I have recently been delivering a Virtualization Assessment engagement for an Enterprise customer, where they have benefited of the recently introduced VMware Application Dependency Planner(ADP). I thought many enterprises & consultants out there would be interested to find out the what, why, when & how they can benefit of this new offering. Below I will try to give a brief of the answers:

What is Application Dependency Planner (ADP)?

VMware Application Dependency Planner is a consulting tool that provides automated, real-time application discovery and dependency mapping to accelerate datacenter migration, precisely plan infrastructure consolidations, and confidently virtualize business critical applications. VMware and partner consultants can use this agentless, non-intrusive, and continuous dependency mapping tool across physical and virtual application infrastructures to quickly gain an understanding of service dependencies with accuracy and efficiency.

Not to confuse it with VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager (ADM). Where ADM had to be licensed by the customer to use it & permanently run it to keep an updated Application Dependency Mapping, ADP is a consulting tool that VMware Consultants and partners can use to help customer prepare for any Data Center transformation being Virtualization, Cloud Computing, SDDC, or even a disaster recovery. The customer does not have to purchase an ADP license, & the consultant will deliver the Application Dependency mapping for the customer applications as a service as a part of consulting engagement (Ex: Virtualization Assessment Engagements offered by VMware & its partners). This should give customers quicker results at lower costs, & help them succeed with their Data Center transformation.

 

Why do I need to use VMware Application Dependency Planner (ADP)?

Having depth knowledge of the applications in your environment is critical to the success of any Data Center transformation effort being Virtualization, Cloud Computing, SDDC, or even just building your Disaster Recovery. You will need to know your Applications SLAs, Required Capacity, Security Constrains, Application Dependency, & more. While most of these requirements and knowledge can be collected by conducting interviews across the SMEs and business owners of the applications, application dependency mapping has proved to be more challenging due to the dynamic nature of application dependance as well the lack of complete application dependency knowledge in most enterprises.

While being challenging, Application dependency mapping knowledge is critical prior to any Data Center transformation effort to avoid a catastrophic failure. Imagine the case where you build a disaster recovery solution, & when the time come to use it you discover that your most critical business application is not coming up as no one has thought of one of its forgotten about dependency. I am sure that is not a scenario that any of us wish for. Luckily today there is automated tools & consultancy service that can help you with it including VMware Virtualization Assessment Service (Include Capacity Planning & the use of Application Dependency Planner).

When should I consider VMware Virtualization Assessment service?

As mentioned earlier in this post, VMware Virtualization Assessment consist usually of two main parts Capacity Planning & Application Dependency planning where it can be customized to give a more in depth understanding of the customer applications. This make such a service crucial before or while planning for any Data Center Transformation effort being Virtualization,  Moving to the Cloud, SDDC, or even Building a Disaster Recovery.

How to obtain a VMware Application Dependency Planner or VMware Virtualization Assessment Service?

If you are a customer then your best bet is to contact your VMware Sales Rep/SE/TAM, & as a start you might want to check the VMware Virtualization Assessment Service Datasheet that can be found at: Virtualization Assessment Data Sheet

How to install & Configure VMware Application Dependency Planner?

If you are a VMware Consultant, then the tool can be downloaded from the Savo pages though partners can get it from the partners portal. Below are the steps to install and configure VMware ADP to scan Application Dependency for an environment running vSphere & where you will deploy multiple collectors and a Separate aggregator.

Deploy ADP DB:

1.  First deploy the Postgres DB Appliance using the supplied OVF (at least 80GB disk available for DB & Thick provisioning it with lazy zeroed is recommended)
2. Power on the ADP DB.
3. When the Postgres DB appliance first powered on a password is randomly generated for the user root.  To change it use /opt/aurora/sbin/set_password
4. Change the PermitRootLogin to yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
5. Enable time Sync using: /usr/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd timesync enable
6.  Logout

Deploy ADP Aggregator:

1. Deploy ADP Aggregator Virtual Appliance using the downloaded OVF(it takes about 80GB as well).
2. After booting the ADP Aggregator choose yes to run the setup
3. Change the Password
4. provide IP Information
5. Setup the time zone
6. Use an NTP for time sync option when asked to sync time
7. When rebooting the ADP Aggregator(This happen automatically as a part of the setup) it will take a while to reboot it 10-15 minutes
8. Choose yes to setup the appliance roles, Choose installation type, Then enter the DB IP & Password (Take several minutes to complete). In our Scenario, we will choose Aggregator with Separate Postgress DB.
9. Login again with the root user
10. Browse to /home/nlayers/Seneca/tools using: cd /home/nlayers/Seneca/tools
11. Run the following command to configure the Postgress DB # ./update_postgress_configurations.sh  (This command is run on the Aggregator VA as well).
12. If you get asked for the DB password again and installation stuck at that point, this means you have entered it incorrectly and you will need to re-do the role installation. Entering the password again does not work. You can use the role_setup command to re-setup the appliance role.
13. To complete the DB Configuration run the following commands on the ADP Aggregator VA

su – nlayers

cd /home/nlayers/Seneca/db_scripts/postgress/

./db_create.sh prod

./db_create.sh dev

14-  Use the below commands to start the service of the ADP Aggregator Appliance:

su – root

adm_control.pl — restart all            (This restart take several minutes)

You have just completed the ADP Aggregator installation; now let’s configure the Aggregator before proceeding with installing the collectors.

1. Get the ADP License Key by opening /home/nlayers/license-key.txt file on the ADP Aggregator. Note it down or copy it somewhere as you will need it in further steps.
2. Access your ADP Aggregator page using IP/URL from IE(The only supported browser at the moment)
3. Login using the default user name and password: admin/123456
4. As soon you are login to the ADP aggregator you will be hitting the license properties page. You will need to hit the upload a new license then enter the license key obtained in step one before you can do anything at the web interface.
5. Run the self test to ensure the system is installed correctly by going to Manage => System => Start Self Test   (Make sure all component has a result of OK in green).

      Installing the Collector:

1. At every ESXi host where you are planning to deploy a collector you will need to create a port group with Promiscuous mode set to accept and that where you will connect your ADP Collector Discovery port to.
2. Deploy the collector OVF to every host you need to collect Data from & make sure you connect the Network ports to the right network.
3. Power on the collectors & go through the setup where you will need to provide IP configurations as well the IP of the aggregator.

       Configuring the Aggregator:

1. Configure the IP range and scope of Servers to discover from: Manage => Passive Discovery.
2. Initialize the Discovery by going to Manage => System => Restart Discovery
3. Now you are ready should start seeing data popping up in your dashboard.

Hope you find this helpful.