Networking requirements

Before you deploy nodes and build up clusters, it is important to get familiar with all the networking requirements that vRealize Operations has. These requirements must be met to ensure not only successful deployment, but also successful operational continuity of the nodes and full VMware support in case of issues.

Most of the requirements are pretty standard industry requirements for any piece of software, such as having IP and FQDN forward and reverse DNS lookup resolution for all nodes. Others are more specific to the product, such as using one IP subnet and layer 2 network, or having 5 ms or less latency between all analytic cluster nodes.

It is worth mentioning that, although introduced a while ago, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is still not widely used in the public space. If you are one of those enthusiasts that have implemented IPv6 in your environment and are using it, vRealize Operations supports the protocol. Although the product supports IPv6 implementation, with certain limitations, my recommendation to you is to stick to IPv4 until a necessity comes that requires you to move to IPv6.

Although IPv6 addresses are supported, you cannot mix IPv6 and IPv4.

vRealize Operations uses several network ports to communicate with VMware vCenter Server®, VMware Horizon View, and vRealize Operations components between node instances. You must ensure the following ports are opened across firewalls, between the corresponding servers, or vRealize Operations components:

vRealize Operations does not support customizing the server ports it uses.

For a full list of vRealize Operations, 6.6 networking requirements and limitations, make sure to check the VMware official product documentation.

It is also very important to be aware of the following latency requirements:

  • Network latency between Analytics nodes should be <5 ms
  • Network latency between remote collectors and Analytics nodes should be <200 ms
  • Network bandwidth should be >= 1 GBps between analytics nodes
  • Storage latency should be <10-15 ms per virtual disk of vRealize Operations nodes