Reservations and Optimization and Planning… Oh My!

By: Anson McCook

Do you use the same platform to maintain performance, onboard workloads, and plan for change? You should.

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I doubt you have just one monitoring tool.

You probably have one or more tool each for:• Monitoring the virtual environment• Measuring application uptime• The network• Storage

Wouldn’t it be nice to have one tool that did ALL of that monitoring?

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Like Bigfoot, this tool does not exist...

STOP

SEARCHING

FOR

IT

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Photo by JD Hancock

Just Deliver Reliable IT Services To The BusinessPerformance needs to be guaranteed while using the least amount of physical resources.

This goal can be bucketed into three categories:• Real-time management• Onboarding & deployment• Capacity planning

Regardless of your task – onboarding 100 new workloads, planning for a hardware refresh, keeping end-users happy – the end result has to be:

Maintaining the environment in a desired state.

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Why Are You Doing The Heavy Lifting?

Data collection of the relevant metrics needs to happen.

Most customers I speak with? They have a few overlapping monitoring products.

“Oh, for this metric, I like to check this tool. But, for that metric, it’s better to check that tool.”

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Why Even Have A Monitoring Tool?Well, it’s because the hypervisor wasn’t designed to keep itself or its workloads healthy.

But here’s what’s shocking…

The largest virtualization companies attempt to sell additional products that simply collect the same data that you have access to through their own hypervisor.

Why? So you can have a nice GUI and more information than you know what to do with.

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Don’t All Monitoring Product’s Websites Look The Same?

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Assure Performance! Improve Operational Efficiency! Increase Workload Density!

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Okay, but if the monitoring tool just monitors my environment…

Who actually does all this stuff?

Oh, that’s you!

How is this different than how you managed to process before you used the monitoring tool?

You Need A Control System

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Because it’s impossible for you to stare at data and make the right decision in real-time that keep the environment healthy.

Image by Kevin Stanchfield

Before Enabling Control

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VMTurbo sees into the virtual & cloud environments and knows…

What workloads to place. Where. When. And in what order.

It gives you actions to drive your environment to a healthy state.

After Enabling Control

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When you automate VMTurbo’s recommendations, those changes from before? They’re implemented in real-time.

Cloud and virtual environments are constantly changing. Workload placement decisions must keep up.

Onboarding & Reservations

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Now how do you deal with upcoming deployments?

You obviously need to have enough capacity to support these new workloads.

But, you need to make sure they’re placed in the right place at the right time.

Otherwise, you’re putting your environment in a state of risk, one that you will have to resolve later.

Your Control System Should Keep Your Environment Healthy.

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When the workloads are deployed, the system is already aware of the current environment’s state.

Based on the resources available from the physical infrastructure, the control system places the workloads in the right location to maintain the desired state.

Remember: once all workloads have been deployed, your real-time control system continues to maintain the health of your environment.

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Simulation & Planning

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As you think about changes to your environment…

• Supporting new projects• Refreshing hardware• Consolidating clusters• Projecting growth

The outcome of these changes needs to be in a healthy environment.

How many workloads can I support? How many hosts do I need? When should I buy hardware?

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As you’ll recall, your capacity tool gave you all the answers.

But who or what figures out how to add those new workloads safely?

Who must keep them healthy on the same number of hosts your cap-planner just said you can support?

You.

Sound familiar yet?

Use The Machine

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The machine answers complex problems. It doesn’t show you how.

So the human has to figure out the steps to reach that answer. Why?

If the computer has the solution, it should achieve the outcome it says you can achieve.

It’s easy if, and only if, the planning platform controls the real-time environment and makes the onboarding decisions.

Image by Tama Leaver

Capacity Planning In VMTurbo

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The same control system that drives your environment to a healthy state (and keeps it there)…

Will continue to do its job as you plan and scale your environment.

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It doesn’t make sense.

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Most tools make you figure it out.

Monitoring tools give you information so that you have to make decisions on how to make your environment healthy (after it’s already unhealthy).

Orchestration tools enable you to create a workflow to build workloads, but you have to figure out if you have the space and where to onboard them.

Capacity tools show you their calculated results for capacity and headroom, but you have to actually achieve them.

Get Under Control

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Only a control system can actually deliver reliable IT services.

So, do you use the same platform to maintain performance, onboard workloads, and plan for change?

You should.

Author

Anson McCookSales Engineering ManagerVMTurbo

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