performance, capacity planning, and efficiency in a virtualized world

© 2014 Scalar Decisions Inc. Not for distribution outside of intended audience

Performance, Capacity Planning and Efficiency in a Virtualized World

Dan Sylvester

Manager, Pre-Sales

Scalar West


Introduction

Performance Management

vCenter Operations Manager

NetApp OnCommand Balance


Background in architecting mission-critical

data centre infrastructure

Founded in 2004

$140M in FY14

Revenues

Nationwide Presence140 Employees

Nationwide

25% Growth YoYToronto | Vancouver | Ottawa

Calgary | London | MontrealGreater than 1:1

technical:sales ratio


Scalar is an Official

Supplier to the

TORONTO 2015 Pan

Am/Parapan Am Games

for IT security, data

centre integration, and

managed storage

services

#1 Canadian ICT

Security Company on

the Branham300


How Is It Running?

Bottleneck Analysis and

Remediation

Performance Optimization

Capacity Planning


Performance Management


What does this really mean?

Why is it happening?

What should you do?


vCenter Ops Manager


vCenter Operations collects metrics from vCenter and provides a holistic view with deep insights into health, risk and efficiency

vCenter Operations catches unusual behavior and detects potential performance bottlenecks early on before end users notice

vCenter Server collects real time performance data from vSphere

vCenter Operations Management Suite


Overview

Comprehensive management

for virtual infrastructure with

health, risk and efficiency

scores

Single pane of glass for

integrated performance,

capacity and configuration

management

Benefits

End-to-end visibility into virtual

infrastructure health

Ensure service levels for IT

services

Optimize for efficiency and cost

Immediate

Problems

Future

Problems

Opportunities

to Optimize


CPU Demand is the bottleneck


Check related Events to find any changes to the VM


Let’s look at capacity shortfalls

Very low on capacity


Current capacity

cross-over point

Actual VMs

deployed

VM count

capacity

Capacity state

today

New capacity

shortfall if I add

10 new VMs


Symptoms/Current State:

– VM feels sluggish

– Database is not responding fast enough

Assumptions

– Must be out of memory – CPU utilization is low

– Currently have 16GB of RAM, Can I get

another 16?


Findings

– vCOPs says the VM is overprovisioned – only

need 8 GB of RAM

– Metrics indicate disk bottleneck

– Did you know your C drive is sitting at 99%

utilization?

Corrective Action

– Re-size VM’s OS drive

– Problem solved


NetApp OnCommand

Balance


Heterogeneous OS Support

Multi-vendor, Multi-protocol Support (SAN, iSCSI, NAS/NFS, CIFS)

Agentless, Easy Install

Powerful AnalyticsIntelligence Instead of Data


Highlights What You

“Need to Know”

Abnormal and

critical events

Storage in Trouble

VMs in Trouble

Virtual Hosts in

Trouble

Physical Servers

in Trouble


On New Dashboard:

Virtual Machines

Virtual Hosts

Arrays

Physical Servers

Switches

Databases


Alerts on abnormal and critical performance issues

Analysis identifies root cause (bully) of performance issue

and affected VMs or hosts (victims)


Management

Solution Certified

Insight Balance


Performance Index of ESX Server

Sweetspot = 100


Scheduled and on-

demand reports

Automated scorecards

provide consistent

metrics

Dozens of drill-down

reports

– Virtual Machine

Scorecard shows how

the infrastructure is

supporting the VM

– Server Volume

Capacity Utilization

Forecast tells you

when you’ll run out

Server Volume Capacity Utilization Report


Symptoms/Current State:

– Poor database performance

– Physical server running Solaris/Oracle DB

– Storage System is extremely busy

– VMs running on the same spindles

Assumptions:

– Storage subsystem can’t keep up

– VMs may be impacting performance of the DB


Findings

– DB server is creating as many IOPs as all VMs

in their environment

– DB server is labeled as a “bully” by Insight

Balance

– Victims are actually VMs and a second

physical DB Server

– Cache Miss is clocked at 40%

– iSCSI errors – 1 per second occurring


Corrective Actions

– Move Lower Priority VMs from SAS to SATA

– Resize server side disk cache

– Scheduling to apply iSCSI patch

– Undersized disk cache was the problem but

iSCSI errors don’t help the situation either


Single Metrics aren’t enough to root cause

Intelligent, analytical systems can bring focus

Faster time to resolution

Become more proactive than reactive by

anticipating problems before they happen


THANK YOU.

performance, capacity planning, and efficiency in a virtualized world

Technology

intended audience

2014 scalar decisions

vms

risk

abnormal

efficiency

health

low