VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator Essentials Overview

This table summarizes the topics discussed in this course and shows approximately how long each
module takes to complete. It may take you more or less time to complete the modules, depending
on your learning style and level of experience with the topics.

In module 1, you will learn the major vCenter Infrastructure Navigator functions, its architecture,
resource requirements and installation considerations.

After you complete this module, you should be able to:

Discuss the value proposition of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator.

Recognize the main functions of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator.
Diagram the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator virtual appliance architecture.
Describe the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator virtual appliance resource requirements.
List the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator virtual appliance installation considerations.

In a virtualized infrastructure or cloud infrastructure, existing methods for tracking applications are
not accurate or scalable. Virtual infrastructure administrators use their own naming conventions,
spreadsheets, folder templates and notes.

Information is dispersed in many different places and not kept up to date, except with tribal
knowledge. This outlines a great need for a more accurate and updated view of application
dependencies across the virtual infrastructure. The information must be up-to-date, accurate and
seamlessly available with virtual infrastructure management solutions for day-to-day operational
use.

Utilizing its pre-built knowledge base, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator automatically discovers
applications, services, relationships and dependencies to build maps that yield a detailed overview
into the virtual infrastructure.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator integrates with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to
showcase existing disaster recovery (DR) protection, and effectively ensures higher applications
delivery service levels.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator automatically discovers application services and visualizes

relationships and maps, dependencies of applications on virtualized compute, storage and network
resources.

Administrators can search and visualize applications and application services within VMware vCenter
Server in their daily operations.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator is seamlessly integrated into the vSphere Web Client and
complements vCenter Operations Manager. It generates dependency maps and tabular
presentations with overlays for Site Recovery Manager, vApps and so on.

It eases the process in triage, backup and recovery, HA planning, change impact and vApp
definitions.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator provides automated discovery and dependency mapping. It is

characterized by the fact that it is simple to download and deploy, and its rapid discovery and
dependency mapping capability. It does not require VMware Professional Services to install.
It is self downloadable and is also available for trial evaluation. vCenter Infrastructure Navigator
includes an out-of-the-box knowledge base which will continue to be updated.

Beyond the out-of-the-box knowledge base, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator provides the ability to
create manual application mappings to visualize non-linear dependencies, either between virtual
machines or specific services.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator provides integrated application dependencies in a day-to-day

operational interface.
Infrastructure Navigator seamlessly integrates in the vSphere Web Client user interface. The virtual
machine topology is obtained from vCenter and is updated every 5 minutes. Application discovery
and dependency mapping are kept current to within every hour and presented through the vCenter
user interface.

In vCenter Infrastructure Navigator, search and filter is a short way to identify the right object,
perfect for day-to-day operating. vCenter Infrastructure Navigator offers summary application
portlets that allow you to obtain application services and dependency summaries. This is integrated
into the vCenter interface as an additional port-let along with other vCenter metrics. vCenter

Infrastructure Navigator has Dependency maps, a Topology map that provides visualization of
applications, app services across the virtual infrastructure.

In addition, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator overlays relevant vCenter Server information (such as
Site Recovery Manager Protection group, recovery plan, vApp, HA cluster information and so on). It
has Tabular views that provide visibility into virtual machines associated at any level of the virtual
infrastructure: site, clusters, hosts, datastore, or vNetwork. Virtual machine Tabular views include
residing application services and other virtual machine relevant metrics.

Powerful filtering and search capabilities identify virtual machines associated with specific
application criteria.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator provides the ability to export the data into other applications.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator is integrated into the vSphere Web Client summary view. When an
object is selected in the inventory tree, infrastructure information is shown in its own information
pane, summarizing discovery status, services and dependencies of the selected object.

The Application Dependencies subtab below the Manage tab gives you a detailed view of the
selected object. Using the Map view, you can understand the selected objects dependencies
intuitively and even get more information about dependent objects. You can also switch to a table
view, making it easier to find the desired information in large maps.

Using vCenter Infrastructure Navigator in combination with vCenter Site Recovery Manager allows
the administrator to create SRM protection groups and recovery plans with accurate app visibility.

Workload dependency maps across virtual infrastructure hosts and clusters allow for HA clusters to
be built and set affinity or anti-affinity rules in the virtual environment.

The automated mapping of application services of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator to underlying

virtual machines, enables the administrator to set up judicious configuration of priorities and
dependencies for correct start up sequences.

In this case, the start sequence is as follows:

First , the Master Database starts, after which the Database and Exchange server start
simultaneously.
Than the Application Server One starts first, followed by Application Server 2 after first started up
successfully.
The two Apache servers and the Mail Sync server start in unison and than all desktops start
together.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator provides the administrator with the complete application context
as a basis for defining vApps.

All dependencies across all tiers are factored in, including centralized services such AD/ LDAP or DNS.
vCenter Infrastructure Navigator shows dependency drifts, so vApp memberships are kept up to
date and provides a common vocabulary for infrastructure and application teams. Instant and
accurate identification of the applications associated virtual machines allow an easy creation of
vApps.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator is integrated in the vCenter Operations Management Suite

Advanced and Enterprise Edition. It is not available as an a-la-carte option.

Please take a moment to review the packaging and pricing overview before we continue.

Summarizing the value proposition, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator can add value for a number of
use cases and solutions.

In vCenter Operations Manager, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator provides a common language and
context administrators can triage for actual and potential issues, change application and business
impacts and become proactive in planning of resources to meet virtual infrastructure delivery SLAs.

With Site Recovery Manager, administrators can plan and maintain accurate disaster recovery plans
based on automated and actual application dependencies. They can factor in changes in application
and virtual machine topology as well dependencies to centralized services and close by physical
servers.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator improves High Availability and Disaster Recovery planning and setup by utilizing vApp context to build HA clusters, affinity rules and placement constraints.

Next, we will discuss the architecture of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator.

This slide illustrates various components of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator and their dependencies.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator is a virtual appliance that you can import into VMware vCenter
Server. A virtual appliance is a virtual machine image that contains software designed to run in a
virtual machine, pre-packaged for low maintenance effort and easy deployment.

With the components of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator, you can map services running in your
virtual environment, examine the application discovery status, view and analyze the dependency
map and have a centralized overview of the entire application environment.

The components of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator are the service, the database and the plug-in
for the vSphere Web Client.

The server component receives data from the Active Discovery component and reconciles data
before transferring it to the database.

The database component stores the data received from the server component. The database
component also stores Infrastructure Navigator configurations. vCenter Infrastructure Navigator
does not support storing of data in an external database.

The vCenter Infrastructure Navigator plug-in in the vSphere Web Client provides a graphical user
interface that you can use to view and analyze dependencies.

The vCenter Infrastructure Navigator virtual appliance interacts with vSphere as follows.

The vApp
Registers with the vCenter Server,
Installs a plug-in for the vSphere Web Client,
Leverages the vCenter inventory to determine which virtual machines will be probed, and
Probes virtual machines with supported operating systems that are running compatible versions of
VMware Tools.

Results from the discovery performed by vCenter Infrastructure Navigator can be viewed in the
vSphere Web Client, although not in the standard vSphere Client. Through the integration with Site
Recovery Manager, information about protection group membership can be seen at a glance while
viewing application group memberships.

Next, we will talk about the methodology behind vCenter Infrastructure Navigator.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator uses Active Discovery to access the virtual machines. Active
discovery is a multithreaded process that uses VMware Tools to access virtual machines.

The application mapping process starts immediately after installation, provided you have valid
administrator-level vCenter Server credentials.
vCenter Infrastructure Navigator maps continuously, unless you stop or disable vCenter
Infrastructure Navigator.
The system begins to populate the inventory table immediately after the virtual appliance has been
installed and configured.
If configuration mapping is incomplete, a This VM is pending application mapping message is
displayed in place of the dependency map.

The vCenter Infrastructure Navigator can remotely connect to the VMware Tools to run command
prompts and netstat. This works with the extension in VMware Tools that implements the VIX API as
well.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator does not need additional credentials to login and access guest
operating systems.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator supports fingerprints, used to match application services and look
inside file systems, Windows registries and to run commands such as WMIC. It allows vCenter
Infrastructure Navigator to not only access a list of running processes, but to look into program file
folders and check what is installed and in which version.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator leverages netstat to obtain dependencies and check which
processes are running on ports, which TCP connections are open against open IPs, or to run netstat
on both virtual machines to match dependencies.

Application services are re-mapped at predefined time intervals (default is 1 hour). This ensures that
the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator database is up-to-date and is synchronized with changes in the
virtual environment. The result of the most recent mapping is shown in the Successful Discovery
field.

vCenter Server details are refreshed every five minutes to detect any changes in the virtual
environment. For example, if a virtual machine is powered off, it will be shown in the Discovery
status field.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator only maps services that run on virtual machines if the following
conditions are met:

The virtual machine is powered on.

The virtual machine can be reached on the network.
The vCenter credentials are valid.
The virtual machine is running on a supported ESX version.
VMware Tools is installed and running on the virtual machine.
The VMware Tools version is supported by Infrastructure Navigator.
And the virtual machine has a supported guest operating system on it.

If any one of these condition fails, an Access failed error message is displayed in the Discovery status
field.

Features such as how to define multi-tier applications, will be discussed in more detail in module 3
of this course. The applications defined by vCenter Infrastructure Navigator are shown in vCenter
Operations Manager under the Groups tab to monitor the Health, Risk and Efficiency for these
specific applications. You can export the maps as images or .csv files, which then can be imported
into Excel.

Next, we will discuss the system requirements to run vCenter Infrastructure Navigator.

The ports listed on this slide are needed by the different components of vCenter Infrastructure
Navigator.

You must meet certain software requirements before proceeding with the deployment of vCenter
Infrastructure Navigator virtual appliance.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator supports discovery of virtual machines and applications on the
following ESX/ ESXi versions:
Version 3.5, 4.0, 4.1 and 5.x

Target virtual machines must have a supported version of VMware tools installed for the respective
ESX versions, and should use virtual hardware version 4 or above.

Target virtual machines may not be running an unsupported operating system or run without
VMware Tools installed. This slide shows a list of unsupported operating systems.
vCenter Infrastructure Navigator does not support virtual machines with guest operating system
defined during creation as Other (64-bit) and Other (32-bit).

You must meet certain requirements before you start deploying the Infrastructure Navigator in a
virtual appliance on the vSphere Client.

The appliance must have 2vCPUs with 4GHz total, 4GB of memory, 20GB of free disk space and a
1Gbps Network interface. Also, the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator server component and vCenter
Server 5.x need to be installed. The vSphere Web Client 5.1 needs to be registered to the vCenter
Server.

To access vCenter Infrastructure Navigator through the vSphere Web Client, your client must meet
the requirements outlined in this slide.

This concludes Module 1.

In summary:

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator is an application awareness plug-in to vCenter Server that provides
continuous dependency mapping of applications.

- vCenter Infrastructure Navigator offers application context to the virtual infrastructure

administrators to monitor and manage the virtual infrastructure inventory objects and actions.
Administrators can use vCenter Infrastructure Navigator to understand the impact of the change of
the virtual environment in their application infrastructure.

- vCenter Infrastructure Navigator automatically discovers applications, services, relationships and

dependencies to builds maps that yield a detailed overview into the virtual infrastructure.

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator is integrated into the vCenter Management Suite and uses the
same user interface to show summary panes, map, and table views.

Now that you have completed this module, feel free to review it until you are ready to start the next
module. When you are ready to proceed, close this browser window to return to the course
contents page.