Optimization Starts with a Clear Inventory

While it is relatively easy to deploy virtual machines, it is difficult and time consuming to track and manage a typical datacenter’s VM inventory. System administrators often find themselves at a loss when management asks questions such as:

• How many VMs to do we have?
• When were VMs deployed and by whom?
• What resources were allocated to VMs?
• Which VMs have not been patched?
• What OS are the VMs running?

Optimization Pack’s inventory features helps busy administrators manage their VM inventory and easily provide needed information. Inventory collects information for each VM from one or multiple vCenter servers. The information is then organized into “Excel like” tables that can be easily sorted by more than 50 attributes and reported into Excel or PDFs. The inventory function also has a custom ‘tag’ feature that allows administrators to associate specific data to one or more VMs. With this feature, administrators can more easily search for VMs by parameters such as:

• Dates when VMs should be taken down;
• Assigned VM owner names;
• Projects associations; and
• Name of the application or departments using the VM.

To generate a report, administrators simply sort, extract the data into Excel files or PDF and email the reports.

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Find VM Sprawl

The ease with which systems administrators can create VMs is a significant benefit to IT operations. Unfortunately, there is no automated process to clean up discarded VMs. These VMs show up as:

• Deployed VMs that have been powered off for a significant period of time
• Deployed VMs that are powered on but are no longer being used as evidenced by constant, low CPU utilization (Zombie VMs)
• Abandoned VMs that are no longer in VCenter, but still exist as VMDKs and are consuming storage
• Abandoned VM templates

Optimization Pack's waste finder functionality seeks out these VMs to determine:

• How long has a VM been since it was last used or powered on (# of days)
• The variance in CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O usage over time
• If it exists only as a VMDK and not in vCenter

With this information, Optimization Pack can make actionable recommendations to reclaim these orphaned resources.

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Manage Snapshots

It is very easy to create multiple snapshots from a single VM to support back up and recovery operations. When multiple system administrators can create snapshots, IT teams can very easily lose track of which snapshots are active and which ones are no longer being used. Optimization Pack's waste finder functionality helps administrators identify which snapshots are no longer being used and are candidates for reclamation.

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Baseline Utilization

Finding resources that are no longer consumed such as Zombie VMs, abandoned snapshots are one way to reclaim storage, CPU and memory resources. Finding over allocated resources is another.

Because it is difficult to determine exactly what CPU, memory and disk resources a virtual machine will require when it is first created, administrators tend to err on the side of performance. As a result, today’s virtualized environment is typified by large numbers of VMs consuming small percentages of their allocated resources. Optimization Pack’s right sizer feature continuously evaluates every VM’s CPU, memory and storage allocations and compares that data to actual utilization. This analysis takes place over time to account for transient utilization surges. The magnitude of this gap between allocated resources and utilized resources can then be used to formulate recommendations for reclaiming CPU, memory and storage resources.

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Recommendations

Reporting on poorly utilized resources is one key element of Optimization Pack. Making the key recommendations to recover these resources is the second element. Optimization Pack makes recommendations to:

• Increase or decrease CPU count for a VM
• Change the memory allocation in GB increments for a VM
• Reconfigure each virtual hard drive in GB increments
• Identify potential zombie VMs, abandoned snapshots, abandoned VMs, unused templates, and power off VMs for reclamation

The result is:

• Fit more VMs on existing server and storage resources without compromising performance
• Reclaim and repurpose 15% to 30% of existing capacity
• Reduce new server and storage purchase by 1/2

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Systems Requirements

VMware ESX 2.5 or vCenter 2.5 or higher