Monitoring Kubernetes OpenShift Environment

Monitoring Kubernetes OpenShift Environment using VMware Aria Operation products

Our customer is currently in search of a comprehensive platform that offers full-stack observability across its entire OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) environment. This includes everything from the foundational infrastructure to the operational applications and services.
With a vast environment of hundreds of clusters, monitoring becomes daunting. Given the dynamic nature of Kubernetes environments, a dedicated solution is essential.

At present, the customer relies on various open-source tools like Prometheus and Grafana to monitor their infrastructure. However, a significant challenge arises from the lack of a mechanism to promptly detect issues within the application layer before they disrupt operations. This challenge stems from the absence of a unified monitoring framework that holistically addresses infrastructure and application layers, hindering the understanding of interdependencies and their impacts.

Our proposed solution is based on the VMware portfolio and consists of three integral components:
Aria Operations, Aria Operations for Applications (AOA) and Management Pack for Kubernetes.

VMware Aria Operations is an intelligent IT operations management solution designed to manage and monitor virtualized and cloud infrastructure efficiently. Aria Operations offers in-depth insights into performance, capacity, health, and overall operational efficiency, enabling you to proactive issue resolution and resource optimization. Key features include Performance Monitoring, Capacity Planning, Troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis, Customizable Dashboards and Reporting, Workload Balancing and Optimization, Policy-Based Automation, Integration with VMware Ecosystem, and Extensibility with third-party tools and management packs.

Management packs in VMware Aria Operations expand monitoring, troubleshooting, and remediation capabilities for software-defined data centers (SDDC) and third-party solutions. Administrators can easily install and configure management packs within an Aria Operations instance.

The Aria Operations Management Pack for Kubernetes provides information for automating deployment and scaling operations of application containers across host clusters, focusing on container-centric infrastructure. The current version of the management pack supports monitoring Kubernetes clusters and deployed containers. With Kubernetes gaining prominence as the platform of choice for enterprise applications, having the necessary tools for operationalizing Kubernetes is crucial. This integration ensures full visibility from application to infrastructure, empowering IT teams to effectively support application owners across various platforms, including VMware TKG, Kubernetes on Amazon Web Services EC2, Google Virtual Machines, or, in our case, RedHat OpenShift environments. Using Aria Operations Management Pack for Kubernetes, our customers can monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Kubernetes cluster capacity management.

The third component, Aria Operation for Apps (AOA), introduces an additional layer of monitoring specifically tailored to applications and services. AOA is a cloud-hosted service offering real-time metrics monitoring and streaming analytics to help customers monitor and optimize their environment.

AOA’s ability to understand the behavior and intricate interconnections between services empowers our customers to derive valuable insights, effectively discern the underlying triggers behind various system errors, and efficiently resolve them within a minimal timeframe.

Our proposed solution equips infrastructure and application teams with full visibility through customized dashboards. These dashboards provide a comprehensive diagrammatic map depicting both the infrastructure and application levels. Additionally, dedicated alerts promptly notify teams of errors, allowing them to investigate the root causes swiftly. Implementing this solution will reduce the time and resources required to address failures and debug errors. It will also enhance operational methodologies, ultimately improving overall organizational performance.

The best part is that our solution is easy to implement, featuring a user-friendly experience and out-of-the-box metrics catering to the customers’ diverse needs.

Written by: Mor Lila, Sr. Sales Engineer