Vmware Skyline Download
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Q. Will my Skyline Advisor data and settings be retained in Advisor Pro?
A. Yes, all data and settings are retained upon activating Advisor Pro.
Q. Will Skyline Advisor Pro collect the same types and amounts of data as Advisor?
A. Yes, please reference the Skyline data collection examples document.
Q. What cloud services will be used to analyze the data in Skyline Advisor Pro?
A. Data will be transmitted to a secure backends located in the United States. Data may reside within VMware maintained data centers or within AWS hosted services managed by VMware employees. For further details, please review the VMware Support Services Sub-processor List.
Q. Will Advisor Pro replace Advisor?
A. Eventually, Skyline Advisor will sunset and be replaced by Advisor Pro. Activate today to receive exclusive benefits of Advisor Pro.
Q. Why am I not seeing new Operational Summary reports?
A. On August 25, 2022, the Operational Summary Report was officially entering the first phase of retirement where no new reports would be created. In mid-October 2022, the final phase will complete removing OSR functionality from Skyline. Until mid-October 2022, the reports will be available in the OSR Library for download. Alternatively, Premier Services customers have access to Success 360 Insights Reporting which replaces OSR functionality. For more information on the Success 360 Insights reporting, please check out the VMware Skyline Product Documentation.
Q. What is VMware Skyline?
A. VMware Skyline is a proactive self-service support technology available to customers with an active Production Support or Premier Services contract. Skyline automatically and securely collects, aggregates and analyzes customer specific product usage data to proactively identify potential issues and improve time-to-resolution.
Q. How does VMware Skyline work?
A. The VMware Skyline Collector is a standalone virtual appliance that automatically and securely collects product usage data. Product usage data includes configuration, feature and performance data.
Product usage data collected by the Skyline Collector, and sent to VMware, is analyzed. The analysis of this data is then presented to you within Skyline Advisor. You access Skyline Advisor via VMware Cloud Services, using a Customer Connect username and password.
Q. How do you manage the VMware Skyline Collector?
A. The VMware Skyline Collector installation and configuration is simple and usually takes no more than 30 minutes to complete. Once complete, ongoing administration is minimal. The Skyline Collector has two interfaces, the Collector administrative user interface, and the Virtual Appliance Management Interface (VAMI).
Skyline Collector administrative user interface - _Collector_FQDN_or_IP_Address
Skyline Collector VAMI - _Collector_FQDN_or_IP_Address:5480
* The Skyline Collector VAMI is not available in Skyline Collector version 2.7 and later.
Q. How do I get started?
A. You can get started with VMware Skyline here: VMware Skyline Get Started. This wizard will walk you through creating a Cloud Services Organization for Skyline (if-needed), downloading and installing the Skyline Collector, registering your Skyline Collector with your Cloud Services Organization, and accessing Skyline Advisor.
Premier Services and/or Success 360 customers should notify their Support Account Manager (SAM) that they intend to install, or have already installed the Skyline Collector. Installing Skyline enables an enhanced level of customer support that Premier Services can provide to you, in addition to all the current benefits of Premier Services.
For more information about VMware Skyline, please see the VMware Skyline Homepage .
Q. How much does Skyline cost?
A. The proactive support capabilities provided by Skyline are available to customers who have an active Production Support, Premier Services, Success 360, or Aria Universal Suite at no additional cost.
Q. Do all support entitlement levels receive the same functionality with Skyline?
A. See KB Article 79286 to view the features and functionality available within Skyline Advisor, based upon your support entitlement (Production or Premier).
Q. What product information is being collected today.
A. Today, we analyze product usage data from VMware vSphere, NSX Data Center for vSphere (NSX-V), NSX Data Center (NSX-T), vSAN, Horizon View, Aria Operations (vROps), and VMware Cloud Foundation.
vSAN Support Insight, included in-product for vSAN 6.6, provides enhanced visibility into your vSAN environment, allowing Technical Support Engineers (TSEs) to quickly diagnose issues in vSAN environments and reduce the time-to-resolution during troubleshooting. Right now, vSAN Support Insight does not require the Skyline Collector, rather is enabled within the release of vSAN 6.6. For more information, visit the vSAN Support Insight page.
For examples of product usage data collected by Skyline, please see KB Article 71071 .
Q. Can VMware Skyline be deployed in large VMware environments?
A. VMware recommends an incremental rollout of Skyline in large VMware environments. You can start by attaching a single vCenter Server to the Skyline Collector. You can attach additional products to the same Skyline Collector incrementally.
There is no configuration maximum for number of products per Skyline Collector.
If you have geographically-disperse environments, we recommend deploying a Skyline Collector in each geographic location. VMware aggregates information collected from multiple Skyline Collectors within Skyline Advisor.
See the Skyline Planning and Deployment Guide for more details regarding how to architect Skyline.
If you have additional questions about VMware Skyline, please talk to your VMware Account Team. Premier Services / Success 360 customers, or talk to your Support Account Manager (SAM). If you have a Technical Account Manager (TAM), you can talk to that individual regarding VMware Skyline.
Q. Can different email address domains register Skyline Collectors under same Entitlement Account (EA) number.
A. Yes. VMware Skyline is now part of VMware Cloud Services. This enables customers to segment the proactive findings generated by Skyline based upon a user-created Organization. The VMware Skyline Get-Started page provides a wizard that walks a customer through creating an Organization within VMware Cloud Services, downloading the Skyline Collector, installing the Skyline Collector, migrating existing Skyline Collectors, and logging into Skyline Advisor. Skyline Collector 2.x is required as part of introducing VMware Skyline within VMware Cloud Services.
To review the Entitlement Account details associated with your Customer Connect account, please see:
Q. Why does Skyline make recommendations that require features not available in all versions of a product?
A. Product license information is not included within the product usage data collected by Skyline. Therefore, Skyline is unaware of what version of a product you are utilizing. Some Skyline Findings are based upon VMware Validated Design Decisions, such as enabling Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and High Availability (HA). However, DRS and HA are features only available in certain versions of VMware vSphere.
Because Skyline is unaware of your product license version, and some Findings recommend the utilization of features only available in certain versions of a product, Skyline may make a recommendation that is not available within your licensed version of a product. In this instance, we recommend you Hide the Finding, using the Hide Findings feature within Skyline Advisor.
Q. Is Skyline available to Basic Support Customers?
A. No, Skyline is not available to Basic Support customers. A customer with only Basic support will be able to onboard to Skyline Advisor and enter a limited mode state. Limited mode will allow the customer to activate TAM Reports or add a support entitlement to Production or VMware Success 360. For more information about the limited mode experience reference KB79286 .
Q. What is the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)?
A. For details regarding the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), please the VMware CEIP overview page.
Note: VMware Skyline participates in the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) Enhanced participation level. The Enhanced participation level includes all data types under the Standard participation level, plus product logs.
Q. What types of Product Usage data is collected?
A. See the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) overview page for details regarding product usage data.
To see additional examples of the product usage data collected by Skyline, please see KB Article 71071.
Q. Does Skyline collect personally identifiable information (PII)?
A. During the collection of VMware product usage data, where personally identifiable is known to reside, the Skyline Collector has been instrumented to remove such information, so that it is not collected and transmitted to the Skyline data service remotely.
Q. What will the Product Usage data be used for?
A. The purposes for which VMware uses product usage data is described on VMware's Customer Experience Improvement Program website.
Q. How is customer data protected?
A. We have implemented reasonable technical, administrative and organizational safeguards given the nature of the information collected. Access to the data via Skyline services is maintained using a least privilege model. All VMware employees must receive training and obtain certification for responsible use and handling of product usage data collected via Skyline.
Q. Is the data encrypted?
A. There are two data methods of data collection within Skyline. The first, product usage data, is collected to provide proactive findings, recommendations, and inventory. The second are support bundles which are collected and transmitted via Skyline Log Assist, as-part of troubleshooting an issue within an open Support Request with VMware Global Support Services (GSS).
Product usage data collected by the Skyline Collector is transferred to VMware using TLS 1.2 cipher suite TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384. The product usage data that is transferred to Skyline's storage platform is encrypted-at-rest.
Support bundles collected by the Skyline Collector, via Skyline Log Assist, are transferred to VMware's Technical Support systems using TLS 1.2 cipher suite TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384. The support bundles are not stored within the Skyline storage platform.
If a customer is utilizing an SSL inspection proxy, then the proxy determines the encryption method used to encrypt product usage data, and support bundles collected, in-transit.
Q. Where is the data center(s) located where VMware Skyline information is stored?
A. Data is transmitted to a secure backends located in the United States. Data may reside within VMware maintained data centers or within AWS hosted services managed by VMware employees.
Q. Is VMware Skyline impacted by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?
A. VMware is subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and complies with GDPR as applicable. VMware's Privacy Notices available at provide notice regarding VMware's data protection and privacy practices.
Q. Does Skyline collect information that identifies an individual?
A. There are two methods of data collection within Skyline. One to deliver proactive analytics, and the other for reactive support using the Skyline Log Assist.