VMware Skyline updates and Global Availability

In an update from my previous post, I wanted to tell you about some of the exciting updates in Skyline v1.4 announced at VMworld Vegas 2018.  Skyline is no stranger to VMworld, and this year did not disappoint, with a raft of updates, hands on labs and expert sessions, including a few tables dedicated to Skyline at the exclusive TAM Customer Central.

Here’s a summary of the announcements made in no particular order:

Global Availability

VMware Skyline is now available globally, which is great for customers looking to increase the level of proactive monitoring they’re doing right now.  One of the key benefits of Skyline in my opinion, is that even if you do zero proactive monitoring, if you’re entirely reactive to incidents and issues, deploying the Skyline collector means that you have taken your first step to get ahead of issues in your environment, and begun your proactive support journey.  Skyline is also now available for customers with Production Support!  Yes that’s right, VMware have opened the doors for all customers with an active support subscription.  As you’ll of read in my previous post, this was initially exclusive to BCS and MCS customers.

vSAN Support

With version 1.4, we now see support for vSAN 6.6, meaning the full SDDC stack is here, proactively helping you to avoid support calls at 3am on a Sunday night, which I’m sure we’ve all had…. or am I just unlucky?!  Skyline now supports vSphere 5.5 (although very soon EOGS) and above, and NSX 6.1 and above.  I’ve read also that the number of proactive findings has increased across the board, helping you to spot issues before they’re er… issues 🙂  You can read more about vSAN proactive support and review the new proactive findings here.

Skyline Log Assist

You raise a Support Request (SR), and the VMware Global Support Services (GSS) engineer needs you to upload logs via MyVMware or FTP.  It’s not too much trouble as you need your issue fixed, but wouldn’t it be great if VMware could get the logs they need, with minimal time and effort from you?  Consider it done!  With Skyline Log Assist, Skyline allows Technical Support Engineers (TSEs) to request logs from a vCenter Server or ESXi host, for example, attach the logs to an open Support Request and submit to the customer for approval. All you need to do is Approve or Deny the log request. If you approve, Skyline orchestrates the retrieval of the required logs and sends these to your TSE!  Simples 🙂

Skyline Advisor

Skyline Advisor is a Software as a Service (SaaS) application, delivered by VMware, that allows customers to view their proactive findings and recommendations on-demand. Skyline Advisor contains Account Details, Proactive Findings and an OSR Library.

Skyline Advisor provides an overview of the Skyline Collector(s) installed within your environment, including vCenter, ESXi, NSX Manager numbers etc.  Drilling into each of these will then reveal potential issues identified by the Skyline collector, based upon severity, category and source name, helping you to filter the findings and tackle issues in an order that you see fit.  You can also use the filter to produce a report of issues that you can direct to your storage, networking or vSphere administrators.  MCS and BCS customers will be able to generate current and past Operational Summary Reports (OSR) which they can work through alone or with a SAM if they have one.

Skyline Advisor and Skyline Log Assist will be available to all customers receiving proactive support with Skyline. Watch for updates on the VMware Support Insider blog and by following us on Twitter, @VMwareCSE (VMware Customer Support Experience). Additional details about today’s Skyline announcements are available on the VMware Skyline home page.

You can read more on the VMware Support Offerings webpage here.VMware Skyline is subject to the VMware End User License Agreement; Read more here.

To get started with Skyline you can sign up for the Managed Access program at the bottom of the page or here, or if you have one, contact your VMWare TAM who can assist you.

You can also watch VMware’s Download, Installation & Configuration below.