VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for Horizon Install
MP4H = Management Pack for Horizon
The vRealize Operations Management Pack for Horizon is the modern version of the old vRealize Operations for Horizon, commonly referred to as v4H. At first glance, they sound the same, but the key difference is in the details of the wording. It’s easier to just call it MP4H which is what you’ll want if you plan to use vRealize Operations to manage your modern Horizon environment.
Below I’ll cover how to install MP4H 2.0 within vRealize Operations. The official documentation can be found here and I’d recommend taking a look in case some parts not covered here apply to your environment.
If you want to see MP4H in action check out Cameron’s walkthrough video as well as a demo of the Horizon World User Performance dashboard.
For MP4H 2.0 What’s New check out Cameron’s blog
Prerequisites
You’ll need to have vRealize Operations. I won’t be covering that here, but MP4H can be used with the on-prem vRealize Operations or the SaaS vRealize Operations Cloud. The vRealize instance needs to also be monitoring the vCenter servers hosting the Horizon Pod.
Be sure to check the VMware Interoperability Matrices to ensure the version of MP4H you’d like is compatible with the versions of vRealize Operations and Horizon you have.
Download MP4H
Download the vRealize Operations Management Pack for Horizon. For me, the latest version is 2.0 and can be found in the VMware Marketplace. Once you locate it on the Marketplace go ahead and click Download. You’ll need to agree to a EULA before the download will start.
Once downloaded you should have a .pak file. Something similar to the following screenshot.
Installing MP4H in vRealize Operations Manager
Log in to vRealize Operations Manager as a user with permission to add a new management pack. Navigate to Data Sources > Integrations > Repository. From there click ADD.
Next click Browse. Navigate to the PAK file you previously downloaded.
After selecting the file click Upload. The upload took just a few seconds for me, but depending on your network connection it could vary.
Look for the message that the PAK file signature is valid and then click Next.
You’ll need to accept the EULA before clicking Next. The installer will immediately start.
Not long after, the installation will complete and you can click Finish.
Configure the Horizon Adapter
Back at the Integrations > Repository, there should now be an installed integration for the vRealize Operations Management Pack for Horizon. To begin configuring it click Add Account.
To start give the Horizon Integration a Name (A). This can be a general name or if you plan to have several Horizon pods you may want to distinguish them by a site or pod name. Optionally you can add a description to help clarify the different Horizon environments. Next to Horizon Connection Server (B) enter one connection server’s FQDN for the Horizon Pod you intend to collect metrics for.
Next, you need to provide credentials with access to the connection server. As noted in the documentation, you actually need an account with an Administrator role for Horizon due to the API restrictions. If you don’t already have some saved in vRealize Operations Manager you can set up new credentials by clicking the + (C).
When adding new credentials you need to provide a friendly name (A) for the account first. Then provide the username (B) with proper permissions to Horizon followed by the password (C) and finally the domain (D). Click OK once you’re done.
You should now see your credential friendly name listed. For the Collector/Group you may be able to leave the Default collector group selected. If you have a large vRealize Operations environment you may have dedicated collector groups set up and you would want to select the appropriate one for the Horizon adapter to use. When you’re ready click Validate Connection.
You may need to accept a certificate. In my lab, my Horizon Connection server is using the self-signed certificate currently and I needed to click Accept to continue.
If all is good you should see a “Test connection successful” message. Click OK to continue.
You may want to take a look at the Advanced Settings to see if you would like to adjust any of the metrics being collected from Horizon. For detailed descriptions of each, you can either click the information bubble or reference the documentation. Below is a screenshot of the default settings.
After making any changes you can now click Add.
Back on the Integrations screen under Accounts, you should now see the VMware Horizon Adapter.
If you click the arrow to expand the Horizon Adapter you may notice it has a status of Warning. In most cases, this is because it takes several seconds for the adapter services to start up. Hovering over the warning icon will give you some details.
For me, I refreshed the page a few seconds later and it showed a status of OK.
You should now start to see inventory and data being collected. I opened up the Horizon Inventory Dashboard which can be found under Visualize > Dashboards > Horizon > Horizon Inventory. Since this is my lab there wasn’t much to look at just yet, but information from my Horizon environment was being collected.
I hope this was helpful and thank you for reading.