Showcasing Virtual Datacenter Capacity using vCenter Operations Manager Dashboards.

A few months back, I wrote about the capabilities of vCenter Operations Manager around Capacity Management in this article - vCenter Operations Manager - Solving Performance, Capacity and Configuration Problems!!. With this article I wanted to take a step further and showcase how you can use vCOps in a real world scenario to monitor the capacity of your Virtual Datacenter in an automated manner.

If you read my last 2 articles on vCenter Operations Manager, you would notice that custom dashboards in vCenter Operations is an amazing way to showcase a lot of important data which is collected,analysed & computed by vCOps Patented Analytics and Capacity engine. In this article I will share a Custom Dashboard which in a single pane can showcase multiple facets of Capacity & Consolidation in your Virtual Datacenter. 

To begin with let's have a look at the dashboard and then we will break down the discussion on how to create it using the custom dashboard widgets.

Executive Capacity Dashboard

Well that is colorful, isn't it. As complex as it looks, if your approach towards creating this dashboard is correct, this should be a matter of few minutes. I will not go into step by step of how I created it, I would rather ask you to get your hands dirty and learn how to create such dashboards.

Here are a few pointers on this dashboard, which will help you create one on your own:-

a) The over all dashboard is a 2 column and 8 widget dashboard.

b) Each widget used is a Score Board Widget.

c) No super-metric used here. Each widget uses metrics which are already populated by default vCOps collection.

Let's look at each part horizontally.

Part 1 - Datacenter Capacity and Consolidation Ratios

Here the widget on the left uses a scoreboard widget to show the capacity of 2 data-centers  DC 1 and DC2.  I have used the Datacenter as the Resource tags here shown the "Summary" of each Datacenter such as number of Clusters, Datastores, ESXi Hosts and Virtual machines in a DC.

The widget on the right uses the scoreboard widget to show the consolidation ratios of both the virtual data-centers by using the Datacenter as the resource tag and  "Density" ratios to populate the following vCPU to pCPU, VMs to Hosts and vMem to pMem. This can give you the density of your Datacenter in a snap.

Part 2 - Capacity & Time Remaining in Each DC/Cluster 

This takes the capacity information to the next level. This section talks about, how many VMs can be deployed, how many VMs are deployed currently and the number of days remaining for VMs to be deployed (from left to right). I have done this for one cluster in each Datacenter as this is what I have in my lab. I used Score Board Widgets, Datacenter/Cluster as Resource Tags and "Capacity Remaining", "Time Remaining" and "Summary" as the metric providers for these scoreboards.

Note:- The number of days are a weird looking number since there has been no deployment in this cluster after installing vCOps. vCOps does not have a deployment pattern in this case, using which it can suggest you the approximate amount of days remaining.

Part 3 - Resource Wise Capacity Remaining

This part also uses 2 scoreboard widgets for each Datacenter/Cluster and this breaks down the part 2 of this dashboard further down to tell which which is the most constraining resource due to which you have given number of virtual machines which you can deploy in your Datacenter/Cluster. Again I have selected Datacenter as the "Resource Tag" and used "Capacity Remaining" resource wise such as CPU, Disk Space, Disk I/O, Memory and Network and showcased, ho many VMs you can deploy as per each individual resource.

Part 4 - Resource Wise Time Remaining

Coming to the last part of the dashboard. This again is made by using the Scoreboard widget and tells you how many days would a resource last with your deployment pattern of creating new Virtual Machines in each Datacenter/Cluster. Again I have selected Datacenter as the "Resource Tag" and used "Time Remaining" resource wise such as CPU, Disk Space, Disk I/O, Memory and Network and showcased, how many VMs you can deploy as per each individual resource.

Note:- The number of days are a weird looking number since there has been no deployment in this cluster after installing vCOps. vCOps does not have a deployment pattern in this case, using which it can suggest you the approximate amount of days remaining.

Having said this before, it is your creativity & need which can take you to heights with vCOps customization. I prefer this way of dash-boarding rather than seeing what is available out of the box in a lot of other products, as this gives the power to create in my hands, rather that being dependent on the manufacturer of the product.

I will close this article now, feel free to reach out if you have questions around the discussed topic. 

Don't forget to Share and Spread the Knowledge. 

Reclaiming Waste Capacity using vCOPS - How to Calculate Waste & Usage Accurately!

This article is coming out of a discussion which I had around a month ago with one of my colleague and then with a customer about the Capacity Management feature of vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS).

If you are new to vCOPS, I would recommend reading my other posts on vCOPS which would make you familiar with this topic:

vCenter Operations Manager - Solving Performance, Capacity and Configuration Problems!!

Right Sizing vCenter Operations Manager vAPP For Efficient Performance !!

I believe this topic is worth writing about as this might help you understand how Capacity IQ which is now rolled up into vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS), calculates the usage of resources for a Virtual Machine or for that matter any object in the vCenter. The resource usage ultimately helps the tool to monitor the Capacity Utilization over a period of time. This Capacity utilization leads to calculation of 2 minor badges:-

a) Reclaimable Waste, and

b) Density

These two values then roll up into a Main Badge known as "EFFICIENCY". A score of 100 on efficiency means that you are using the virtual infrastructure in the most appropriate way, and as that score starts reducing, you know that either you have virtual machines which are Over Sized or Under Sized which will lead to waste of resources or performance issues due to resource contention.

Below is a screenshot which shows how the efficiency badge and the sub-badges show in the vCenter Operations Dashboard.

At the end of the day, efficiency is the most important piece of information which the Capacity Management feature of vCOPS provides. From the perspective of an IT buyer, it becomes a tool which helps you to ensure that you do not waste any resources in your infrastructure by following primitive methods of resource allocation to servers and applications.

Hence, this allows you to right size your infrastructure as you operate and manage it. 

For example, a new application which needs to be deployed in your infrastructure needs a Windows 2008 R2 VM, with 4 vCPU and 16 GB of RAM as per the application owner. This might be a practice which is being carried forward by the application owner from the world of physical servers. However, with Virtual it is quite possible that the VM will never use the allocated capacity. The challenge is that how can we capture this data and present it back to the application owner.

vCOPS has the answer - Once this machine is created and the server goes into production, vCOPS would start monitoring this virtual machine on a regular basis and would capture data around utilization of CPU & Memory. After a period of 30 to 45 days, vCOPS would understand the capacity utilization patterns of this virtual machine. After this, a report in vCOPS about Reclaimable Waste will easily tell you about all the virtual machines which are over-sized on CPU or Memory. On the basis of this report you can reclaim the resource and save a lot of money for your organization by increasing the efficiency of the hardware. 

While I say this, it is important that you have the correct settings to monitor the utilization capacity and usage patterns of your virtual infrastructure. In a business environment where the servers work between 9 AM to 6 PM, Monday to Friday, it is important that you capture the utilization patterns during this period to calculate the reclaimable waste and density of the Virtual Machine. In such a scenario if you set the monitoring days and time to 24/7, you will end up capturing a lot of skewed data which does not reflect the correct business cycles. This will ultimately result in a very low efficiency and a huge amount of reclaimable waste which might not be TRUE otherwise.

To avoid such problems, follow the settings on the screenshot mentioned below and you should be good to go.

This would ensure that you capture the right data and process it into valid information which will help you manage capacity in your Virtual Infrastructure. It's important that any decision regarding capacity is not taken in a haste. Rather, we should ensure that we customize the settings for monitoring capacity on the basis of our own environment and then let the tool run for a period of 4 weeks to 6 weeks before you start looking into the results and begin to make changes for the betterment of your Virtual Infrastructure.

Hope this will help you learn more about what vCOPS can do for you and how you can do such tasks accurately.

vCenter Operations Manager - Solving Performance, Capacity and Configuration Problems!!

I have been writing about the cloud infrastructure products of VMware all this while. I believe it is important to look at the management side of things as well. No doubt Virtualization makes things easier for an organization and its IT department; however things are good till the time they are small and easy to manage. As the confidence of such organizations increases towards Virtualization, you would notice a VM sprawl, which might someday defeat the purpose of Virtualization & consolidation.

The result of a sprawl leads to unpredictable behavior of the Virtual Infrastructure, Performance bottlenecks, Waste of expensive resources, complex troubleshooting procedures and issues around other day to day admin activities. I believe any administrator of a medium/large virtual infrastructure would agree to the brief description of the pain points which I have listed above. If you categorize these problems broadly they would fall under 3 Major Categories:-

I - Performance Problems - This will include pain points such as:-

§  How is my overall infrastructure performing?

§  How hard my physical ESXi servers are working?

§  Am I looking at a potential problem which might break my infrastructure?

§  Is there a way I can predict issues and solve them before they are noticed by End Users?

§  Which areas do I look at to troubleshoot any existing issues?

§  Is it a storage issue or is it the hypervisor?

&, the list is never ending..........

II - Capacity Problems - Let's have a look at the pain points of capacity:-

§  Do I have enough Physical capacity (CPU, MEMORY, NETWORK and STORAGE) to support my virtual machines?

§  When do I need to buy more hardware?

§  Am I wasting any resources?

§  Have I sized the virtual machines appropriately?

§  How should I answer questions raised by my CXO's about capacity forecasts, buying decisions etc.??

& many more.....

III - Configuration & Compliance Problems - A more critical problem area, let's see some issues here:-

§  I am asked to follow HIPPA, SOX or PCI compliance policies for my servers, am I compliant?

§  My infrastructure is too big? How do I control changes in my Virtual Infrastructure? 

§  Is there a way to maintain common standards?

The more you dig here... the more issues you would find...

Well, the list above is only a sub set of issues which we face while managing the Virtual Infrastructure. As a reader of this article and an administrator you would be able to add 10 more unique issues to this list when you read this article. However, we still have a bigger issue on hand. I call it the BIGGEST issue. Questions are always raised around:-

- There are so many tools in the market who claim that they can help me with such issues. Which one should I chose??

- What should I do with my existing tools? That's a huge investment which I have already made.

- Can I get a Single Pane of Glass to solve all such issues? (The most common one - People are fascinated with a single pane, I don't know why?)

and another long list of questions.........

I hope you are with me so far and not lost into the issues which you are facing in your Virtual infrastructure because now I am going to tell you how you can solve such issues. I must tell you over here that the solution I am going to talk about has been around for a good number of years, however I have taken my own sweet time to start believing in this solution as it has matured over a period of time. Now that I see this solution working for large enterprises, I guess this is a good time that you can look into this for solving issues related to Performance, Capacity, Configuration and Compliance in your virtual infrastructures.

As the headline of my post suggest, I am talking about vCenter Operations Manager a.k.a. vCOPS. As an introduction, I would say that this VMware solution has been stitched together in the recent past, by plucking out best components from various industry standard tools which have been there in the Industry for a long time. Though there are a number of functions available in this solution, I would talk about the major life-savers here:-

Let me explain each one of them in simpler manner:-

Patented Performance Analysis - A set of 9 patented algorithms which look at performance as a behavior and not a threshold. The engine learns the behavior of your infrastructure by monitoring all the performance metrics. It learns the Normal behavior and only alert you if it observes an abnormal behavior which could lead to a potential problem. Overall gives you the HEALTH of the infrastructure and make you take right decisions in real-time. This was acquired as a part of Integrien acquisition back in 2010.

Purpose Built Capacity Planning & Analysis - This is VMware Capacity IQ which is rolled up into this suite. Those who know the power of capacity IQ would know that it is the only tool available today, which can pin-point at things like, oversized & under-sized VMs, wasted resources, time remaining & capacity remaining to provision new workloads and potential RISKS associated to Capacity of your Physical Infrastructure. It will also help you do tasks such as Capacity Trending & Forecasting for better and accurate buying decisions.

Automated Configuration & Compliance - This ability of the Suite is provided by vCenter Configuration Manager which again is around for a while. It was a part of the IONIX product portfolio, however later it was picked up by VMware from EMC to weave it into vCOPS and complete the entire picture. This is one of the strongest solution which I have witnessed for compliance and configuration management and has the capability of working across virtual and physical infrastructure, across OS platforms and across server architectures.

I hope this gives you some insight on VMware vCenter Operations Manager. I know I am leaving you with a few thoughts around what else this solution can do and how it actually does what it promises to. There would be questions around financial implications and licensing models as well. I will leave you with a few links which will help you learn more about vCOPS and at the same time I will come back with a few more articles which will help you use this solution effectively in your infrastructures.

Before I share those links, here is an interesting fact which might impress you, if you are still not impressed by vCenter Operations Manager:-

The latest version of vCOPS called vCOPS 5.6 (launched at VMworld Barcelona), has the capability to work across multiple hypervisor, multiple cloud platforms (private or public) and allows you to build Self-Healing mechanisms using vCenter Orchestrator as the Workflow Orchestration Engine. Except Capacity Management, this solution can extend into your Non-VMware infrastructure for Performance, Compliance & Configuration Management. (Storage, Networks, Other monitoring tools, HP UX, Solaris, Applications - Exchange, Oracle, SQL, Amazon, Azure, XEN, Hyper-V etc)

I sure see a revolution coming our way.. Get your seat belts on & sit tight :-)

Here are the links which you can use to learn more:- 

VMware vCenter Operations Manager Fundamentals [V5.X] - This free eLearning course covers how to install and configure vCenter Operations Manager as well as how to use its many robust features.

Other Technical Resources and Links - Link to demos, videos, documentation etc.

Pricing & Packaging - All you need to know about vCOPS licensing, pricing etc.

Hope this helps... If you liked this article, kindly share with others and let the knowledge spread.......