5.8.5

Table Of Contents
Introducing Key Features and
Concepts 1
vCenter Operations Managerprovides monitoring functionality for your virtual environment.
Understanding important features and concepts of vCenter Operations Manager helps you use the product
effectively.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“vCenter Operations Manager Features,” on page 7
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“Main Concepts of vCenter Operations Manager,” on page 8
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“Metric Concepts for vCenter Operations Manager,” on page 9
vCenter Operations Manager Features
vCenter Operations Manager collects performance data from each object at every level of your virtual
environment, from individual virtual machines and disk drives to entire clusters and datacenters. It stores
and analyzes the data, and uses that analysis to provide real-time information about problems, or potential
problems, anywhere in your virtual environment.
vCenter Operations Manager works with existing VMware products to add the following functions:
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Combines key metrics into single scores for environmental health and efficiency and capacity risk.
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Calculates the range of normal behavior for every metric and highlights abnormalities. Adjusts the
dynamic thresholds as incoming data allows it to better define the normal values for a metric.
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Presents graphical representations of current and historical states of your entire virtual environment or
selected parts of it.
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Displays information about changes in the hierarchy of your virtual environment. For example, when a
virtual machine is moved to a different ESX host, you can see how these changes affect the performance
of the objects involved.
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Allows you to define "group" containers to organize monitored objects in accordance with the structure
of your environment.
VMware, Inc.
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