Virtual Machine Capacity Profiles in vRealize Operations 6.1

Let me start this article with this statement, "vRealize Operations Manager 6.1 is probably the best UI for an enterprise Performance, Capacity or Monitoring tool I have ever seen". I must congratulate the VMware R&D folks and the Product Management to transform vCenter Operations to vRealize Operations in a beautiful way. Yes I work for VMware and this might sound bias, but I would encourage you to use the product once and I am sure you would agree with me about this transformation for good.

While the UI has become amazingly intuitive, the great news is that simplification of the product from a feature-functionality standpoint is definitely another area where I am liking the product more than what I use to. One of such a feature is the Capacity Remaining Breakdown.

We all know that vROps has the capability of trend analysis and forecasting for capacity on the basis of policies which are pre-defined by IT for an organization or for an environment. One of the outcomes of the policies is to derive the CAPACITY REMAINING. This derived metric uses either the Demand or Allocation model for capacity planning and determines the number of VMs Remaining (in other words, the number of VMs which can be deployed on a container before it is declared full). A container here is a logical abstract of resources and are denoted by an ESXi host, a resource pool, a cluster, a virtual datacenter, a vCenter Server or it could also be the entire Universe.

If you remember the One Click cluster capacity dashboard which I created for vCOps 5.x here and then re-created for vROps 6.x here, you would notice that I plot the VM Remaining value which denotes the number of VMs which are left in a given cluster. Here are the screenshots where I am pointing at both the dashboards with a little explanation:

Dashboard with vCOps 5.x

If you notice the highlighted fields in RED, you can clearly see that, I am showcasing the number of VMs left in the cluster & I am showcasing the number of VMs left in the cluster resource wise, such as CPU, Memory, Disk & Network. In this case, the number of VMs remaining is calculated using the following formula:

VM Remaining = (Total Resources / Average VM Profile Size) - VMs Deployed

Remember the Average VM Profile Size here is automatically determined by vROps and hence the VMs Remaining would be of that Profile Size. This size can bee seen easily under the analysis tab of vROps/vCOps.

Dashboard with vROps 6.x

Now lets's look at the Dashboard which I created for version 6.x (to be precise any version of vROps 6.x except 6.1).

Here you can notice that apart from the VM Remaining metric, I have four profiles defined which are showing the VM remaining. So the profiles take 4 VM profiles into consideration Small, Average, Medium & Large. Well this is better but not best because again, we are dependent on the VM profile sizes which are defined automatically by vROps.

Now with vROps 6.1, this has changed a little bit and for the best. Let me show you what I am talking about. If we look at vROps 6.0.x, we can see that the default 4 profiles here:

Select a Cluster from the Inventory List -> Click on Analysis Tab -> Click on Capacity Remaining and you would see the 4 profiles and the VMs remaining.

Here you can see that we have 4 profiles which are showing the virtual machines remaining in the cluster. If you click on the black triangle on any of the profiles, it would display the Profile Definition calculated automatically by vROps, see the screenshot below:

Remember, this is fixed and cannot be altered with any version of vROps except version 6.1. Yes, you heard it right, you can define custom profile sizes in vROps 6.1 which can match the standard offerings from your service catalog (if you have one) and make the results more predictable for the business in terms of how many more VMs and what type of more VMs before you actually run out of capacity. Read the above again. Yeah.. THIS IS SUPERCOOL because now I have better visibility into capacity remaining which resonates to my business and not just a random size.

Without further ado let's have a look at the same on vROps 6.1.

While you see the standard profiles here defined out of the box, you also have an opportunity to click on that box highlighted in RED and click on the + Sign to define a profile of your own. This is how you can get more predictive results which relate to your own environment. Let us click on the plus sign to add a new profile.

Let us fill this up and see what inputs go into creating this profile:

You can clearly see the options available to either model out of an existing VM or define your own profile. You even have the option to model anything which you are running capacity planning on, whether Virtual Machine, Datastores or 3rd party object. Finally you can chose between Allocation based Capacity Modelling or Demand based Capacity Modelling. Let's click on OK to save this and refresh the window to check if the new profile is available:

You can see that the new profile is available now, however the calculation on the number of VMs remaining shows a question mark. This is because the next Capacity Calculation would happen at 9 PM in the night. This is the default time of the vROps instance to run the capacity engine and redo all the capacity calculations every night.

So, wait for one more day and you would start seeing values there. Or wait for for my next post where I will post a tweak by which you can Force the Capacity engine to run on demand ;-) (GRIN..). Till then, enjoy the new feature and implement it to meet your business requirements.

And do not forget to SHARE & SPREAD THE KNOWLEDGE!!

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.