What-If VM Deployment Planning for VMware (model existing VMs)

This report calculates the number of additional VMs that your existing infrastructure (vSphere clusters and datastores) can support before the resource utilization reaches the specified threshold value.

Description

The What-if VM Deployment Planning for VMware (model existing VMs) report evaluates total capacity of your infrastructure and provides estimation of how many sample VMs of a certain profile can be added without causing the specified resource utilization threshold to be breached. In this report, you can choose sample VMs from the existing environment.

The report analyzes historical performance data for the specified period in the past, calculates the performance utilization trend and applies it to the forecast horizon. Calculation of additional VM sets is based on the predicted future performance of the sample VMs and the predicted virtual infrastructure capacities.

Note

To make a prediction for the vCpuCount counter, the report analyzes the current vCpuCount value, not historical performance data.

Parameters

Performance Data From: defines a date in the past starting from which historical performance data will be used for calculating the performance utilization trend. The report analyzes historical performance data starting from this date to the current date (data collection period).

Note

To make a forecast, the report must use historical performance data for at least 72 hours.

Forecast Horizon: defines the forecast period. The calculated performance utilization trend is applied to the time period that starts from the current date to the forecast horizon date.

Note

The date in the Forecast Horizon field must be a date in future.

Scope: defines a list of Groups or Objects that will be analyzed in the report (by default, the VMware Clusters and VMware Datastores groups are selected). The Add Group option returns a Group and all objects that a group contains (with all performance counter instances). The Add Object option returns only the selected object.

Important

Objects of the VMware Clusters and VMware Datastores groups are described with different related metrics. That is why consider the following to evaluate your VMware infrastructure properly:

To evaluate datastore free space and IOPS, select the VMware Datastores group in the Scope section, and specify the Threshold: Datastore Free Space and Threshold: Datastore IOPS thresholds.
To evaluate memory and CPU utilization, select the VMware Clusters group in the Scope section, and specify the Threshold: CPU Utilization (%), Threshold: Used Memory (%) or Threshold: vCPUs per Core thresholds.

Workload: defines a VM profile that will be used as a sample for calculating the number of VM sets. If you choose one VM, the report will calculate how many similar VMs can be added. If you choose several VMs, the report will calculate how many similar VM sets can be added.
The object picker control for the report workload has a predefined filter which limits selection to Objects of the VMware Virtual Machine class and Groups that include objects of the VMware Virtual Machine class.

Threshold: CPU Utilization (%): defines the CPU usage threshold as a percentage of total cluster CPU resources.

Threshold: Used Memory (%): defines the used memory threshold as a percentage of total cluster memory resources.

Threshold: Datastore Free Space (%): defines the free space threshold as a percentage of total available datastore space.

Threshold: Datastore IOPS: defines datastore IOPS threshold.

Threshold: vCPUs per Core: defines the threshold for vCPU cores per a single instance of the physical CPU core.

Sample Usage

Forecast how many VMs of the specified profile can be added to your datastores taking into account datastore capacity. Make sure that the free space threshold will not breach 20% within the next 30 days. Use the historical performance data for the previous month for report analysis.

Instructions

Open the What-if VM Deployment Planning for VMware (model existing VMs) report.
From the Performance Data From list, select Previous month > First day.
From the Forecast Horizon list, select a date in future (30 days from today).
In the Scope section, exclude the VMware Clusters group from the report scope (select the group and click Remove) to search for available datastores only.
In the Workload section, search for the VM that will be used as a sample. Click Add Object. In the Add Object window, click Search. The search will return a list of objects that belong to the VMware Virtual Machine class. Select the necessary VM in the list, click Add and click OK.
In the Threshold: Datastore Free Space (%) field, enter 20.
Click Run to view the report.

Report Output

The Virtual Infrastructure Described table will provide an overview for all datastores included in the report scope: total number of datastores, total capacity, amount of free and provisioned space, amount of space consumed by unknown files and the number of VMs residing on the datastores (note that this number will include both VMs and VM templates).

The Sample Workload Described table will provide an overview for the virtual machine used as a sample for calculating the number of VM sets: total number of VMs, total vCPUs, total CPU usage, memory usage and number of IOPS.

The Constraining Resource per Each Object table will provide the following details for every datastore:

Column	Description
Name	Name of the datastore.
Constraining Resource	Resource for which the specified threshold will be breached first within the forecast period. For example, both Datastore Free Space (%) and Datastore IOPS thresholds will be breached within the forecast period and the Datastore Free Space (%) is reported to be breached first. In this case, the report will display Free Space as the constraining resource.
Possible Capacity	Number of additional VMs of the specified profile that your datastores will be able to support on the forecast horizon date (that is, at the end of the forecast period).

Details

Report details will provide in-depth forecast information for every datastore included in the report scope.

The Overview table will provide an overview for the datastore: total capacity, amount of free and provisioned space, amount of space consumed by unknown files and the number of VMs residing on the datastore (note that this number will include both VMs and VM templates).

The Performance Forecast section will show a details table for each analyzed datastore resource:

Column	Description
Aspect	Name of the analyzed resource
Threshold	Specified threshold value
Capacity	Total datastore capacity
Predicted Usage	Predicted amount of free space left on the datastore after the new VM sets are added. The report provides both absolute value and relative value (as a percentage of total capacity).
VM Sets that Can Be Added	Number of additional VMs of the specified profile that the datastore will be able to support on the forecast horizon date (that is, at the end of the forecast period).