5.8.5

Defining Risk to Assess Future Problems in vCenter Operations Manager
The vCenter Operations Manager Risk badge indicates a potential performance problem in the near future
that might affect the virtual environment.
Risk involves the time remaining, capacity remaining, and stress factors that account for the time buffer,
remaining virtual machines, and degree of habitual high workload.
vCenter Operations Manager calculates the risk score using the scores of the sub-badges that the Risk badge
contains. The formula that is applied to calculate the risk score is inverse geometric weighted mean.
The overall risk score for an object ranges between 0 (no risk) to 100 (serious risk). The badge changes its
color based on the badge score thresholds that are set by the vCenter Operations Manager administrator.
Table 2‑6. Object Risk States
Badge Icon Description User Action
The selected object has no
current problems. No problems
are expected in the future.
No attention required.
A low chance of future
problems exists or a potential
problem might occur in the far
future.
Navigate to the Scoreboard tab
to check which resources are
likely to exhaust and plan for
appropriate actions.
A chance of a more serious
problem exists or a problem
might occur in the medium-
term future.
Navigate to the Scoreboard tab
to check which resources are
close to exhausting and take
appropriate actions as soon as
possible.
The chances of a serious future
problem are high or a problem
might occur in the near future.
Navigate to the Scoreboard tab
in to check which resources are
exhausted and act immediately
to resolve or prevent problems.
No data is available.
The object is offline.
Using the Time Remaining Badge Under the Risk Badge
The vCenter Operations Manager Time Remaining badge measures the time before a resource associated
with an object reaches capacity. This badge indicates the available timeframe to provision or load balance
the physical or virtual resources for a selected object.
vCenter Operations Manager calculates the Time Remaining score as a percentage of time that is remaining
for each compute resource compared to the provisioning buffer you set in the Configuration dialog box. By
default, the Time Remaining score provisioning buffer is 30 days. If even one of the compute resources has
less capacity than the provisioned buffer, the Time Remaining score is 0.
For example, if the provisioning buffer is set to 30 days, and the object that you selected has CPU resources
for 81 days, memory resources for 5 days, disk I/O resources for 200 days, and network I/O resources for
more than one year, the Time Remaining score is 0, because one of the resources has capacity for less than 30
days.
The Time Remaining score ranges between 0 (bad) and 100 (good). The badge changes its color based on the
badge score thresholds that are set by the vCenter Operations Manager administrator.
Chapter 2 Beginning to Monitor the Virtual Environment
VMware, Inc. 17