1.4 Application Scenario

PlateSpin Recon and PlateSpin Portability Suite combine to form the only suite that automates the entire capacity planning and server consolidation project from start to finish. The following table illustrates how to assess, design, and implement a solution for optimizing and consolidating the data center.

Table 1-6 Data Center Optimization and Consolidation Workflow

Action

Process

Description

Solution

Assess

1. Inventory

  • Remotely discover server hardware and software assets across the data center

  • Gather detailed information for each server such as operating system, installed and running applications or services, patch levels, CPU, memory, network and disk resources

  • Connect to the network, then select relevant computers or domains; data on hardware and resources is collected in a centralized database

  • Organize servers by predefined and user-defined groupings for organized analysis

PlateSpin Recon: Remotely and agentlessly identify server resources and workloads in the data center and create a complete picture of hardware and software inventory, utilization levels, and workload sizes

Assess

2. Collect

  • Identify workloads and collect utilization data over days, weeks or months to determine workload sizes and appropriate resource matching

  • Create dynamic reports to identify workload and resource mismatches and identify candidate workloads for consolidation or resource upgrading

  • Rank and sort server workloads by CPU, network, disk, memory inventory, and/or performance

  • View summary workload sizing data or drill down to point-in-time granular levels

  • Collect and analyze data from multiple sites to create a more complete picture of the data center

  • Export the data to third-party tools or copy visual graphs to business presentations

PlateSpin Recon: Remotely and agentlessly identify server resources and workloads in the data center and create a complete picture of hardware and software inventory, utilization levels, and workload sizes

Design

3. Analyze

  • Identify virtualization candidates

  • Create scenarios for distributing workloads across servers to maximize utilization

  • Balance application workloads over time and across hardware resources to minimize resource contention

  • Use “what-if” modeling to determine different combinations of hardware and virtual hosts required for the project

  • Generate consolidation or disaster recovery plans with detailed project, scenario, and workload assignment reports and charts

  • Compare different scenarios based on total cost of ownership, consolidation ratio, rack space, and power needs

PlateSpin Recon: Generate consolidation scenario plans to optimally combine and allocate workloads to new virtual hosts

Implement

4. Consolidate

  • Accelerate the server consolidation project by streaming physical servers into virtual environments such as VMware ESX Server, VMware Server, and Microsoft Virtual Server

  • Automate migrations between dissimilar physical servers or from physical servers to blades

PlateSpin Portability Suite: Automatically stream data, applications, and operating systems to any physical or virtual platform over the network

Manage

5. Monitor

  • Keep track of workload performance

  • Identify over- and under-utilized workloads for ongoing optimization

PlateSpin Recon

6.Chargeback

  • Assign customized raters to machines

  • Measure resource usage and bill business owners for usage

  • Create reports on usage and cost

7. Manage Virtual Infrastructure

  • Monitor VM creation

  • Report on VM growth