System Sizing Guidelines for Integrity Virtual Machines Deployment -- Hardware Consolidation with Integrity Virtual Machines

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Data Collection Tools
Many system management products provide excellent utilization analysis tools. HP Operations
Center products can help in identifying average utilization as well as time, duration, and extent of
peak utilization (or „spikes‟). The Integrity Essentials Capacity Advisor also features workload and
hardware utilization tools as well as capabilities for analyzing workload aggregation on various
server configuration scenarios.
HP Operations Center’s Performance Agent and GlancePlus
Several tools are available for use in collecting utilization data. One common data collection tool
is Operation Center‟s Performance Agent (OVPA). Operation Center products can collect
information for multiple hardware components for various platforms and vendors. The Operation
Center products can generate executive summary reports indicating average and peak utilization
for various hardware components.
HP Capacity Advisor
Capacity Advisor (CapAd), part of the Virtual Server Environment suite, collects and reports
utilization data for systems across the data center. Collected data may be from either OVPA or the
various VSE agents. HP Integrity Essentials Capacity Advisor allows you to collect and compare
average and peak utilization for CPU, memory, networking, and disk resources.
Capacity Advisor can analyze multiple systems, predicting their potential as candidates for
consolidation onto a single physical system. CapAd makes the analysis of utilization data easier,
effectively eliminating the manual stacking and fitting of workloads. It combines and aggregates
utilization data (from VSE agents or HP Operations Center) for a clear picture of the total utilization
curve for the consolidated workloads. After you select multiple systems for aggregate analysis of
their utilization data, you can define a scenario using the hypothetical (or existing) system on which
you want to consolidate.
CapAd is an excellent tool for planning consolidation. It provides insights into workload behavior
that might otherwise be difficult, if not impossible to predict. You can estimate peak utilization,
average utilization and statistical percentiles (for example, utilization levels for 90% of a given time
period).