VMware Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations)

vRealize Operations has received its latest update on December 7, 2021. vRealize Operations 8.6.1 is a maintenance release which resolves several important security, performance, stability, and functionality issues identified in the product. Issues Resolved The following issues have been resolved as of vRealize Operations 8.6.1: vRealize Operations firstboot doesn’t complete successfully after deployment. Agent stopped automatically post content update for applications having jolokia2 plugin. Moved the running Custom Script feature using Telegraf to ADV license.

During VMworld 2021, VMware announced that the vRealize True Visibility Suite 3rd party compute and storage management packs would be provided free of charge to all existing vRealize Operations customers. The only caveat was that these management packs wouldn’t be available until a future release. On November 11, 2021, VMware followed through on this announcement and released new versions of all of 20 compute and storage management packs. Customers can download these new management packs by accessing the vRealize Operations Management Packs VMware Customer Connect download page.

Today, VMware is announcing vRealize Operations 8.6 which includes a ton of additional features and capabilities. These updates include numerous enhancements to public cloud support (including support for monitoring ALL AWS services including custom metrics), a revamped user interface, support for defining custom email notices within the user interface (FINALLY!), new methods to define customer groups, the inclusion of vRealize True Visibility compute and storage management packs for all editions, and new sustainability-related dashboards.

With the upcoming release of vRealize True Visibility Suite, VMware will be entitling all vRealize Operations customers with access to the compute and storage management packs available within the suite. Previously, access to all of these management packs would require a license to the Advanced (Standard+) edition of vRealize True Visibility Suite. Going forward, no additional license key will be required to install and use these management packs. After this upcoming release becomes generally available, you will be able to access the management packs by visiting the Customer Connect portal and looking for the vRealize Operations Management Packs for Compute and Storage.

VMware vRealize Operations 8.4 has reached general availability as of April 15, 2021. With this release, VMware has provided several enhancements and new capabilities, including: vRealize Application Remote Collector has been deprecated and replaced by Cloud Proxy Introduction of the new vRealize Operations Automation Center that allows for scheduling of automation jobs from within vRealize Operations Introduction of Alert Payload Templates that allow for easy customization of alert plugin content Simplified Alert Notifications Outbound Plugin Enhancements Telegraf-based Application Monitoring Enhancements Major enhancements regarding cost management and reporting Support for VMware Cloud on AWS Costing APIs for Pricing Rate Cards Cost Optimization Dashboards New Cost and Price Dashboards for both the consumer layer and provider layer What If – Migration Planning for Azure VMware Solution (AVS) and Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) Tag-Based Price as Individual Metrics Costing and Pricing of Short-Lived VMs allowing for tracking VMs to a minimum granularity of five minutes lifetime Energy Consumed, OS Categories, and Number of Rack Units as new cost drivers Ability to export all content using a single button for backup/restore, cloud migration, and disaster recovery use cases Availability of a system access URL (vRealize Operations Cluster LB IP/FQDN) to support registration of vRealize Operations within Center using the load balancer URL (FINALLY!