Managing the capacity of your XenServer infrastructure
As a Capacity Planner or XenServer Technology Specialist, you can use BMC Helix Capacity Optimization to configure, administer, and manage the capacity of your XenServer infrastructure. BMC Helix Capacity Optimization enables you to collect and analyze data from XenServer infrastructure elements:
- Providers (hosts)
- Consumers (virtual machines)
As described in the flow diagram, the BMC Helix Capacity Optimization data source (ETL or Gateway Server) collects data from the XenServer infrastructure elements. The collected data is transferred to the BMC Helix Capacity Optimization data warehouse where it is processed, and then displayed on the user interface. You can use the product features to review, analyze, and manage the capacity of your XenServer infrastructure providers and consumers.
The following sections describe how you can achieve these goals:
Managing the capacity of XenServer infrastructure providers
You can analyze and manage the capacity of your XenServer infrastructure providers by using the XenServer views. For the infrastructure data to be available in the view, the Administrator must first set up the data source to collect data.
Step 1. Collect data and install the views
As an Administrator, use one of the following methods for data collection:
- Using the out-of-the-box ETLs:
- Using the Capacity Agents
After data collection starts, data is loaded in the data warehouse daily and Indicators are available in the Workspace.
As an Administrator, you must install the XenServer views and Capacity Pools view and grant the necessary permissions to Capacity Planners and XenServer Technology Specialists to access these views.
Step 2. Analyze the collected data
To get a high-level view of the infrastructure usage and health, use the out-of-the-box capacity pools in the Capacity-Pools-view.
For detailed analysis, see XenServer-Overview.
The following common use cases are described here:
Understand the usage and health of your XenServer infrastructure providers
Review and analyze the out-of-the-box capacity pools for XenServer hosts for a high-level understanding of their health and usage. For more information, see Capacity-Pools-view.
You can drill down into a specific host for detailed analysis.
An Administrator can create capacity pools as per your requirement. You can then view and analyze them in the Capacity Pools view.
Understand resource availability, utilization, and utilization trend of your XenServer infrastructure providers
Review and analyze the resource metrics of XenServer providers on the Host page in the XenServer view page in the XenServer Overview view.
Identify the XenServer providers that have exhausted or exhausting resources
Use the Future Saturations page in the XenServer view to get a quick view of the XenServer hosts that have exhausted or exhausting resources (CPU, memory, and storage).
Managing the capacity of XenServer infrastructure consumers
You can analyze and manage the capacity of your XenServer infrastructure consumers (virtual machines) by using the capacity views. For the infrastructure data to be available in the view, the Administrator must first configure data collection.
Step 1. Collect data and install the views
As an Administrator, you can use the following data sources to collect data for your XenServer virtual machines:
- BMC-TrueSight-Capacity-Optimization-Gateway-VIS-files-parser
- BMC-TrueSight-Operations-Management-10-1-10-5-10-7-11-0-11-3-extractor
Before you use this ETL, you must instrument the VMs.
After data collection starts, data is loaded in the data warehouse daily and Indicators are available in the Workspace.
As an Administrator, you must install the XenServer views and grant the necessary permissions to Capacity Planners and XenServer Technology Specialists to access these views.
Step 2. Analyze the collected data
Use the capacity views to analyze the imported data of XenServer virtual machines. Depending on the data source, you can use the XenServer Overview view or the Servers Overview view for analysis.
To view and analyze the key capacity metrics and charts for XenServer VMs, use the XenServer-Overview view. It displays metrics collected by the BMC-TrueSight-Capacity-Optimization-Gateway-VIS-files-parser ETL.
To view and analyze the granular metrics (actual memory utilization value, workload data, and process level data) that are collected from the VM, use the Servers-Overview-view.
The following common use cases are described here.
Determine and analyze the available resources and their utilization per VM
Review and analyze the relevant metrics on the Virtual-Machines-page-in-the-XenServer-view to determine the available resources and their utilization per VM. For example, utilization metrics for CPU and memory.
Identify the XenServer VMs that have exhausting resources
Review the Future Saturations page in the XenServer view to identify XenServer virtual machines that have exhausting resources (CPU, memory, storage). The page also provides actionable recommendations to help you handle them.
Analyze the trend and behavior of the actual (OS-level) memory utilization of XenServer VMs
Review the Servers views to review and analyze the trend and behavior of the actual memory utilization of the XenServer virtual machines.
These views display data that is collected from instrumented VMs.
Performing advanced analysis
The earlier sections explained how you can use the out-of-the-box capacity views to manage your environment. These capacity views help you analyze your XenServer infrastructure using a predefined set of metrics.
To perform advanced analysis on the imported XenServer data, such as identifying specific performance issues, trends, and bottlenecks, you can use Analysis.
The following use case explains how to analyze the CPU utilization of xen virtual machines over time:
For more examples, see Creating-an-analysis.
Managing the future demand
By using the capacity views and analysis charts, you can analyze the data of your existing capacity. To predict and plan your IT resource needs, use Models.
Predicting the behavior of your resources
Use Models to predict service performance and obtain forecasts of historical series of metrics, including deep details on the modeling techniques used in forecasts and how to interpret the results of model runs.
How to determine when a virtual machine underutilizing the resources
For more information, see Modeling-capacity-usage.
Further reading