Aria Operations Dashboard Creation & Custom Metrics
Objectives
- Create a multi-widget dashboard for VM capacity planning and cost analysis, using both standard and custom metrics.
Prerequisites
VCF lab environment deployed and operational
Lab Environment
Standard VCF lab environment for Cloud Operations 8.x Professional
Tasks
Task 1 Aria Operations Dashboard Creation & Custom Metrics
Create a multi-widget dashboard for VM capacity planning and cost analysis, using both standard and custom metrics.
Create Dashboard: Dashboard name: "Production Capacity & Cost"Scope: Custom group "All Prod VMs" (tag: environment:prod)Auto-refresh: 5 minutes
Widget 1 - Cluster Capacity Heatmap: Metric: cpu|demand_percent, memory|demand_percentVisualization: Heatmap (clusters as rows)Threshold: Green <50%, Yellow 50-75%, Red >75%Drill-down: Click cluster → view individual VM allocation breakdown
Widget 2 - Time Remaining Trend: Metric: capacity|timeRemaining (super metric calculating weeks until exhaustion)Visualization: Line chart (one line per cluster)Time range: 12-month historical trendAnnotation: Mark when capacity planning actions taken (host addition, VM consolidation)
Widget 3 - VM Efficiency Table: List all VMs with columns: Name, CPU Allocation, CPU Demand, CPU Efficiency%, Memory Allocation, Memory Demand, Memory Efficiency%, Right-size RecommendationSort: Memory Efficiency % ascending (show over-provisioned VMs first)Filter: Show only VMs with >20% over-provisioning
Widget 4 - Monthly Cost Trend: Create super metric: vm_monthly_cost = (numvCPU 150 + memory_gb 10)Visualization: Stacked bar chart by costcenter tagInsight: Show which cost center is driving growth
Widget 5 - Rightsizing Savings Potential: Super metric: cpu_reclaim = (cpu|allocation - cpu|demand) for all prod VMsGauge widget showing total reclaimable vCPU and memoryCalculate potential cost savings: reclaimable_vCPU * $150
Configure Drill-Down Actions: Widget 1 heatmap clusters → link to "Cluster Detail" dashboardWidget 3 VM rows → link to "VM Performance" dashboardAll links open in new tab
Set Dashboard Sharing: Readers: Ops team group (view-only)Editors: Finance & Ops team leads (can modify dashboard)Owner: Ops director
Validation Gate
Check: Verify lab completion
Expected: Lab exercise completed successfully
Common Errors
Final Validation
Lab completed successfully
✓ All steps completed → No errors observed
Cleanup / Restore
• Revert to snapshot if needed