In this 3 rd Tech Tip, I will cover some insights into right sizing your VMs.There are 2 areas that I’d like to share 1) How does vC Ops’ stress based analytics work to right size VMs/Clusters 2) Methodology you can use to identify, report and reclaim unused resources
#Vmware capacity planning best practices series
In part 2 of this series I covered which visuals you can use in vCenter Operations to answer key questions around datacenter or cluster wide capacity usage and risk monitoring. In part 1 of this series I covered the importance of using the right metrics and tuning the knobs to assess your capacity risk. Follow the latest developments in virtualization on is part 3 of the mini Tech Tip series for vSphere Capacity Planning. This story, " VMware tries its hand at capacity planning," was originally published at. VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is now available, and pricing starts at $1,204 for a single CPU and one year of gold support. VMware did say its expects the product to support vSphere before the end of the year. Instead, the 1.0 product is only available for VMware ESX 3.x and vCenter 2.5 environments, which could cause confusion with those administrators in the process of upgrading. The other curious thing to note about VMware's CapacityIQ release is that it doesn't currently work with VMware vSphere, the platform that VMware is pushing existing and new users toward. "CapacityIQ may be good enough for some," said Bakman, "but our Capacity Analyzer and Optimization Pack provides many more features and functionality and delivers our users the answers and actionable information to make them successful in managing and optimizing their environments."
VKernel has been developing its solutions for two years now, and unlike VMware's 1.0 product, Bakman believes that VKernel's solutions provide the detailed answers that are needed and missing in VMware's product. They need instant answers to solve these issues to continually improve performance and optimize their VMware environments." IT admins do not have a lot of time to figure this stuff out before problems arise. However, where it falls short is in bottleneck identification (current and future), right-sizing, and waste finding. In fact, when I spoke with Bakman, he said he would like to thank VMware for validating the market need for capacity planning, management, and optimization.īut he added, "In looking at CapacityIQ, it does a good job of capacity modeling and planning. No doubt, this technology is a necessary part of the virtual environment, but the question raised in my mind back at VMworld 2008 still rings true today: How will CapacityIQ and other VMware products like it go over with existing VMware partners offering competing technology?Īlex Bakman, founder and CEO of VKernel, a VMware partner, seems to agree with the importance of capacity-planning tools. Mann also said that EMA research shows that this discipline contributes to higher VM densities, higher admin efficiency, better application performance, and more best-practice outcomes. As a result, administrators can eliminate waste, reduce overhead, and minimize risks.Īndi Mann, VP of research for independent IT analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), said that capacity-planning tools are essential for any virtualization deployment, adding "With VMware vCenter CapacityIQ, VMware is delivering a key solution for one of the most impactful areas of virtual systems management." VMware said that CapacityIQ provides administrators with visibility into past, present, and future infrastructure capacity so that they can analyze what is available and what is being used, forecast what is needed, and plan when capacity will run out. VMware released a 1.0 version called VMware vCenter CapacityIQ, making good on its promise to bring this technology to market during the current calendar year.Ī value-add component of the VMware vCenter family of management solutions, CapacityIQ provides (as its name suggests) capacity management capabilities for virtualized datacenters or desktop environments. Much to the chagrin of many of its partners at that time, it was obvious that many of these products and modules would be directly competing with them for the same customer dollars.įast-forward to this week, and VMware finally announced its initial attempt to productize and answer the capacity-planning question that many of its consumers have been asking. Much was made about VMware expanding its management product portfolio back during VMworld 2008 as the company hinted around an entire new series of vCenter products and modules in the coming months and following year.