removes the “6.x” signifier tied to the minimum supported vROps version. The official build number for this release that will be listed in our documentation is 2.0.0.20170719.200055
• Version number:
◦ “2” is the major version.
◦ “0” is the minor version.
◦ “0” is the patch version.
• Build number:
◦ “20170719” is the build date (YYYYMMDD).
◦ “200055” is the build time (hhmmss).
Ransomware…
After 30 odd years in IT it still amazes me people will not take care of basic protection in their environments. Security settings, patches, anti-virus. Nope. Even after previous ransomware attacks this one is still successful. Even in big corporations.
And please don’t go the “it won’t happen on my Mac/ Linux/ TRS-80 machines” way. You know it is coming … Some environments are more secure like Mac OS with sandbox and just not running Windows file sharing, but attacks are more and more ingenious. Even your Intel processor has built-in risks and it takes just a link in an email. Yes I know you were just curious about that viagra ad and did not really intended to order…
Get some basic discipline and IT-hygiene ! That is the real issue.
New management packs for Citrix, JBoss EAP and Apache Tomcat
Overnight Blue Medora released some great new and improved management packs for VMware vRealize Operations Manager. As always the advantages include full API support – no agents to install – relationships detection across solutions and some great dashboards to get you started included with every solution.
Citrix Xen Desktop (build 6.2.10202006)
This is an important new release since VMware decided to drop support for Windows remote collectors in vRealize Operations v6.5. Updates Include (from release notes):
- Removed Windows Collector requirement for PowerShell metric retrieval (i.e., session latency metrics; not applicable to XenDesktop versions 7.5 and below)
- Added support for WinRM HTTPS
- Renamed Citrix XenDesktop Relationships dashboard to Citrix XenDesktop Health Investigation
- Combined Application Details and Desktop Details dashboards into single Citrix XenDesktop App and Desktop Details dashboard
- Deprecated Inactive User property string metrics
The great new html documentation is available.
JBoss EAP (build 6.3.10100004)
JBoss and Tomcat are new products, inline with our expanding True Visibility Suite offering, to monitor your application servers in the full stack. Key Features include (from release notes):
- 4 comprehensive monitoring dashboards, including:
- JBoss EAP Overview
- JBoss EAP Environment Overview
- JBoss EAP Server
- JBoss EAP Virtual Machine Viewer
- Nearly 150 collected metrics for JBoss EAP resources
- Key performance metrics such as average response time, active connection count, wait count, percent in use, and active sessions
- Detailed alerts when symptoms arise for high JVM usage, datasource wait count/active connections, servlet processing time, and more
- vRealize Calculated Memory, Connection, Thread, and Session capacity definitions for JBoss EAP resources
See documentation for further details and installation. JBoss EAP is licensed per Application Server – or as part of the TVS Enterprise suite – and is supported on Enterprise Edition of vRealize Operations.
Apache Tomcat (build 6.3.10100007)
Key Features include ( (from release notes):
- 4 comprehensive monitoring dashboards, including:
- Apache Tomcat Overview
- Apache Tomcat Environment Overview
- Apache Tomcat Server
- Apache Tomcat Virtual Machine Viewer
- 200+ collected metrics for Apache Tomcat resources
- Key performance metrics such as average response time, active connection count, wait count, percent in use, and active sessions
- Detailed alerts when symptoms arise for high servlet load time, datasource/session manager active sessions, cache hit count, and more
- vRealize Calculated Memory, Cache, Threading, and Session Manager capacity definitions for Apache Tomcat resources
See documentation for further details and installation. Apache Tomcat is licensed per Webserver – or as part of the TVS Enterprise suite – and is supported on Enterprise Edition of vRealize Operations.
Printing Blue Medora Raspberry Pi cases for @vmug_nl…
Visit Blue Medora at VMUG NL UserCon !
The biggest VMUG UserCon is in two weeks in Den Bosch, the Netherlands. The event itself is highly recommended with around 1000 participants, a lot of sessions and vendors to interact with. You can consult the agenda here.
Blue Medora is a Silver sponsor, we will have a booth and my colleagues and me will be glad if you stop by for a chat or a demo and maybe you win a prize !
Register for attendance here.
New Nagios Management Pack for vROps
The first release of our vRealize Operations Management Pack for Nagios is now generally available!
I forgot to mention this one, although I am really excited about it! It was written for a big account of mine here in EMEA. When I was still at VMware, I had a customer who tested the first version of this adapter to import NTP time information from linux servers in vCOps. That version used Perl to import RRD-files from Nagios in vCOps with the text file adapter. Things have evolved since then…. At Blue Medora our Nagios management pack connects to the Nagios XI monitoring platform, bringing in Host Groups, Hosts, Service Groups and Services and connecting them to related VMware objects. So you will need the commercial version of Nagios, the reason is that we need a stsable API to connect to…
Major features:
• 6 comprehensive monitoring dashboards.
• 5 high-level views—and 2 corresponding reports — including right sizing information over the last 30 days for CPU, Disk, and Memory used per host.
• 170+ collected metrics for Nagios resources.
• Key performance metrics such as System Memory, System CPU, System Disk, Host Memory, Host CPU, and Host Disk.
• Detailed alerts and notifications imported from the Nagios API.
• Capacity definitions for vRealize Calculated CPU Capacity, Disk Capacity, and Memory Capacity.
So why would you use this next to your Nagios deployment? Here are some reasons:
- Centralize information in easy to use dashboards for the whole enterprise.
- capacity calculations !
- Automatic relationships to VMware objects.
As always you can consult the product page to get more info and a demo. The management pack is available standalone or in the TVS Suite Enterprise or Manager-of-Managers True Visibility Suite pack. This is a great collection of management packs to connect Oracle Enterprise Manager, MS SCOM, IBM Tivoli, Solarwinds and Nagios to vRealize Operations. Some customers use three of these connectors at the same time !
All technical documentation is on the support portal.
New Blue Medora SAP HANA management pack
The first vROps-optimized release for SAP HANA is now generally available:
SAP HANA was one of the first adapters Blue Medora built for VMware vCOps. This release brings HANA up to vROps standards, including capacity definitions, and new dashboards, views and reports.
Please contact your local sales team via bluemedora.com if you are interested in a demo. The documentation will be updated as usual here.
Mail filtering in iOS10
I am not sure that this is a well known feature, I discovered it by accident after upgrading to iOS10. In the Mail app there is now a little icon in the bottom left corner. When you click it your mail will be filtered to show only unread messages by default.
You will notice that ‘unread’ is blue. If you click it a whole filtering menu will appear, allowing you for example to select I only mails with attachment. Handy to tame your inbox…
vRealize Operations in a (hyper)converged world
My blogpost for Blue Medora has just been posted to the VMware cloud management blog. Have a look !