Notice there are two possible files you can download the OVA and the PAK file. Setup of vCOps is done via an OVA you download from VMware’s vSphere download page.
How to do this has been covered in a previous article. Prior to beginning your installation you will need to create an IP Pool for the virtual network you wish to deploy vCOps to. For a full side by side comparison of the 4 version please see the VMware supplied Editions Comparison. The way I look at it the free edition lets you see what’s wrong whereas the paid editions will not only let you see what’s wrong but actually fix them on the fly. Keep in mind that what you get with your vSphere Essentials Plus license (and up) is the Foundation edition, which has a greatly reduced toolset when compared to more feature rich, paid versions.
Views of this information once setup is available not only from the vCOps UI webpage but also from within the VI client once you install and enable the plugin. The goal of this is to let you see where your issues are and then go out and fix them. Further these health measures can be seen throughout the hierarchy, ranging from the overall “world” health down to the individual VM or datastore. Further there is a numeric score overlaid to allow you to quantify.
Green badges are good, red badges are bad, etc. VCenter Operations Manager (vCOps or vCO for short) uses a system of “badges” to display various system health states. For this reason VMware (as well as other vendors) have been bringing management dashboard applications to market to consolidate your view of all of these various items.
Doing these tasks manually, while possible, is in and of itself a full time job never mind the fact that your boss most likely wants you to actually do things as well as just monitor. You not only need to keep track of the health of your various hypervisors, but also the underlying storage and networking components as well as the individual Virtual Machines themselves. Operating and managing a virtualized system can be a complex and arduous task.