6.0 Planning for Capacity in Virtual Environments
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Introduction to this Guide This chapter provides information about what is contained in the vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning. It also provides information about the vfoglight documentation suite and Quest Software. This chapter contains the following sections: About vfoglight...4 vfoglight Documentation Suite...4 Text Conventions...7 About Vizioncore Inc...7
4 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning About vfoglight vfoglight helps IT organizations understand the virtual infrastructure by managing the relationships and interaction between all the components in the environment, including data centers, data stores, clusters, resource pools, hosts and virtual machines. With vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning, administrators can quickly determine the root-cause of an incident or problem, track virtual machine (VM) movements and understand their impact, and identify contention for resources between virtual machines. About this Cartridge The vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning provides projected consumption metrics of virtual and physical machines for CPU, network, memory, and storage requirements. Hosts can be selected and metrics can be compared. Charts are generated showing what happens when new physical or virtual machines are added to an ESX server. About this Guide This provides an overview of the vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning. This is organized as follows: Chapter 1, Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views lists and describes the predefined views included with the Cartridge for Capacity Planning. vfoglight Documentation Suite The vfoglight documentation suite is made up of the core documentation set, plus the documentation set for each vfoglight cartridge that you deploy. Documentation is provided in a combination of online help, PDF, and HTML.
Introduction to this Guide 5 vfoglight Documentation Suite Online Help: You can open the online help by selecting the Help tab from vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning s action panel. PDF: The Getting Started Guide, What s New Guide, System Requirements and Platform Support Guide, Installation and Setup Guide set, Administration and Configuration Guide, vfoglight User Guide, Command-Line, Web Component Guide, and Web Component Tutorial, are provided as PDF files. The PDF guides are included in the zip file downloaded from Vizioncore. Adobe Reader is required. HTML: Release Notes are provided in HTML. Core Documentation Set The core documentation set consists of the following files: Release Notes (HTML) Getting Started Guide (PDF) What s New Guide (PDF) System Requirements and Platform Support Guide (PDF) Installation and Setup Guide set (all in PDF format): Installation and Setup Guide Installing on Windows with an Embedded MySQL Database Installation and Setup Guide Installing on Windows with an External MySQL Database
6 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning Installation and Setup Guide Installing on Windows with an External Oracle Database Administration and Configuration Guide (PDF and online help) vfoglight User Guide (PDF and online help) Advanced Configuration Guide set Command-Line (PDF and online help) Web Component Guide (PDF and online help) Web Component Tutorial (PDF and online help) Web Component Reference (online help) Cartridge Documentation Sets When you deploy a cartridge, the documentation set for the cartridge is installed. The online help for the cartridge is integrated automatically with the core vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning help. When you open the help, the name of the cartridge is displayed in a top level entry within the table of contents. The documentation set for this cartridge consists of the following documents: vfoglight Cartridge Planning for Capacity Release Notes (HTML format) vfoglight Planning for Capacity in Virtual Environments User Guide (PDF and online help) vfoglight Planning for Capacity in Virtual Environments (PDF and online help) Feedback on the Documentation We are interested in receiving feedback from you about our documentation. For example, did you notice any errors in the documentation? Were any features undocumented? Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve the documentation? All comments are welcome. Please submit your feedback to the following email address: info@vizioncore.com Please do not submit Technical Support related issues to this email address.
Introduction to this Guide 7 Text Conventions Text Conventions The following table summarizes how text styles are used in this guide: Convention Code Variables Interface Files, components, and documents Description Monospace text represents code, code objects, and commandline input. This includes: Java language source code and examples of file contents Classes, objects, methods, properties, constants, and events HTML documents, tags, and attributes Monospace-plus-italic text represents variable code or command-line objects that are replaced by an actual value or parameter. Bold text is used for interface options that you select (such as menu items) as well as keyboard commands. Italic text is used to highlight the following items: Pathnames, file names, and programs The names of other documents referenced in this guide About Vizioncore Inc. Vizioncore was formed in July 2002 as a consulting and software-development company with the mission to create easy-to-use software solutions that performed reliable and repeatable automation of datacenter functions specifically for the Citrix platform. A main corporate goal was to enable business partners to offer solutions that targeted real-world IT issues and provided the best possible installation and automation for their clients' systems. Vizioncore's solutions have proved successful in organizations from small to mid-sized businesses to large enterprises, in a wide variety of vertical industries, including Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and High Tech. Vizioncore, Inc. can be found in offices around the globe and at www.vizioncore.com.
8 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning Contacting Vizioncore Email: info@vizioncore.com Mail: Vizioncore, Inc. 975 Weiland Ave Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 Web site: www.vizioncore.com Refer to our Web site for regional and international office information. Contacting Vizioncore Support Vizioncore Support is available to customers who have a trial version of a Vizioncore product or who have purchased a commercial version and have a valid maintenance contract. Vizioncore Support is easily accessed in the following ways: Email support directly at support@vizioncore.com for automatic case creation. Contact Vizioncore support directly via our global and local telephone numbers. Log and create/update your case, and check its status via the Vizioncore Support Case Management portal. View the Vizioncore Support Guide for a detailed explanation of support programs, online services, contact information, and policy and procedures. The guide is available at: http://www.vizioncore.com/support/documents/vizioncore_supportguide1_sfs.pdf Contacting Quest Support Quest Support is available to customers who have a trial version of a Quest product or who have purchased a commercial version and have a valid maintenance contract. Quest Support provides around the clock coverage with SupportLink, our web self-service. Visit SupportLink at: http://support.quest.com. From SupportLink, you can do the following: Quickly find thousands of solutions (Knowledgebase articles/documents). Download patches and upgrades.
Introduction to this Guide 9 About Vizioncore Inc. Seek help from a Support engineer. Log and update your case, and check its status. View the Global Support Guide for a detailed explanation of support programs, online services, contact information, and policy and procedures. The guide is available at: http://support.quest.com/pdfs/global Support Guide.pdf.
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Table of Contents Introduction to this Guide...3 About vfoglight... 4 About this Cartridge... 4 About this Guide... 4 vfoglight Documentation Suite... 4 Core Documentation Set... 5 Cartridge Documentation Sets... 6 Feedback on the Documentation... 6 Text Conventions... 7 About Vizioncore Inc.... 7 Contacting Vizioncore... 8 Contacting Vizioncore Support... 8 Contacting Quest Support... 8 Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views...13 Why You Use the Cartridge for Capacity Planning... 14 Accessing the Capacity Planning Dashboards... 15 Using the Capacity Planner Dashboards... 16 VM Capacity Planner Dashboard... 16 Viewing the Included and Excluded Hosts Pane... 22 VM Capacity Planner (No Storage) Dashboard... 22 Capacity Planning Reports... 23 Index...25
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1 Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views The vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning ships with predefined views allowing you to forecast the projected capacities of Elastic Sky X (EXS) servers. This chapter contains the following sections: Why You Use the Cartridge for Capacity Planning...14 Accessing the Capacity Planning Dashboards...15 Using the Capacity Planner Dashboards...16 Capacity Planning Reports...23
14 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning Why You Use the Cartridge for Capacity Planning A host is a computer which can be a physical or virtual machine. Virtual machines (VMs) are quickly becoming the industry norm in IT infrastructures. Planning the addition of virtual machines to an Elastic Sky X (ESX) server can be a challenge for IT administrators. They lack the required metrics to properly forecast projected CPU, memory, network consumption, and storage requirements. Monitoring virtual machine environments with the vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning simplifies the planning process and allows administrators to obtain projected, accurate metrics for virtual or physical machine capacity planning. Hosts can be selected and metrics can be compared. Charts are generated showing what happens when new physical or virtual machines are added to an ESX server. The Cartridge for Capacity Planning allows you select any number of VMs and predict their combined impact on the target ESX host s resources. You can also select an ESX host to see the resource impact caused by all of its resident VMs. One of the views excludes the disk consumption in situations where you want to focus on the ESX host itself and excludes the impact on external shared storage. The other view includes disk storage. The Cartridge for Capacity Planning thresholds are user configurable. You can change the hardware configuration of the physical ESX host (e.g., what if I had four more
Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views 15 Accessing the Capacity Planning Dashboards CPUs? What if I had 3.6 GHz CPUs? What if I had twice as much memory?, etc.). You can create and model what the VM loads look like on a hypothetical ESX server. Accessing the Capacity Planning Dashboards After installing the Cartridge for Capacity Planning, the VM Capacity Planning dashboard displays in the vfoglight Dashboards navigation panel. Note If the Capacity Planning dashboard is not present in the tree view of the navigation panel, see the vfoglight Administration and Configuration Guide or the vfoglight Installation and Setup Guide for installation procedures before continuing.
16 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning Using the Capacity Planner Dashboards The Cartridge for Capacity Planning provides the following dashboards: VM Capacity Planner Dashboard (See page 16.) VM Capacity Planner (No Storage) Dashboard (See page 22.) For detailed information about the workflow of Capacity Planning dashboards, see the vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning User Guide. VM Capacity Planner Dashboard You use the VM Capacity Planner dashboard to build capacity planning usage scenarios and view graphs detailing consumption of projected: CPU capacity Memory capacity Network bandwidth Available storage
Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views 17 Using the Capacity Planner Dashboards From the VM Capacity Planner Dashboard you: Create Usage Scenarios you create capacity planning scenarios to project the CPU capacity, memory capacity, network bandwidth, and total available storage based on the actual system that will be used to host the virtual machines. Open Usage Scenarios after creating capacity planning usage scenarios, you may want to change the properties originally entered. Open Usage Scenarios allows you to open and reuse a host list for capacity analysis.
18 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning Edit Usage Scenario Properties after opening a usage scenario, you can make changes to tailor a scenario to meet your capacity planning needs, then save those changes. Select Hosts after creating the usage scenario, you assign and select the hosts you want to include.
Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views 19 Using the Capacity Planner Dashboards Select Target after selecting the hosts, you select the ESX server you want to use in the capacity planning analysis. Modifying Time Range Criteria prior to moving a VM to a new ESX host, it is recommended to look at a longer historical timeframe (e.g., Last Month, This Year, All Time) to a broader view of ESX host resource availability rather than using the default of the last four hours. If you end up with a large list of excluded
20 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning hosts, or VMs with insufficient data, you can experiment with shorter time intervals. After creating capacity planning usage scenarios, the following projected consumptions graphs and storage requirements are provided: Projected CPU Consumption (See page 20.) Projected Network Consumption (See page 21.) Projected Memory Consumption (See page 21.) Projected Storage Requirements (See page 21.) Projected CPU Consumption This view presents the total projected CPU consumption in gigahertz for the host(s) and time range selected. Hovering over an individual host displays a popup of CPU data for that host.
Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views 21 Using the Capacity Planner Dashboards Projected Network Consumption This view presents the total projected network consumption in megabytes per second for the host(s) and time range selected. Hovering over an individual host displays a popup of projected network consumption data for that host. Projected Memory Consumption This view presents the total projected memory consumption in gigabytes for the host(s) and time range selected. Projected Storage Requirements This view presents the total projected storage requirements in gigabytes for host(s) and the time range selected.
22 vfoglight Cartridge for Capacity Planning Viewing the Included and Excluded Hosts Pane The lower portion of the Capacity Planning dashboard provides a table view of projected consumption. It contains the following tabs: Included Hosts lists those hosts which had enough data to produce a projected consumption. Excluded Host - Insufficient Data lists those hosts which did not have enough data to project capacity planning data. You can do advanced searches from this view by clicking the Advanced button to search for an individual host. VM Capacity Planner (No Storage) Dashboard The VM Capacity Planner (No Storage) dashboard has the same views and functionality as the VM Capacity Planner dashboard. The only difference is that the Projected Storage Requirements view chart is not displayed. Virtual hard disk storage is usually separate from the ESX server. By not displaying the projected storage, a separate view of the projected metrics can be given, providing a clearer view of ESX server capacity.
Cartridge for Capacity Planning Views 23 Capacity Planning Reports Capacity Planning Reports The Cartridge for Capacity Planning provides the following report templates: ESX Host Capacity Trending this template is used to generate a report that shows projected CPU, memory and network usage values for the next 90 days for each ESX Host in the service. The projected values are calculated based on data observed for the past three months. Datastores Capacity Trending this template is used to generate a report that shows the capacity trending (used space, total space, growth rate per week, and time to full) for each datastore of each ESX host in the service. The projected values are calculated based on data observed for the past three months. For procedures on generating Capacity Planning reports, refer to the Managing Virtualized Environments User Guide.
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Index A about vfoglight 4 C Capacity Planning dashboards 20 overview 14 Capacity Planning Reports 23 Datastores Capacity Trending 23 ESX Capacity Trending 23 cartridge 6 contacting Quest 8 core 5 D dashboards 15 VM Capacity Planner 16 VM Capacity Planner (No Storage) 22 documentation 4, 5, 6 F feedback 6 P Projected Consumption CPU 20 Memory 21 Network 21 Storage 21 R reports Datastores Capacity Trending 23 ESX Host Capacity Trending 23 S suite 4 support 8 T technical support 8 text conventions 7 V views 15 I Insufficient Data 22
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