Managing the capacity of your vSphere infrastructure

As the flow diagram illustrates, the data source (VMware vSphere or Gateway Server) collects data from the vSphere infrastructure elements. The collected data is transferred to the 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 vSphere infrastructure providers and consumers. 

The following sections describe how you can achieve these goals:

• Manage the capacity of vSphere infrastructure providers   
• Manage the capacity of vSphere infrastructure consumers
• Perform advanced analysis
• Manage future demand

Managing the capacity of vSphere infrastructure providers

You can analyze and manage the capacity of your vSphere infrastructure providers by using the vSphere Infrastructure view. 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, configure and use the out-of-the-box VMware-vCenter-Extractor-Service ETL for data collection. 

In the ETL configuration, you can choose to collect data only from the providers or from all the vSphere elements, including consumers.

To collect data only from the providers, select the Data type option - metrics at Cluster, Resource Pool, Host, Datastore level.

To collect data from all the vSphere elements, including consumers, retain the default Data type option (metrics at Cluster, Resource Pool, Host, Datastore, and Virtual Machine level).

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 vSphere views and Capacity Pools view and grant the necessary permissions to Capacity Planners and vSphere 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, use the vSphere Infrastructure view. 

The following common use cases are described here:

Managing the capacity of vSphere infrastructure consumers

You can analyze and manage the capacity of your vSphere 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 vSphere virtual machines:

• VMware-vCenter-Extractor-Service ETL: Configure and use this ETL to collect the required configuration and performance metrics for the VMs. 

• BMC - TrueSight Capacity Optimization Gateway VIS files parser: Configure and use this ETL to collect additional metrics, more accurate memory utilization metrics, and performance metrics at a higher granularity. For example, use this ETL to collect the OS-level real memory usage values that are used to generate overallocated VM recommendations. Before you use this ETL, you must instrument the VMs. 

  Instrumenting VMs

  The memory utilization value that is collected from an instrumented VM is based on the actual memory of the VM. The Agent collects resource consumption breakdown at process or workload level and helps you to detect specific in-guest OS level resource constraints (for example, in-guest paging due to the physical memory configuration of the VM being too low).
  The memory utilization value from a non-instrumented VM is based on the data collected by the hypervisor. This value might be over-reported and the VM might not be detected as overallocated. BMC recommends that you instrument your business-critical VMs to collect OS-level memory usage values.
  
  To instrument a VM:
   1. Install a Capacity Agent inside the VM from which you want to collect metrics
   2. Configure the Gateway Server and Capacity Agent to initiate data collection. For more information, see Collecting-data-via-Capacity-Agents.
   3. Configure and use the out-of-the-box BMC-TrueSight-Capacity-Optimization-Gateway-VIS-files-parser to collect the required metrics from the VM.

After data collection starts, data is loaded in the data warehouse daily and Indicators are available in the Workspace.

In the Workspace:

• Virtual machines whose data is collected by the VMware vCenter Extractor Service ETL are represented by the Virtual Machines - VMware system type
• Instrumented VMs are represented by the Virtual Node - VMware system type
• If you have configured the ETLs to share the same entity catalog, then these two system types, Virtual Machine - VMware and Virtual Node - VMware, are internally linked and you can view their relationship for each VM.

As an Administrator, you must install the vSphere views and Capacity Pools view and grant the necessary permissions to Capacity Planners and vSphere Technology Specialists to access these views.

Step 2. Analyze the collected data

Use the capacity views to analyze the imported vSphere virtual machine data. Depending on the data source, you can use the vSphere Virtual Machines view or the Servers Overview view for analysis.

To view and analyze the key capacity metrics and charts for vSphere VMs, use the vSphere-Virtual-Machines-view. It displays metrics collected by the VMware-vCenter-Extractor-Service ETL.

To view and analyze the granular metrics (actual memory utilization value, workload data, and process level data) that are collected from an instrumented VM, use the Servers-Overview-view. The vSphere Virtual Machines view does not display these metrics. 

The following common use cases are described here. 

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 vSphere infrastructure using a predefined set of metrics.

To perform advanced analysis on the imported vSphere data, such as identifying specific performance issues, trends, and bottlenecks, you can use Analysis.

Here are some use cases for which you can create and use Analyses:

For more examples, see Creating-an-analysis.

Managing 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, Reservations, and the Virtual Planner.

This topic describes the following use cases:

For more use cases of Virtual Planner, see Creating-virtualization-studies-to-assess-VM-capacity-requirements.

Further Reading

Best Practices for using the Capacity Pools view