Hi vAdmins,
With the introduction of VCF 9 and VCF Operations, we’ve seen a growing need for deeper insight into these useful new capabilities To address this, we’re launching a new series of updates focused on VCF Infrastructure Operations.
In this blog post we will take a closer look at Diagnostic Findings.
Intro
Diagnostics for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is your built-in assistant for keeping your VCF environment healthy and running smoothly. Designed to streamline analysis and troubleshooting, this feature focuses on the most common issues within VCF components.
What’s in it for you?
This powerful feature works great by automatically detecting typical problems in your environment. Instead of hunting for clues, you receive clear findings that you can use to quickly diagnose and fix (potential) issues. It also provides relevant, guided self-help flows specifically for key vCenter capabilities. This means you have the right information at your fingertips to resolve problems with less guesswork.
Current Capabilities Covered
Diagnostics for VMware Cloud Foundation currently helps you analyze and troubleshoot issues related to critical capabilities, including:
- vMotion
- DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler)
- HA (High Availability)
- Snapshots
- Workload Provisioning
- Certificates
- VC resources and services (vCenter Server)
- DNS (Domain Name System)
- NTP (Network Time Protocol)
By default, property-based signatures are evaluated every four hours. To evaluate log-based signatures, click Refresh Findings.
Demo
In the introduction above is already described that findings provide you with all relevant information at your fingertips to prevent and resolve problems with less guesswork, but how does this look like?
From the dashboard, you can see all current findings in a single pane of glass! As soon as we open a specific finding, we can see a summary, all affected object including a recommendation.
This provides full insight into the specific finding with substantiation timeline and Knowledge Base articles with recommendations for mitigating measures .
Historical Findings
Historical Findings analyze log-based signatures from a specified past time period. To view them, use the Generate Findings option and define a timeframe. If the historical logs do not reveal the root cause of the issue, you should check the active, property-based findings, which refresh every four hours. Note that only one historical finding request can be processed at a time, and new results will always replace the previous ones.
You can also review historical Findings to confirm that previously fixed issues are fully addressed and to identify the specific remediation used.
In the screenshot above we generate a historical findings overview (maximum of 48 hours) for selected objects.
Findings Catalog
The Findings Catalog tab shows the complete, current list of signatures being checked in your environment. The 753 available items in this demo clearly show how powerful this proactive tooling can be for your VCF platform.
Summary
The VCF’s Diagnostic Findings Capability functions as a single console to correlate and diagnose known issues impacting your VCF infrastructure, including security risks based on CVEs Which contributes to proactive day 2 operations and the stability of your platform!
End of this post.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed in this blog are solely my own and should be treated as personal opinions. This content does not hold any legal or authoritative standing.