Configuring the Migration Simulation settings

Use the Settings page in Migration Simulation to configure various settings for optimization and on-premises costs that impact the data displayed in Migration Simulation. The migration simulation covers a month of 30 days to estimate the migration costs. 

The frequency of materialization of the data in migration simulation is 1 day. 

Before you begin

• Ensure that you have installed Migration Simulation. 
• Ensure that you have the required permissions to edit the Settings page.

To access the Settings page

1. Click Views tab.

2. Expand the left navigation pane and select Migration Simulation.  

3. Click the Settings icon and select Settings. 

   The Settings page displays the settings that are currently configured for Optimization and On-Premises Costs Definition in the respective tabs.
   

   About price catalogs of public cloud providers

   Public cloud price catalogs are based on the price information that is provided by each public cloud provider. BMC Helix Continuous Optimization collects this up-to-date pricing information for cost computation and standardizes it across all cloud providers so that there is a fair comparison between providers during Migration Simulation. The product then computes benchmark values for new instance types, packages these customized version of price catalogs, and automatically updates the price catalogs with each release or patch.

   The Migration Simulation Settings page displays the date when these customized price catalogs for all cloud providers were last updated in the product. 

To configure optimization settings

Use the Optimization tab to configure various settings that are required for simulating the migration. You can modify the settings such as strategy, optimization behavior, storage allocation, and target providers. 

1. Click the action menu next to the Settings page title and select Edit. The Settings page opens in edit mode. The Optimization tab is displayed by default. 
   
   
   

2. To select or remove the target cloud providers to which you want to simulate the migration, in the Target Providers section, select or clear the required cloud provider. Depending on your selection, when you initiate the migration simulation, the simulation results are displayed only for the selected cloud providers. For example, if your organization wants to move to AWS cloud, you can select only AWS as the target cloud provider and avoid simulating to other cloud providers. 

   By default, all cloud providers are selected. 

3. To modify the migration simulation approach, under the Strategy section, select one of the following options:

   • Utilization-based: Resource (CPU, memory, storage) utilization of the servers to be migrated is measured and analyzed to suggest the best or ideal resized instance types on the public clouds. This is the default strategy.
   • Lift-and-Shift: Servers are replicated or re-hosted on the target public cloud without any redesigning.
     For more information about the strategies, see Strategies for Migration Simulation. 
     By default, the Utilization-based approach is used by the product to generate the simulation results. 

4. If you want the migration simulation process to consider burstable instances as target virtual machines or instances, select Include burstable instances. By default, burstable instances are not suggested as target instances.

    About burstable instance

   A burstable instance is a VM instance that provides a baseline level of CPU performance that can automatically burst to a higher level to support occasional spikes in usage, for a limited amount of time.

   Burstable instances are well suited for scenarios where an instance is typically idle, or has low CPU utilization with occasional spikes in usage. These instances are also ideal for scaled-down workloads that do not require a full core. For example, microservices, low-latency interactive applications, small and medium databases, virtual desktops, development, build, and stage environments.

   
   For AWS, only burstable instances in Standard mode (T2 Standard, T3 Standard) are supported. Unlimited mode for burstable instances is not supported.
   For Oracle Cloud, the baseline CPU utilization of the target burstable instance is a fraction of each CPU core that is 12.5% or 50%. The baseline provides the minimum CPUs that can be used constantly.
   
   

5. If you want to include the ephemeral or temporary storage of the proposed server in the recommended amount of storage (external volumes) to be purchased, select External volumes, ephemeral/temporary storage. 

   As a result, the proposed storage value of the target server considers the sum of the ephemeral storage and the external storage (EBS volume) values. 
   
   For example, consider the following screenshots that show the migration results for phx–01 based on the selected setting. The Storage of the source server is 59.9 GB.

   Selected setting	Migration simulation result
   External volumes (Default)	The Storage of the proposed server does not consider the Ephemeral/Temporary Storage value (20) and suggests that you buy 58.3 GB of external storage.
   External volumes, ephemeral/temporary storage	The Storage of the proposed server considers the Ephemeral/Temporary Storage value (20) and suggests that you buy the external storage accordingly. So the proposed amount of storage to buy = (58.3 - 20) = 38.3 GB

6. If you want the migration simulation process to include the regions from the Government cloud subscriptions along with the standard subscriptions, select Government regions. By default, regions from Government subscriptions are not included.

7. To modify the backend process of computing the utilization of a server, select one of the following behaviors in the Optimization behavior section. The selected behavior impacts the sizing of the target server or virtual machine that is proposed by the Utilization-based simulation results. You can choose to be conservative in your approach by considering the spikes in the resource utilization or be aggressive by considering the typical average utilization. You also have the option of being balanced in your approach.

   Optimization behavior	Description
   Aggressive	Resource utilization in the server is computed by considering the average value of the hourly samples. Then, 95th percentile of the hourly value over the last 30 days is computed for each resource to generate the configuration of the target virtual machine or instance type. Spikes in the resource utilization within the hour are not considered. This optimization behavior does not require the server to be instrumented because granular or detailed metrics are not used for the computation.
   Balanced (Default)	CPU utilization in the server is computed by considering the 90th percentile value of hourly samples. Then, 95th percentile of the hourly value over the last 30 days is computed for CPU to generate the configuration of the target virtual machine or instance type. 90% of spikes in the CPU utilization within the hour are considered. Utilization of memory and storage is computed by considering the 95th percentile of the average hourly values over the last 30 days. This optimization behavior requires the server to be instrumented to collect the granular or detailed metrics. For VMware vSphere, the server need not be instrumented because the vSphere Service ETL collects data at less than one minute granularity.
   Conservative	CPU utilization in the server is computed by considering the 95th percentile value of hourly samples. Then, 95th percentile of the hourly value over the last 30 days is computed for CPU to generate the configuration of the target virtual machine or instance type. 95% of spikes in the CPU utilization within the hour are considered. Utilization of memory and storage is computed by considering the 95th percentile of the average hourly values over the last 30 days. This optimization behavior requires the server to be instrumented to collect the granular or detailed metrics. For VMware vSphere, the server need not be instrumented because the vSphere Service ETL collects data at less than one minute granularity.

   The computed resource utilization values are stored in the demand indicators (CPU Demand, Memory Demand, and Storage Demand). For more information, see Indicators.

   Information

   If you select the Conservative or Balanced optimization behavior for a server that is not instrumented, the results are based on the Aggressive behavior.

   BMC recommends the Conservative behavior for servers that are running business-critical applications.

    About instrumented server

   A server with a Capacity Agent installed on it to collect granular or detailed metrics.

8. To provide an additional cost or discount to be applied to the cost of resources in the public cloud, in the Public Catalog Pricing Customization section, select the public cloud provider, and specify the Discount or Additional Cost amount in percentage. The discount percentage value can be used to represent any special agreement that you have with your cloud provider. The additional cost value can be used to consider surcharge such as personnel expenses.
   
   
9. To modify the threshold of a metric or an indicator, click Optimizer Thresholds. The Thresholds page in the Administration tab opens. For more information about configuring the thresholds, see Configuring and managing thresholds for metrics and indicators.

10. Click Save.

If you modified the settings under the Optimization Behavior section, all the Optimizer rules that are defined with the following template group are initiated to run:

• Cloud
• VMWare Virtualization
• Hyper-V Virtualization

For details, see Configuring and managing Optimizer rules.

Use the On-premises Costs Definition tab in the Migration Simulation Settings page to define the monthly costs of instances (VMs or standalone systems) in your on-premises environment. This tab contains the default cost rates of factors that are considered to compute the cost of an on-premises instance. 

The cost of an instance is computed based on various factors such as compute, storage, network, virtualization system, database, operating system, and so on. The default cost rates of these factors are available out-of-the-box when you install the migration simulation. You can modify the default cost rates in the On-premises Costs Definition tab. You can also specify generic cost that the predefined factors do not account for.

1. In the Migration Simulation Settings page, click the On-premises Costs Definition tab. 

2. Click the action menu next to the Settings page title and select Edit.  The fields in the Infrastructure Costs per Month section are displayed in the edit mode. 
   

   Factor	Description
   Hardware	Monthly cost of the system resources: Physical CPU Virtual CPU Memory Storage
   Software	Monthly cost per server for various computing platforms, for example, virtualization platforms and operating systems. The supported on-premises platforms are: Generic (Standalone) VMware Hyper-V Xen KVM

   These infrastructure cost values are calculated using the values provided in the Cost Estimator Inputs section. If required, you can override the calculated values by directly modifying the unit costs in the Infrastructure Costs per Month panel. The values are re-calculated when you modify any of the values in the Cost Estimator Inputs section and click Estimate costs.

3. Click Save.

   The Settings page is saved with the changes that you made. These settings are applied from the day you make the changes.

To estimate your on-premises costs

Use the Cost Estimator Inputs section to estimate the monthly cost rates of your physical and virtual resources. This section contains the on-premises environment characteristics such as a number of hosts, number of VMs, and operating systems, which are considered to estimate the default cost rates. 

The Measured from imported data pane in the Physical Servers and Virtualized Servers panels displays the values calculated based on the imported data in your environment. By default, the cost values in the Physical and Virtualized Servers panels are calculated and displayed based on this measured data. You can choose to override the measured data and modify the values as per your requirement to re-estimate the costs.

For example, if your environment does not include Hyper-V data, it is not displayed as an input field in the Virtualized Servers panel or in the Measured from imported data pane. If required, you can add Hyper-V data by clicking Override measured data. 

The infrastructure cost values are calculated when you modify any of the values in this section and click Estimate costs.

Review the following tables to understand the input fields provided to calculate your monthly cost rates.