VMware Aria Operations MCP Skill

Author: Wei Zhou, VMware by Broadcom — wei-wz.zhou@broadcom.com This is a community-driven project by a VMware engineer, not an official VMware product. For official VMware developer tools see developer.broadcom.com.

AI-assisted monitoring and capacity planning for VMware Aria Operations (vRealize Operations) via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Overview

vmware-aria exposes 18 MCP tools for interacting with Aria Operations through natural language AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Goose, etc.):

Total: 18 tools — 16 read-only, 2 write (acknowledge/cancel alerts)

Quick Start

# Install
uv tool install vmware-aria

# Configure
mkdir -p ~/.vmware-aria
cat > ~/.vmware-aria/config.yaml << 'EOF'
targets:
  prod:
    host: aria-ops.example.com
    username: admin
    port: 443
    verify_ssl: true
    auth_source: LOCAL
default_target: prod
EOF

# Set password (never in config.yaml)
echo "VMWARE_ARIA_PROD_PASSWORD=your_password" > ~/.vmware-aria/.env
chmod 600 ~/.vmware-aria/.env

# Verify setup
vmware-aria doctor

CLI Examples

# List top CPU consumers
vmware-aria resource top --metric cpu|usage_average --top 10

# Check active CRITICAL alerts
vmware-aria alert list --criticality CRITICAL

# Acknowledge an alert
vmware-aria alert acknowledge <alert-id>

# Fetch 4-hour CPU + memory metrics for a VM
vmware-aria resource metrics <vm-id> --metrics cpu|usage_average,mem|usage_average --hours 4

# Check cluster capacity
vmware-aria capacity remaining <cluster-id>
vmware-aria capacity time-remaining <cluster-id>

# Find rightsizing opportunities
vmware-aria capacity rightsizing

# Check Aria platform health
vmware-aria health status
vmware-aria health collectors

MCP Setup (Claude Code)

After uv tool install vmware-aria, add to ~/.claude.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vmware-aria": {
      "command": "vmware-aria",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "env": {
        "VMWARE_ARIA_CONFIG": "~/.vmware-aria/config.yaml"
      }
    }
  }
}

v1.5.15+ uses the single-command form vmware-aria mcp. The legacy vmware-aria-mcp console script is still kept for backward compatibility. If you must use uvx --from vmware-aria vmware-aria mcp (no install) and hit invalid peer certificate: UnknownIssuer behind a corporate TLS proxy, set UV_NATIVE_TLS=true or use the recommended vmware-aria mcp form above.

Then use natural language:

• "Show me the top 10 CPU consumers right now"

• "List all CRITICAL alerts and acknowledge them"

• "How long until the prod cluster runs out of memory?"

• "Which VMs are over-provisioned? Show rightsizing recommendations"

• "Are there any anomalies on vm-web-01?"

Authentication

Aria Operations uses OpsToken authentication:

POST /suite-api/api/auth/token/acquire
{"username": "admin", "password": "...", "authSource": "LOCAL"}
→ {"token": "abc123", "validity": 1800000}

Subsequent requests: Authorization: OpsToken abc123

Tokens are valid for 30 minutes and automatically refreshed 60 seconds before expiry.

Architecture

User (natural language)
  ↓
AI Agent (Claude Code / Goose / Cursor)
  ↓  [reads SKILL.md]
vmware-aria MCP server (stdio transport)
  ↓  [HTTPS + OpsToken]
Aria Operations Suite API
  ↓
VMs / Hosts / Clusters / Alerts / Capacity

Companion Skills

Security

• Passwords loaded from env vars or .env file, never from config.yaml

• Write operations (acknowledge/cancel alert) audit-logged to ~/.vmware-aria/audit.log

• API responses sanitized (control chars stripped, 500-char limit) to prevent prompt injection

• Supports self-signed certificates (verify_ssl: false) for lab environments

License

MIT — see LICENSE