Hi vAdmins,
Following my initial post on VMware vRealize Operations 8, Part 1, I thought it would be a good idea to explore the world of certificate, cost and capacity management.
Let’s take a closer look!
Capacity Planning
Capacity planning is essential to ensure that the infrastructure and resources in your environment are sufficient and running efficiently.
With the built-in capacity analytics engine of vRealize Operations, data is collected every 5 minutes which allows for predictions and forecasting in the near future.
Having a robust capacity planning system in place eliminates the need to scramble for additional hardware when the environment runs out of capacity.
Capacity Engine and Calculations
The capacity engine utilizes real-time predictive capacity analytics to analyze past utilization and project future workloads. This is accomplished through an industry-standard statistical analysis model that is tailored to demand behavior. By taking the Demand and Usable Capacity metrics as input, the engine produces the output metrics of Time Remaining, Capacity Remaining, Recommended Size, and Recommended Total Capacity, as illustrated in the figure below.
vRealize Operations caps the recommended size that is generated by the capacity engine to keep the recommendations conservative.
- vRealize Operations caps an oversized recommended size at 50% of the currently allocated resources.For example, a virtual machine that is configured with 8 vCPUs has never used more than 10% CPU historically. Instead of recommending a reclaim of 7 vCPUs, the recommendation is capped to reclaiming 4 vCPUs.
- vRealize Operations caps an undersized recommended size at 100% of the currently allocated resources.For example, a virtual machine that is configured with 4 vCPUs has been constantly running very hot historically. Instead of recommending the addition of 8 vCPUs, the recommendation is capped at adding 4 vCPUs.
Source: For more information, see this awesome article!
In the demo below, you can see the status of the environment including capacity forcast.
Capacity Models
There are 2 different capacity models and below is a description of what they can be used for.
Allocation-based
- This model assumes that the virtual machines claims all the assigned resources vCPU, vMEM etc
Demand-based
- This models looks if how much resources are allocated, based on the object’s demand.
Capacity Reclaiming
vRealize Operations offers proposed configurations to adhere to based on reclaiming standards. These can be utilized for:
- Powers off VMs
- Idle VMs
- Snapshots
- Orphaned Disks
You can adjust these criteria so that these citations fit well with the requirements of your organization.
Whaf-if Scenarios
Capacity Optimization allows you to forecast successfully the impact of adding a workload to an application. By trying various scenarios, you can arrive at an optimum configuration.
There are 7 different types of simulations what-if scenarios available:
- 2 related for adding or removing VMs
- 2 related for adding or removing ESXi host
- 2 related the impact of migration VMs to various Clouds
- 1 Cost comparisons
In the demo below, you can see the potential cost savings by migrating workload to a pubic Cloud.
Acces Cost and Cost Savings
The Cost dashboard within VMware vRealize Operations gives you convenient access to the cost and reclaimable resources of your datacenters and clusters.
From a single window, you can view a list of all your Data centers and receive a comprehensive overview of their infrastructure.
For instance, if you have one datacenter with ten hosts distributed across three different clusters and seventeen CPU sockets, you can see a wealth of sizing information. Moreover, the Datacenter Resource Cost tab shows the total cost per month of ownership to run the environment, as well as the reclaimable resources which indicate possible savings. Additionally, a number of performance metrics (vm level) for cost optimization are provided, further streamlining the experience, see below:
- Effective daily cost
- Effective MDT cost
- Monthly Effective Projected Total cost.
You can gain a better understanding of the usage of a certain virtual machine and the associated expenses by adding certain metrics to it.
Cost Drivers
VMware vRealize offers a variety of cost drivers which give you insight about the expenses associated with your private cloud, including ESXi hosts, storage, licensing, and application costs. This feature enables you to precisely calculate costs by allowing you to customize each of these categories. With vRealize, you have the capability to modify the calculation process, such as changing how you are charged for VM CPU cycles or Memory. Moreover, you are able to make cost calculations for cloud providers such as AWS, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware’s VCPP. For those unaware of the cost of their resources or provider, they have the option to download default values from the cost reference database.
vRealize Operation Certificate management.
Due to VMware vRealize sending all communication securely via SSL traffic, it is essential that all relevant certificates are properly implemented and not allowed to expire.
By default, vRealize nodes are installed with self-signed certificates, though you have the option of using your own certificate as long as it is compliant with various criteria.
- The file is encoded in PEM format
- The certificate is valid for Server Authentication
- All certificates are in the chain are included
- The private key is included
vRealize operations cluster have a root certificate, cluster certificate and node certificate.
The vRealize Operations administration provides te option for viewing and replacing the existing certificate:
You can use the Locker tool within the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to generate a CSR.
When you first install vRealize Operations, you will already have a copy of the cost reference database
So far this post (part 2) in the next post I will cover additional functionality like Performance Optimization, Application Monitoring and User Acces Control.
So stay tuned!
End of this post.
Disclaimer: This blog is based on my personal title and assumptions. No rights can be derived from this blog