vSphere With Operations Management | Overview, License, Edition

If you have a complicated vSphere environment, you can try vSphere with Operations Management that offers intelligent operations and improves availability.

By @Crystal Last Updated November 4, 2022

What is vSphere with Operations Management

vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM) offers the most trusted virtualization platform with intelligent operations and performance. The virtualization platform is able to manage capabilities excellently that can run applications at high service levels. VMware vSOM allows you to monitor the operational performance of vSphere environment and optimize capacity to save hardware cost to the maximum.

Note: For beginners, you may wonder the difference among VMware vSphere vs vCenter vs ESXi.

What are the 2 components of vSphere with Operations Management

In VMware vSphere with Operations Management 6, it combines two components into a single product with a single license.

  • vSphere
  • VMware vRealize Operations Standard

All virtual machines running on Operations Management processors have access to the two features, which are not detachable. The two components can be used as a single entitlement. Upgrades are available on a version-by-version basis or through vReal versions or through the vRealize Operations Insight plug-in, but vSphere and VMware vRealize Operations components cannot be upgraded independently.

How to use vSphere with Operations Management

As vSphere evolves, you need a pro-active management tool to provide an obvious platform of monitoring, performance, and capacity. vSphere with Operations Management can analyze and monitor data carefully and provide feedback, and it also enables you to utilize the virtualization platform by resizing capacity of virtual machines and improving utilization of resource. VMware vSOM offers the broadest choice for virtualizing business. Details are as follows.

1. Intelligent Operations: Enable IT to proactively respond to specific performance. It can collect and analyze performance, correlate anomalies, and discover the root causes of problems. 2. Simplify IT operations at a lower cost: Reduce operational expense and significantly simplify the management of large IT environments that are dispersed across multiple locations. 3. Improve application performance and business continuity: Support for resource-intensive applications to ensure SLAs and availability. It reduces the cost and complexity of business continuity and disaster recovery with vMotion, vSphere Replication and vShield Endpoint against service outages and data loss. 4. Optimize Capacity: Makes it easier to manage and optimize capacity. Reclaim unused VMs and resize under-provisioned VMs to moderate size, which helps to use resources efficiently.

License of vSphere with Operations Management

VMware vSphere with Operations Management 6/6.5 is licensed on a per-processor basis. A vSphere with Operations Management processor license key is required for each physical processor (CPU) in the server. There are no restrictions on physical cores or physical RAM and also no restrictions on the number of virtual machines that can run on each properly licensed vSphere with Operations Management 6 processor.

License keys are 25-character alphanumeric strings, and it doesn’t contain any server-specific information and are not tied to a specific piece of hardware. So you can assign the same license key to multiple vSphere and vSphere with Operations Management hosts, as long as the sum of physical processors on those hosts does not exceed the encoded license quantity in the license key.

Example: If you have 2-CPU (each with 6 cores) hosts with 128GB of physical RAM, and each host want to get licenses with vSphere with Operations Management 6.5 Enterprise Plus edition. Each physical CPU requires a license, so four vSOM 6.5 Enterprise Plus licenses are required.

Package of vSphere with Operations Management

VMware offers several packaging options for all size of business.

● vSphere with Operations Management Standard Edition: it offers an entry-level solution for basic server consolidation which reduces hardware costs and accelerate application deployment.

● vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Edition: it ensures the business continuity and helps IT operations to gain visibility into virtual environments and optimize resource utilization through a unified console.

● vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus Edition: it simplifies the management data centers. Proactively identify and remediate emerging performance issues and optimize resource utilization through a unified console.

vSphere vs vSphere with Operations Management

vSphere is the trusted server virtualization platform that provides the best foundation for your applications, your cloud and your business. It’s high-available to use vSphere HA for virtual machine failover.

vSphere with Operations Management takes virtualization to the next level with intelligent operations management. It offers you better insights and improves performance and availability.

This chart will demonstrate the differences between vSphere and vSphere with Operations Management in detail. 

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Frequently asked questions about VMware vSOM

Q: How many license keys will a customer get when they purchase vSphere with Operations Management?

A: vSphere with Operations Management will show up in the customer’s license portal as a unique entitlement. This entitlement will generate one license key that the customer will activate in vCenter Server.

Q. Are there VMware Acceleration Kits for vSphere with Operations Management?

A: Yes, there are three Acceleration Kits associated with the three editions of vSphere with Operations Management. Each kit consists of six processor licenses for vSphere with Operations Management, and a license for one instance of vCenter Server Standard.

Q. Can I purchase an upgrade from vSphere with Operations Management to VMware vRealize™ Operations™ Advanced and Enterprise?

A. All vSphere with Operations Management editions include VMware vRealize Operations Standard. Customers can add VMware vRealize Operations Advanced to all editions of VMware vSphere with Operations Management by purchasing the vRealize Operations Insight add-on, a bundled solution that includes vRealize Operations Advanced and vRealize Log Insight. Customers who want VMware vRealize Operations Enterprise have two options: (1) purchase a paid upgrade to vCloud Suite Enterprise or (2) purchase standalone VMware vRealize Operations Enterprise on a per-VM basis.

Summary

This article introduces the information of VMware vSphere with Operation Management including its components, licenses and packages, and compares the differences between vSphere and vSOM. In VMware environment, vSphere with Operations Management continuously monitor your data center to get the most performance and availability out of your infrastructure. It improves the efficiency of the IT staff by freeing up the time to focus on the more important matters.

In addition to vSphere with Operation Management, you may wonder what is VM replication and how to enable it on VMware vSphere.