Download, install, and use TCA Content pack

Products

• VMware Telco Cloud Automation
• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)
• VMware Telco Cloud Platform

Issue/Introduction

• How to configure / use the VMware - Telco Cloud Automation content pack

Purpose of the Content Pack

• It provides predefined dashboards, queries, alerts, and extracted fields tailored to TCA infrastructure and applications.
• Designed to help:
  • Quickly visualize TCA logs.
  • Monitor application and infrastructure health.
  • Track Kubernetes workloads, VMs, and telco services.
  • Analyze Postgres, Kafka, Redis, and TCA microservices logs in one pane.

Prerequisite

• Ensure logs are being forwarded from the TCA-M / TCA-CP environment
  • See Configure TCA to forward logs to Aria for Logs

Environment

• Aria for Logs / vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) 8.x
• TCA 3.2, 3.4
• TCP 3.x, 4.x, 5.x

Resolution

Download and install the TCA Content pack

1. Download the TCA Content Pack for VMware Aria Automation for Logs
2. Login to Aria for Logs
3. Go to Content pack > Import Content Type
4. Browse and upload the TCA content pack downloaded earlier
5. Click on Import

Explore TCA logs using Aria for Logs

1. Log into Aria for Logs
2. Go to Explore Logs

• • Adjust the time period
    • The Custom Time range option to edit time period specific to the issue that is being investigated
  • Filter the log results
    • Use the search text box to find only those events that contain the specified keywords by entering any complete keywords, globs, or phrases.
    • Use the ADD FILTER option to filter based on field search criteria such as the following:
      • source / hostname (such as TCA-M / TCA-CP). See Understanding the Source and Hostname fields
      • event_type
      • text
    • For more information see Searching and Filtering Log Events
  • Export logs
    • Click on the Export or share current query button
    • Click on Export Chart Data
    • Select CSV or JSON 
      • Per-export row limit is 20,000 events.
    • Click on EXPORT 
  • Export Data from a dashboard
    • To export data from a dashboard, one must transfer the results to a Explore Logs query.
    • In a dashboard, depending on the widget, you can transfer the data by clicking on the Open in Explore Logs page button or the click on the View more results in Explore Logs page link.
    • Follow the instructions above to export the results.

Additional Information

Overview of TCA content pack dashboards:

• Namespace

  • Kubernetes namespaces (k8s_ns), pod-level events.
  • Useful for: Identifying which namespace generates most events, debugging issues per namespace.

• Postgres

  • Postgres pods, database-related events.
  • Useful for: Monitoring Postgres health and load.

• Kafka

  • Kafka workloads and pod-level events.
  • Useful for: Ensuring Kafka messaging services are functioning, spotting errors quickly.

• TCA Applications

  • Specific TCA services (tca-app, tca-api, tca-platform-manager, tca-ui, etc.)
  • Useful for: Full-stack observability of TCA microservices.