Overview
Migrating to Cloud enables organizations with a lot of benefits. This unofficial vRealize Log Insight Cloud Migration Guide will help users come up with a plan on how to migrate from vRealize Log Insight to vRealize Log Insight Cloud.
vRealize® Log Insight Cloud™ Value Proposition
VMware vRealize® Log Insight Cloud™ offers IT teams unified visibility across private, hybrid, and native public clouds by adding structure to unstructured log data, providing intuitive dashboards, and leveraging machine learning for faster troubleshooting.
It provides the following benefits
- Multi-Cloud Observability – It supports Public Clouds (AWS, Azure, & GCP) along with VMware Clouds like VMC on AWS and VMware Cloud on DELL EMC
- Availability – It provides availability commitment of 3 9s
- Scalability – It is designed to handle all kinds of machine-generated data while delivering near-real-time monitoring.
- Time to Value – Simple and flexible logging architecture allows IT teams to get quickly started which improves Productivity.
Getting Started with the Migration Journey
Before starting the migration project, it is important to understand the following
- vRealize Log Insight Cloud Architecture
- Differences/Similarities between vRealize Log Insight & vRealize Log Insight Cloud
1. VMware vRealize® Log Insight Cloud™ Architecture
2. Differences/Similarities between vRealize Log Insight & vRealize Log Insight Cloud
| Category | Product / Features | vRealize Log Insight | vRealize Log Insight Cloud |
| VMware Cloud | VMC On AWS | Not Supported | Supported |
| VMware Cloud | VMC on Dell EMC | Not Supported | Supported |
| Integration with VMware Product | VMware SDDC Integration (VC / ESXi + NSXv / NSX-T) |
Supported | Supported |
| Integration with VMware Product | vROPs | Supported with Onprem vROPs | Supported with vROPs Cloud |
| Integration with VMware Product | vRA | Supported with Onprem vRA | Currently its via Onprem vRLI. Direct Integration is on Roadmap |
| Integration with VMware Product | Wavefront | Not Supported | Supported |
| Cloud-Native | Tanzu Kubernetes Grid | Supported | Supported |
| Cloud-Native | Redhat OpenShift | Supported | Supported |
| Cloud-Native | Vanilla Kubernetes using kubeadm | Supported | Supported |
| Cloud-Native | Managed Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE) |
Not Supported | Supported |
| Alerts | Type of Alerts | Windowed | Windowed & Real-Time |
| Notification | Webhook Notifications | Supported
via shims |
Direct Integration |
| Notification | Email Notification | Supported | Supported |
| Content Pack | Content Packs | Supported | Supported* (90% Parity with On-prem |
| Dashboards | Dashboards | Supported | Supported |
| Log Management | Log Forwarding | Supported | Supported |
| Log Management | Log Masking | Not Supported | Supported |
| Log Management | Log Retention | Supported | Supported ** |
| Log Management | Log Archival | Supported (NFS) | Supported (S3) **** |
| Log Management | Log Partition | Supported (NFS) | Supported (S3) ***** |
| Log Management | Log Query | Supported (Up to 72TB of searchable storage) |
Supported (Up to 30 days) |
| Log Management | Log Export | Unlimited Log Export (CSV, JSON, RAW) |
Export limited to 20,000 Events (RAW only) |
| Log Management | Live Tail | Not Supported | Supported |
| Log Management | KB Insights | Not Supported | Supported |
| RBAC | Access | Local Accounts / AD Integration | AD Integration via Cloud Services Portal (CSP) |
| RBAC | Customer Roles | Not Supported | Supported |
| RBAC | Custom Data Sets | Not Supported | Supported |
| Compliance | STIG | Supported | N/A |
| Compliance | FIPs | Supported | N/A |
| Licensing | Licensing | Charged per PLU or OSI | Based on GB ingested |
* – Please reach out to the Account team if you have any Custom Content Pack).
** – Maximum of 30 days.
*** – Archival to S3 has additional charges.
Migration Planning
Proper planning is a very critical task for your migration journey to be successful. Following questionnaire would help you with migration planning
- What VMware Products do you plan to migrate?
- What Applications do you plan to migrate?
- How would traffic flow look like from your corporate network to Cloud?
- Does your Security Team have any requirements?
- Does the corporate network have enough bandwidth?
- Do you have any GDPR requirements for the data?
- How will migration affect your internal user experience?
- Will there be any downtime due to the migration?
- Do you have any Custom Content Pack requirements?
- Do you have any long-term archival requirements for the data?
Setting up your Environment for Migration
After you have done your planning exercise you can start setting your vRealize Log Insight Cloud Environment. There are 2 options when starting the migration
- Configure Event Forwarding in vRealize Log Insight to forward logs to vRealize Log Insight Cloud. This allows you to play around with the environment before cutting it over completely*
- Modify the Sources to send logs to vRealize Log Insight Cloud.
Depending upon your Sources / Application following feature/agent can be leveraged
| Source / Application | Feature/Agent | Comments |
| vSphere Infrastructure | vSphere Integration | You can configure vSphere Integration via Cloud Proxy. This helps configure syslog configuration on VC & ESXi to point it to Cloud Proxy |
| NSXv / NSX-T | Cloud Proxy | Configure Syslog via API to point it to Cloud Proxy |
| Kubernetes Cluster (For e.g., TKG) | Fluentd
Fluentbit |
You can configure Kubernetes Clusters to forward logs using the agent of your choice. |
| Traditional Applications | Fluentd
Fluentbit Logstash vRLI Agent |
If you have traditional applications, you can leverage agents of your choice to forward logs.
· Fluentd/Fluentbit/Logstash – Allows Log ingestion directly to Cloud or via Cloud Proxy* · vRLI Agent – Log Ingestion is only supported via Cloud Proxy |
* – This might require additional licensing to have both Products
** – Payload should be JSON.
Operating the vRealize Log Insight Cloud Environment
Once you have enabled the logs to be sent to vRealize Log Insight Cloud, there are a couple of things that you should do to manage the environment.
- Controlling User Access – vRealize Log Insight Cloud supports two default service roles from VMware Cloud Services – administrator and user. In vRealize Log Insight Cloud, the organization owner can create and assign additional roles from the Access Control page. For more details, Please Read the How to Control Access
- Setting up Content Packs – Content packs contain dashboards, extracted fields, saved queries, and alerts that are related to a specific product or set of logs. For more details, Please Read the Working with Content Pack documentation
Next Steps
If you’re not already using vRealize Log Insight Cloud, check out our free 30-day trial. To learn more about how to use Log Insight Cloud, please check out
- VMware Pathfinder.
- VMware Cloud Management Blogs
- VMware Cloud Management You Tube Channel