Transforming capacity planning in enterprise data centers

To solve the waste problem, you need better knowl edge
of your environment, including accurate information
on system trends and a better understanding of best-fit
scenarios. Data alone isn’t enough. You need tools that
can quickly sort through and analyze massive amounts
of data and then generate meaningful information that
you can put to work in your capacity planning efforts.
This sharply targeted information is one of the keys to
allocating virtual and physical resources in a more
flexible manner, avoiding over-provisioning and meet -
ing the peak demands the applications you support.
This is where today’s new tools for capacity planning
come into place. These tools arm you with the insight
you need to make capacity planning and resource
optimization an everyday event in your data center.
Taking capacity planning to a
new level
At HP, we have been working actively to apply
advanced technologies to the challenge of capacity
planning. These technologies, including algorithms
developed by HP Labs, are a part of the new HP
Insight Dynamics – VSE software suite. This software
incorporates HP Smart Solver technology that allows
you to automatically analyze and optimize server
capacity and power use.
HP Insight Dynamics – VSE collects and analyzes
thousands of historical data points from virtual and
physical resources each day. It gathers data every five
minutes to create a clear record of server utilization—
processors, memory, networking and I/O bandwidth—
and energy consumption. Then, using the HP Smart
Solver, the software identifies the best fit for workloads
and highlights opportunities to consolidate servers to
improve utilization and cut power and cooling costs.
Using the HP Smart Solver, you can quickly evaluate
different scenarios for consolidating older and under -
utilized physical servers onto virtual machines. You can
simulate different workload configurations on different
sets of server resources. You can automatically find
best-fit solutions for dozens of servers, or even more.
And you can easily see which alternatives use the least
computing power, the least space and the least energy.
When you need to deploy a new workload, the five-
star rating system lets you instantly see the best place
to put the workload within your existing infrastructure.
And on an ongoing basis, you can use HP Insight
Dynamics – VSE to identify servers that often push their
capacity limits, and then shift the loads to servers that
are often underutilized. For example, a server that runs
certain workloads at night, such as a backup applica -
tion, might sit idle during the day. With this information
in hand, you can try out different workload balancing
scenarios, and then confidently shift certain daytime
workloads to the idle server, so you can take advan -
tage of the open computing capacity.
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It’s easy to see how historical CPU utilization for a workload has performed over time.