First of all, we acknowlege the issue and yes we can do better than that.
Starting 1.2 release, OC API Services can directly connect to the CDOT clusters and give you storage inventory, configuration and performance metrics information.
It also contains APIs to provision storage, configuration and data protection. You don't need to deploy OCUM or OPM for this.
The only limitation in the mode is you don't get historical performance data. so, if you are not interested in historical performance data and are keeping the history
in your applications database, I suggest you move to 1.2 RC1 version.
We are open to suggestion on improving our install experiece, if vApp is the preferred mode of packing and deployment in VMWare
environments we will certainly consider it. Are there other packaging models you think are more consumer friendly like a docker container etc.? Let us know?
One of the reasons not to tightly couple OCUM and OCPM with API Services is that this product will eventually be the API gateway for everything under NetApp,
so that you have one endpoint and a consistent API across our storage portfolio.
HTH,
Ameet