Modern datacentres run on layers of virtualisation, applications, networks, and security policies that all need to be monitored together, not in isolation. As environments scale, the real challenge is not deploying the technology—it’s keeping it healthy, stable, and predictable over time.
This is where VMware Aria comes in.
VMware Aria is VMware’s cloud management platform designed to give organisations complete visibility across their virtual and cloud environments. It brings together metrics, logs, network flows, capacity insights, and application dependencies into one integrated ecosystem. Instead of monitoring the environment through multiple tools, teams can use Aria to see the full picture: performance, behaviour, security, and dependencies.
Aria is made up of several components, but the three that directly support infrastructure monitoring are:
- VMware Aria Operations
- VMware Aria Operations for Logs
- VMware Aria Operations for Networks
In this blog, we’ll break down what each platform does, how it supports day-to-day operations, and how they work together to give you full-stack visibility.
This section outlines how monitoring will be implemented using the three VMware Aria Operations components:
1. VMware Aria Operations – Monitoring Design
VMware Aria Operations will act as the core monitoring platform for the virtual infrastructure. It collects performance metrics from vCenter, ESXi hosts, and virtual machines, and uses these metrics to evaluate health, performance, and capacity at every layer. Once deployed, the system continuously analyses CPU, memory, disk, and network usage trends to identify performance issues early. Aria Operations does not just present raw metrics; it builds baselines of typical behaviour and highlights deviations that may indicate future issues.
Aria Operations will be configured to pull detailed metrics from each vCenter Server. This includes host hardware status, VM performance counters, datastore capacity information, and cluster-level resource usage. These metrics enable capacity forecasting so teams can see when resources are likely to run out and plan expansions ahead of time. The forecasting engine also identifies oversized or undersized virtual machines, helping the operations team optimise resource consumption.
Dashboards in Aria Operations provide a structured way of monitoring the environment. For example, the Host Performance dashboard allows engineers to quickly identify issues such as high CPU Ready times or memory contention. The VM Troubleshooting dashboard brings together CPU, memory, I/O, and network graphs into one place, making it easier to trace the source of performance complaints. If required, custom dashboards can be created for critical applications or specific business units so their behaviour can be monitored more closely.
Alerts in Aria Operations will be based primarily on VMware’s recommended thresholds, but custom alerting rules will also be applied. For example, alerts may be configured at specific CPU Ready levels, datastore latency thresholds, or memory ballooning levels to match the organisation’s performance expectations. All alerts are designed to provide context and recommended actions, giving the operations team clear guidance on what needs attention. Alerts can also be escalated to service desk tools or email groups.
In addition to real-time monitoring, Aria Operations will support scheduled reporting. These reports include cluster capacity summaries, host performance over time, datastore growth trends, and VM rightsizing recommendations. The operations team can use these reports in monthly service reviews or capacity planning meetings.
Monitoring Scope
VMware Aria Operations is the main platform for performance, health, and capacity monitoring of the virtual infrastructure. It collects metrics from:
vCenter Servers
ESXi hosts
Virtual machines
Datastores
NSX-T Manager and related objects (if integrated)
Aria Operations stores time-series metrics and uses analytics to learn “normal” behaviour and highlight anomalies, issues, and risks.
Data Collection and Adapters
vCenter Adapter
Primary data source for ESXi, VMs, clusters, and datastores.
Collection interval: typically 5 minutes (can be tuned if needed).
NSX-T Adapter (if deployed)
Collects metrics for logical switches, routers, edges, and firewalls.
Other Management Packs (optional)
Additional packs can be added later (e.g. for physical hardware, backup, storage) to extend monitoring.
All collectors use authenticated service accounts with read-only or least-privilege roles defined in vCenter and NSX.
Dashboards and Views
Out-of-the-box dashboards in Aria Operations will be used as the baseline, for example:
vSphere Overview – overall health of clusters, hosts, and VMs
Capacity and Utilisation – CPU, memory, and storage trends
Troubleshooting Dashboards – detailed views for specific objects when investigating issues
Where needed, simple custom dashboards will be created to:
Group objects by site, cluster, or application
Show key KPIs for management (e.g. top 10 busy clusters, host contention, datastore usage)
KPIs and Thresholds
Key metrics monitored include:
Cluster / Host
CPU usage (%)
Memory usage (%)
Disk latency (ms)
Network throughput and packet drops
VM
vCPU ready time and CPU contention
Memory usage and ballooning / swapping
Disk latency and IOPS
Datastores (non-vSAN)
Capacity used / free
Disk latency and outstanding IO
Default Aria Operations alert definitions and dynamic thresholds are used, with adjustments where the environment has known baselines (for example, high but normal CPU usage in test clusters).
Alerts and Notification Flow
Alert Types
Health / performance alerts (e.g. high CPU, datastore latency)
Risk alerts (e.g. capacity exhaustion in 30 days)
Efficiency alerts (e.g. oversized or idle VMs)
Alert Routing
Alerts are grouped and forwarded to the central ticketing system (e.g. ServiceNow, Jira) using email or webhook integration.
Critical alerts (e.g. host down, cluster redundancy at risk) are tagged with higher severity for on-call escalation.
Noise Reduction
Non-actionable alerts (e.g. short, transient spikes) are tuned or disabled after an agreed review period.
Alert policies are scoped per object group (e.g. production vs. non-production) to avoid unnecessary tickets from lab systems.
Capacity and Planning
Aria Operations is used to support capacity planning:
Tracks consumption trends for CPU, memory, and storage
Identifies when clusters are predicted to run out of capacity based on observed growth
Provides simple “what-if” analysis to estimate impact of adding or removing hosts
Capacity reports are generated monthly and reviewed by the infrastructure team.
Reporting and Responsibilities
Daily
Operations team monitors key dashboards and new critical alerts.
Weekly
Review of recurring alerts and potential tuning / remediation.
Monthly
Capacity and performance summary report for management.
The infrastructure operations team owns Aria Operations dashboards and alert configurations, with change control for any major policy changes.
2. VMware Aria Operations for Logs – Monitoring Design
Aria Operations for Logs provides centralised log management for the environment. Instead of manually reviewing logs on individual ESXi hosts or vCenter Server, all system logs are forwarded into a single platform. This ensures that operational and security events are captured reliably and retained for the required duration.
The platform will receive logs from vCenter Servers, ESXi hosts, and other infrastructure components. Logs can include events such as authentication failures, service restarts, hardware warnings, VM lifecycle events, and any configuration changes. If the customer chooses to forward application logs from VMs, those can also be processed and indexed for troubleshooting purposes.
Once logs are ingested, they become searchable in real time. This enables engineers to quickly investigate incidents by filtering and correlating logs from different sources. For example, if a host becomes unresponsive, the platform can show related warnings from ESXi, vCenter’s task history, and any VM-level events around the same time. This reduces the time required to identify the root cause of issues.
Aria Operations for Logs also supports alerting based on log patterns. Alerts can be created to detect repeated authentication failures, storage-related warnings, host PSOD events, or any specific text patterns the customer wants to monitor closely. These alerts supplement the metric-based alerts from Aria Operations, providing more context around system behaviour.
Dashboards in Aria Operations for Logs present log data in an organised manner. Examples include dashboards for ESXi health events, vCenter errors, and security-related events. These dashboards help teams monitor the environment without having to run manual searches. Logs can be retained for 30, 90, or more days depending on compliance and storage policies. The retention period should match operational and auditing needs, as older logs are often required during incident investigation or compliance reviews.
By centralising all logs, the environment gains consistent visibility and much faster troubleshooting capabilities. Instead of connecting manually to each ESXi host, engineers can access an indexed, searchable history of system activity.
VMware Aria Operations for Logs – Monitoring Design
Monitoring Scope
VMware Aria Operations for Logs is the central log management and analysis platform. It collects logs from:
vCenter Servers
ESXi hosts (via syslog)
NSX-T components (Managers, Edges, T0/T1 gateways)
Aria Operations nodes
Optionally, other infrastructure devices and systems that support syslog (e.g. firewalls, load balancers, Linux VMs)
No vSAN log content is required in this design.
Log Collection and Ingestion
ESXi hosts and other syslog sources forward to Aria Operations for Logs using:
Standard syslog (UDP/TCP 514) or
Encrypted syslog (TCP 6514 / 1514) where required.
vCenter sends events, tasks, and alarms through its native integration.
Aria Operations sends events into Logs to link metrics and logs for end-to-end troubleshooting.
Log volume and EPS (events per second) are estimated to ensure the appliance is correctly sized for the environment.
Content Packs and Dashboards
Built-in content packs are used to provide ready-made dashboards, queries, and alerts for core platforms (e.g. vSphere, NSX, Aria Operations itself).
Custom dashboards will be created where needed to:
Show a “single pane” of critical logs for production
Highlight failed logins, configuration changes, and system errors
Provide quick filters by site, environment, or application tag
Log-Based Alerts
Aria Operations for Logs generates alerts when log patterns match known issues or error conditions, for example:
Repeated authentication failures
ESXi host connection failures
NSX component errors
vCenter or Aria Operations service issues
Alert notifications are integrated with the same central ticketing / notification system used by Aria Operations to keep workflows consistent.
Where possible:
Metric + Log Correlation is used (e.g. a CPU spike in Aria Operations plus related error logs in Operations for Logs) to speed up root-cause analysis.
Retention and Storage
Log retention period is defined based on:
Troubleshooting needs (e.g. 30–90 days online)
Any audit or compliance requirements (e.g. longer retention in cheaper storage or external archive)
The appliance storage is sized to keep the agreed retention without impacting performance. When storage usage nears thresholds, the operations team either expands storage or adjusts retention.
Responsibilities
Platform Owners
Ensure all required devices and systems send logs to Aria Operations for Logs.
Maintain parsing rules and log source configurations if new platforms are added.
Operations Team
Review log-based alerts daily.
Use dashboards for incident investigation.
Tune noisy or duplicate alerts in a controlled manner.
3. VMware Aria Operations for Networks – Monitoring Design
Aria Operations for Networks provides visibility into traffic flows, network dependencies, and communication paths across the virtual and physical network. This platform focuses on understanding how applications communicate, detecting abnormal traffic patterns, and mapping the end-to-end network path for any VM.
The system will connect to vCenter Server to discover virtual machines and their relationships to hosts and networks. It can also integrate with physical switches, routers, and firewalls through SNMP, API connections, or flow exports such as NetFlow or IPFIX. This allows it to build a combined view of both virtual and physical network components.
One of the primary benefits of Aria Operations for Networks is the ability to analyse traffic flows. It shows which VMs communicate with each other, the volume of data exchanged, and whether any unexpected or unauthorised flows occur. This is particularly useful for troubleshooting connectivity issues. For example, if a VM cannot communicate with a database server, the platform can display the full path between them, highlighting any firewall drops, misconfigurations, or latency issues.
The system also provides application-level visibility. Aria Operations for Networks can automatically identify application components based on their communication patterns and present them as a visual map. This helps teams understand dependencies and allows better planning for changes or migrations.
Performance monitoring is another important capability. The platform can highlight areas of the network experiencing packet loss, increased latency, or bandwidth congestion. These insights allow the network team to identify potential bottlenecks or misconfigurations before they affect users. If NSX-T is deployed, the platform can also show security group behaviour and suggest firewall rules based on real traffic patterns. This helps maintain a secure and efficient micro-segmentation policy.
Network alerts are generated when anomalies are detected. Examples include detection of unexpected inbound traffic, high latency between specific workloads, or sudden changes in communication patterns. These alerts allow the network team to act quickly and reduce the impact of issues.
Reports generated by Aria Operations for Networks include application dependency maps, firewall rule usage summaries, traffic volume reports, and network health assessments. These reports support regular operational reviews and help validate that the network is functioning as intended.
VMware Aria Operations for Networks – Monitoring Design
Monitoring Scope
VMware Aria Operations for Networks provides network visibility, flow analysis, and security posture monitoring across virtual and (optionally) physical networks.
In this design it is used to monitor:
NSX-T logical switches, routers, and edges
Traffic flows between VMs, tiers, and applications
Connectivity between on-premises data centres and cloud endpoints (if present)
Firewall and security rules (where integrated)
Data Sources and Collectors
Typical data sources:
vCenter Servers – inventory of VMs, port groups, and distributed switches
NSX-T Manager – logical networking, routing, and security rules
Physical devices (optional) – switches, routers, firewalls via SNMP, API, or flow exports
Collector/Proxy nodes are placed close to key data sources to reduce latency and minimise impact.
Dashboards and Visualisation
Default Aria Operations for Networks dashboards are used to provide:
Application Topology Views
End-to-end paths between application tiers
Identification of dependencies (e.g. web → app → DB)
Flow Analytics
Who is talking to whom, over which ports
East-west vs. north-south traffic patterns
Security Posture
Unused firewall rules
Potential micro-segmentation policies
These dashboards help to:
Validate network changes
Understand impact of outages or degraded links
Prepare for future segmentation or migration projects
Thresholds and Alerts
Aria Operations for Networks is configured to raise alerts for:
Loss of connectivity between key application components
Abnormal changes in traffic volume or patterns
NSX-T or network component health issues
Potential security issues, such as new unexpected flows or changes to policies
Conclusion
Monitoring a VMware environment effectively requires more than just collecting metrics or reviewing logs. You need a unified view that connects performance, events, and network behaviour. VMware Aria delivers exactly that through three tightly integrated components: Aria Operations, Aria Operations for Logs, and Aria Operations for Networks.
- Aria Operations shows how the environment is performing.
- Aria Operations for Logs shows what is happening behind the scenes.
- Aria Operations for Networks shows how everything communicates.
Together, they give operations teams the visibility they need to keep systems running smoothly, troubleshoot issues faster, and plan capacity with confidence. By using the full Aria suite, organisations can move from reactive firefighting to proactive management, reducing downtime and improving the overall stability of their environment.