Understanding capacity in vRealize Operations involves finding opportunities for resource optimization and cost savings. On the Projects tab of VMware vRealize Operations, you can monitor the use of resources and the available capacity in your virtual environment. Furthermore, you can use scenarios for project planning to understand capacity needs in the future.
In the image above, I have selected the labesx02.home.virtlab.com object and in the Memory Demand panel it is showing the memory capacity remaining in my host. This is typically going to demonstrate an upward trajectory. The extended forecast is going to present you the prediction for the amount of capacity remaining and the shortfall.
There are several options available for the capacity container, which includes Most Constrained, Memory Demand, Memory Allocation, CPU Demand, CPU Allocation, vSphere Configuration Limit, Disk Space Demand, and Disk Space Allocation.
An important part of understanding capacity trending is being able to forecast changes to the environment. This is where projects comes into play. A project is an upcoming change to the infrastructure, such as adding Microsoft Exchange servers to a host, which is going to impact the capacity of the environment.
We are going to add a new project by clicking the green + icon. The first screen ask you for the name and description of the project. The status of the project can either be planned or committed. Planned projects help you understand the availability and visualize future demand. Committed projects calculate the actual capacity numbers with the project in mind.
A project can have one or more scenarios, such as adding
capacity or demand to the environment. In our example below, we are going to
add 5 virtual machines for an Exchange project with the expected demand of 1 GB
of memory and 800 MHz of CPU.
New to vRealize Operations 6 is the ability to have multiple projects and forecast the demand. To see the impact of a project, we drag the project up to the bar in the middle of the screen or click the plus icon at the end of the row. After I move my Exchange project into the visualization pane, we recognize that I am going to have a shortfall of memory for the next month.
Another scenario I have used for capacity modeling is removing hosts in a cluster to relocate them to another datacenter. This gives me an understanding of the impact to the virtual machines and if we can afford the reduction in resources.
vRealize Operations 6 provides deep insight into capacity planning of your environment, you no longer need to make guesses based on capacity snapshots from vCenter Server and annual budgeting can be more precise.
