CAPACITY MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES

FOR VBLOCK™ INFRASTRUCTURE

PLATFORMS

IaaS COE
March 2011

WHITE PAPER
© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 1
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ...................................................................................................... 3
Why is Capacity Management Important? ....................................................................... 3
Scope of This Paper ........................................................................................................ 3
Audience ......................................................................................................................... 3
Terminology .................................................................................................................... 4
Capacity Management Overview .................................................................................. 5
What is Capacity Management? ...................................................................................... 5
Guidelines for Implementing Capacity Management........................................................ 5
Choose the Right Toolset and Capacity Management Database (CDB) .............................................. 5
Select a Process Owner ............................................................................................................................................... 6
Define Resource Lifecycle Requirements............................................................................................................ 6
Measure Key Performance Metrics ....................................................................................................................... 6
Establish Baselines ....................................................................................................................................................... 6
Collect Workload Forecasts From Consumers ................................................................................................. 6
Analyze Results .............................................................................................................................................................. 7
Establish Regular Metering and Chargeback (Optional) ........................................................................... 7
Establish Capacity Triggers ..................................................................................................................................... 7
Model Resource Requirements................................................................................................................................ 7
Summary......................................................................................................................... 7
What to Monitor ............................................................................................................. 8
Vblock Infrastructure Platforms ....................................................................................... 8
Key Monitoring Metrics and Events ............................................................................... 11
VMware vSphere Virtualization Software ......................................................................................................11
EMC Storage ..................................................................................................................................................................14
Cisco Network Switches ...........................................................................................................................................15
Cisco Unified Computing System..........................................................................................................................15
Considerations for Choosing a Toolset ..................................................................... 16
Monitoring Tools Considerations ................................................................................... 16
Capacity Management Tools Considerations ................................................................ 16
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 18
References ................................................................................................................... 19
VMware vSphere virtualization software........................................................................................................19
Cisco Nexus Switches .................................................................................................................................................19
Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) ............................................................................................................19
EMC Celerra ...................................................................................................................................................................19
EMC CLARiiON..............................................................................................................................................................19
EMC Symmetrix............................................................................................................................................................19

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 2

Executive Summary
Why spend money unnecessarily? Effective capacity management makes efficient use of existing capacity,
minimizes waste of computing resources, and plans for the need to accommodate any spikes in resource
demands. To address the challenges of managing capacity in the virtualized data center, IT managers need end-
to-end visibility into their physical and virtual resources.

In comparison to traditional data centers, managing capacity in the virtualized data center of today presents
unique challenges for IT organizations. Exact measurement of available physical resources is difficult because the
capacity is hidden behind a layer of virtualization. To uncover those physical attributes, IT managers need
processes and toolsets that enable the necessary visibility into infrastructure capacity and performance.

Why is Capacity Management Important?

Understanding, forecasting, and fine tuning application and infrastructure component usage helps to improve
performance and reduce consumption, which lowers costs and allows more consistent levels of IT services. With
an effective capacity management strategy in place, IT operations can provide more efficient and comprehensive
service levels, while making more efficient usage of the existing infrastructure.

Effective capacity management allows IT operations to:

 Optimize use of existing infrastructure

 Lower capital expenses by accurately predicting future capacity resource requirements
 Properly and efficiently plan for new infrastructure purchases
 Improve service quality
 Eliminate redundant work
 Ensure consistent reporting of performance and capacity
 Provision capacity efficiently and in a timely manner
 Uncover bottlenecks before business services are adversely affected

Scope of This Paper

This white paper provides guidance to organizations that have not yet implemented capacity management in
Vblock™ Infrastructure Platforms.

This white paper includes:

 General guidelines for implementing capacity management on Vblock Infrastructure Platforms

 A closer look at what to monitor for Vblock Infrastructure Platforms for capacity management
purposes
 Guidelines for evaluating and choosing an effective toolset for your specific virtual environment

Audience
Directors of IT, Operations Managers, and technical staff looking to integrate or implement capacity management
for Vblock Infrastructure Platforms will benefit from reading this paper.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 3

Terminology
Table 1 defines terms used in this document.

Table 1. Terminology

Term Definition
Alert A warning that a threshold has been reached, something has changed, or a
failure has occurred. Alerts are often created and managed by System
Management tools and are managed by the Event Management Process.

Capacity Management Discipline that ensures IT infrastructure is provided at the right time in the
right volume at the right price, and ensuring that IT is used in the most
efficient manner.

Capacity Planning Estimating the space, computer hardware, software and connection
infrastructure resources that will be needed over some future period of time.
Providing satisfactory service levels to users in a cost- effective manner.

Event Any detectable or discernable occurrence that has significance for the
management of the IT infrastructure or the delivery of IT service and the
evaluation of the impact a deviation might cause to the services.

Performance Monitoring Ongoing monitoring and analysis of system performance to ensure

appropriate levels of capacity have been provisioned and resources are
optimally tuned.

Vblock Infrastructure Engineered, pre-tested, and validated units of IT infrastructure that are
Platforms guaranteed to perform at a defined level. Vblock Infrastructure Platforms are
the industry’s first completely integrated IT offering that combines high
quality networking, computing, storage, virtualization, management, and
security technologies with end-to-end vendor accountability.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 4

Capacity Management Overview
Virtualization technologies help IT managers utilize infrastructure resources more efficiently, but virtualization also
makes physical resource requirements harder to determine because the virtual servers are abstracted from the
physical hardware. However, the right capacity management solution can help assure high performance of
business-critical virtualized applications, while saving time and money. The following sections define capacity
management in the context of this paper and provide some guidelines for developing an effective capacity
management strategy.

What is Capacity Management?

®
The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL ) defines capacity management as a discipline or system of rules that ensures
the sufficient, timely, and cost-effective provision of IT infrastructure resources to maximize IT operational
efficiency. Effective capacity management requires input from many different areas of the business to identify
which services will be required, what IT infrastructure will be required to support these services, what level of
contingency will be needed, and how much this infrastructure will cost.

Guidelines for Implementing Capacity Management

Efficient and cost-effective capacity management on a virtualized, converged infrastructure such as Vblock
Infrastructure Platforms requires a dynamic, agile strategy that incorporates processes and methodologies based
on business needs.

The following are guidelines for developing an effective capacity management strategy:

 Select a Capacity Management Database (CDB)

 Select a Process Owner
 Define Resource Lifecycle Requirements
 Measure Key Performance Metrics
 Choose the Right Toolset
 Establish Baselines
 Collect Workload Forecasts from IT Service Consumers
 Analyze Results
 Establish Regular Metering and Chargeback (Optional)
 Establish Capacity Triggers
 Model Resource Requirements

Choose the Right Toolset and Capacity Management Database (CDB)

Once you have moved to a converged and virtualized infrastructure, it is necessary to re-evaluate your monitoring
and capacity planning strategy. When selecting an approach, ensure that it can scale across the enterprise and
can import a wide variety of data sources. The tool or toolset must provide end-to-end visibility throughout the
Vblock platform. Refer to Considerations for Choosing a Toolset for more information about choosing the best
toolset for the environment.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 5

ITIL recommends establishing a CDB as a subset of a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). A CDB can
be constructed manually, for example, through a spreadsheet-based process, or can be purchased as part of a
capacity management toolset that maintains a relational database. The CDB is the cornerstone of a successful
capacity management process because it organizes all the business, financial, technical, and service information
received and generated by capacity management processes in relation to the capacity of the infrastructure and its
elements. When selecting or building a CDB, ensure that it supports input from a variety of systems and external
sources. Capacity management is an ongoing process, and therefore, the CDB must be kept current and up to
date.

Select a Process Owner

Select a capacity management process owner who understands all aspects of the company’s business and is
able to communicate effectively with all business units. It is critical for the process owner to verify that accurate
data gets entered into the CDB to ensure the credibility of the capacity plan. This process owner is accountable for
designing, implementing, and maintaining the overall capacity management process.

Define Resource Lifecycle Requirements

After selecting a CDB and a process owner, next define the processes, workflows, approvals, and schedules
associated with the workloads in your virtualized environment. In particular, it is important to understand resource
provisioning and decommissioning processes to avoid virtual machine (VM) sprawl and to manage resources
efficiently.

Measure Key Performance Metrics

The next step is to populate the CDB with critical infrastructure resource IDs and associated metrics. Start by
determining which services, servers, and devices are critical to meeting future capacity needs, and subsequently
identify the key metrics that should be measured. Focus on collecting metrics that are critical to performance and
capacity management.

This activity is the main focus of the second part of this paper, What to Monitor.

Establish Baselines
Once the new environment is deployed, it is recommended that you measure the current performance of Vblock
resources. The results, which should be recorded in the CDB, will provide:

 A baseline from which future trends can be projected and analyzed

 An indication of currently available capacity and potential performance bottlenecks
Understanding the performance of individual components and the system as a whole makes capacity planning
and management easier and more efficient.

Collect Workload Forecasts From Consumers

Capacity planning output depends on accurate workload forecasting input. This activity will require detailed
conversations with consuming business units and/or customers. After the workload forecasts are collected, the
associated current and future resource requirements to meet those forecasts are then established. This
information—consumer mapping to resources, targets and forecasts—should then be entered into the CDB.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 6

Analyze Results
Once you have carried out the above steps, the information contained in the CDB can be used to:

 Assess utilization
 Review resource demands
 Determine peak users, sessions, and processes
 Identify performance bottlenecks
 Run “what-if” analysis
 Forecast capacity resources

Establish Regular Metering and Chargeback (Optional)

Metering and chargeback data can provide valuable input to the capacity management process, as driven by your
business model. Chargeback systems based on allocated or actual resource usage complement capacity
management by accounting for the operational costs involved in providing and maintaining an IT infrastructure,
including the costs for IT services and applications. Refer to Vblock Infrastructure Platforms – Guidelines For
Metering And Chargeback Using VMware vCenter Chargeback (http://www.vce.com/solutions/applications/) for
more information.

Establish Capacity Triggers

Next, you will want to identify when and under what circumstances changes to your environment are required.
This exercise will involve reviewing the metrics in your CDB and identifying thresholds for each. For instance,
detecting an alarming trend for a particular CPU’s usage will allow you to determine what to do about it—incur
performance degradation or increase the resource capacities required to eliminate bottlenecks or other perceived
issues.

Model Resource Requirements

Now that you have carried out the steps described above, you are in a position to model the forecasted resource
requirements. Typically, this is carried on a semi-annual or annual basis. This information provides you with
management insight and justification to the business or IT related expenditures.

Summary
Without proper capacity management, infrastructure resources may not be used optimally and unnecessary
investments are made resulting in unnecessary costs. Or, worse still, not enough resources are available, leading
to degraded quality of service or loss of business. A capacity management strategy based on the guidelines
described above can ensure that the right resources are available at the right time at the right price.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 7

What to Monitor
Once the CDB is ready for use, populate it with critical infrastructure resource IDs and associated metrics. Start by
determining which services, servers, and devices are critical to meeting future capacity needs, and subsequently
identify the key metrics that should be measured. Focus on collecting metrics that are critical to performance and
capacity management. The following sections describe key infrastructure components and metrics critical to
efficient capacity management.

Vblock Infrastructure Platforms

Before examining key metrics to monitor, it is important to understand the components of Vblock Infrastructure
Platforms with which those metrics are associated. Vblock Infrastructure Platforms provide pre-engineered,
production-ready (fully tested) virtualized infrastructure components, including the best of breed cloud offerings
® ® ®
from Cisco , EMC , and VMware . Vblock Infrastructure Platforms are designed and built to satisfy a broad range
of specific customer implementation requirements.

Refer to the following for detailed information:

 Figure 1 illustrates the layers of the Vblock infrastructure.

 Table 2 describes the three Vblock platforms.
 Table 3 describes the key components of each Vblock platform.

Management VMware vCenter

Cisco UCS Manager
EMC Ionix UIM
SMC or Unisphere
Advanced Management Pod (AMP)

Compute/Network
Cisco Nexus 1000V

VMware vSphere

Cisco UCS 5108Blade Chassis

Cisco’s UCS 61x0 Fabric interconnects

Network

Cisco Nexus 5000/7000

SAN
Cisco MDS 9000

Storage
NS-120 CX4-480 NS-480 NS-960 VMAX
VCE228037
Vblock 1U
Vblock 0

Vblock 1

Vblock 2

Figure 1. Vblock Architecture

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 8

Table 2. Vblock Infrastructure Platforms

Platform Description
Vblock 0 Platform designed for enterprises, remote locations, file and print servers,
and as a test/development platform utilizing a Network Attached Storage
(file based) layer. UCS local disks are required for boot purposes.

Vblock 1 and 1U Designed for shared services such as email, virtual desktops,
collaboration, and file and print servers utilizing a SAN (block based)
storage layer (Vblock 1), NAS (file based) storage layer (Vblock 1U), or a
unified (NAS/SAN) layer (Vblock 1U). UCS local boot disks are optional.

Vblock 2 Deployed for massive scaling with ERP, CRM, and virtual desktops in
configurations that are extensible to meet the most demanding IT
requirements of any enterprise or service provider. Utilizes a SAN storage
medium. UCS local boot disks are optional.

Table 3. Vblock Components

Category Vblock 0 Vblock 1 Vblock 1U Vblock 2

Compute  Cisco 6120  Cisco 6120 or  Cisco 6120 or  Cisco 6120 or
Fabric 6140 Fabric 6140 Fabric 6140 Fabric
Interconnects Interconnects Interconnects Interconnects
 Cisco UCS  Cisco UCS  Cisco UCS  Cisco UCS
5108 chassis 5108 chassis 5108 chassis 5108 chassis
 Cisco UCS B-  Cisco UCS B-  Cisco UCS B-  Cisco UCS B-
series blade series blade series blade series blade
server packs server packs server packs server packs
Network  Cisco Nexus  Cisco Nexus  Cisco Nexus  Cisco Nexus
1000V 1000V 1000V 1000V
 Cisco Nexus  Cisco Nexus  Cisco Nexus  Cisco Nexus
5010 data 5020 data 5020 data 7010 data
center center center center
switches switches or switches or switches or
optionally, optionally, optionally,
Cisco Nexus Cisco Nexus Cisco Nexus
7010 data 7010 data 5020 data
center center center
switches switches switches
Storage  EMC Celerra  EMC  EMC Unified  EMC
NS-120 CLARiiON Storage Symmetrix
CX4-480 SAN Celerra NS- VMAX-iSCSI
 Cisco MDS 960 or NS-480 and SAN
Aggregation  Cisco MDS  Cisco MDS
SAN switch Aggregation Aggregation
SAN switch SAN switch
Virtualization  VMware  VMware  VMware  VMware
vSphere / vSphere / vSphere / vSphere /
vCenter vCenter vCenter vCenter
Management  EMC Ionix  EMC Ionix  EMC Ionix  EMC Ionix
Unified Unified Unified Unified
Infrastructure Infrastructure Infrastructure Infrastructure

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 9

 Category Vblock 0 Vblock 1 Vblock 1U Vblock 2
Manager Manager Manager Manager
(UIM) (UIM) (UIM) (UIM)
 EMC  EMC  EMC  EMC
Unisphere Unisphere Unisphere Unisphere
 Cisco UCS  EMC  EMC  EMC
Manager PowerPath PowerPath PowerPath
 Advanced  Cisco UCS  Cisco UCS  Cisco UCS
Management Manager Manager Manager
Pod (AMP)  Advanced  Advanced  Advanced
Management Management Management
Pod (AMP) Pod (AMP) Pod (AMP)

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 10

Key Monitoring Metrics and Events
The following sections list key metrics and events to monitor for capacity management purposes, as determined
by industry and vendor best practice guidelines. These metrics and events are associated with the following major
components of the Vblock platform:

 VMware vSphere virtualization software

 EMC storage
 Cisco switches
 Cisco compute blades

VMware vSphere Virtualization Software

The virtualization elements to monitor within the VMware vSphere™ environment are:

 Virtual Machines
 ESX Hosts
 Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) Clusters
 Resource Pools
To manage capacity, performance categories associated with each of these elements must be tracked. As you
read through these sections, pay special attention to these critical areas:

 CPU Ready—Indicates how much time a virtual machine has been waiting for space to run on a
physical CPU. The higher the ready time is, the slower the virtual machine is performing.
 Memory Balloon—Indicates how much memory the hypervisor is taking from a virtual machine to
keep it under a limit or to be reallocated. Ideally, this value is close to 0. A higher value indicates
that a virtual machine has a limit preventing it from getting all the memory it needs to run.
 Memory Swapped—Indicates how much memory the host is forced to push to disk storage because
of a memory shortage. This metric should also be close to or at 0 in an environment that is
performing well with enough memory for all the virtual machines.
For more information, refer to the documents listed in the References section of this paper.

Virtual machine metrics

A virtual machine is a tightly isolated software container that can run its own operating systems and applications
as if it were a physical computer. A virtual machine behaves exactly like a physical computer and contains it own
virtual (that is, software-based) CPU, RAM, storage, and network interface card (NIC). A virtual machine is
composed entirely of software and contains no hardware components whatsoever.

Attribute Metric Category

CPU  CPU Usage

 CPU Usage in MHz
 CPU Used
 CPU Ready
 CPU System
 CPU Wait Memory

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 11

 Attribute Metric Category

Memory  Memory Balloon

 Memory Balloon Target
 Memory Usage
 Memory Active
 Memory Granted
 Memory Consumed
 Memory Swapped

Disk  Disk Read Rate

 Disk Write Rate
 Disk Usage
 Disk Read Requests
 Disk Write Requests

Network  Network Usage

 Network Data Transmit Rate
 Network Data Receive Rate

ESX host metrics

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are “bare-metal” hypervisor architectures, meaning they install directly on top of
the physical server and partition it into multiple virtual machines that can run simultaneously, sharing the physical
resources of the underlying server.

Attribute Metric Category

CPU  CPU Usage

 CPU Usage in MHz
 CPU Used

Memory  Memory Balloon

 Memory Usage
 Memory Active
 Memory Granted
 Memory Consumed
 Memory Swapped Used
 Memory Shared Common

Disk  Disk Read Rate

 Disk Write Rate
 Disk Usage
 Disk Read Requests
 Disk Write Requests

Network  Network Usage

 Network Data Transmit Rate
 Network Data Receive Rate

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 12

Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) Cluster metrics
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) is one of the technologies you can use to configure vSphere
resources and improve vSphere management. DRS clusters represent the aggregate computing and memory
resources of a group of ESX hosts, and act and can be managed much like ESX hosts.

Attribute Metric Category

CPU  CPU Usage in MHz

Cluster Services  Effective CPU Resources

 Effective Memory Resources
 Current Failover Level

Memory  Memory Balloon

 Memory Usage
 Memory Active
 Memory Granted
 Memory Shared Common
 Memory Swapped Used

Resource Pool metrics

Resource pools are another control to help with vSphere resource management. Resource pools allow systems
administrators to divide and allocate CPU and memory resources to virtual machines and other resource pools
within a standalone ESX host or DRS cluster. By defining shares, reservations, and limits for a resource pool or
virtual machine, the systems administrator controls the guaranteed amount, both minimum and maximum, of CPU
and memory to allocate.

Attribute Metric Category

CPU  CPU Usage in MHz

Memory  Memory Balloon

 Memory Balloon Target
 Memory Usage
 Memory Active
 Memory Granted
 Memory Consumed
 Memory Swapped

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 13

EMC Storage
The following are key events to monitor for EMC storage systems. These events provide an effective balance of
events relating to the performance of the EMC storage system, as well as its overall availability and capacity.

Pay close attention to monitoring thin pools and their used and free capacity. It is vital that thin pools contain
available data device capacity to avoid a “pool full” condition, which occurs when thin devices bound to an
oversubscribed thin pool have free capacity but the underlying thin pool is full.

For more information, refer to the documents listed in the References section of this paper.

Component Event

Storage  Utilization (%)

Processors/Directors  Total Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Read Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Write Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Read Bandwidth (MB/s)
 Write Bandwidth (MB/s)
LUN Performance Metrics  Response Time (ms)
 Total Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Read Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Write Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Read Bandwidth (MB/s)
 Write Bandwidth (MB/s)
 Average Busy Queue Length
 Utilization (%)
Disk  Utilization (%)
 Response Time (ms)
 Total Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Read Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Write Throughput (I/O/sec)
 Read Bandwidth (MB/s)
 Write Bandwidth (MB/s)
 Average Busy Queue Length

Thin Pools  Percent Full (%)

 Percent Subscribed (%)
 Available Capacity (GB)
 Subscribed Capacity (GB)
 Oversubscribed By
RAID Groups  Free Capacity (Blocks)
 Logical Capacity (Blocks)
 Raw Capacity (Blocks)
 Number of LUNs (Count)

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 14

Cisco Network Switches
The following are key metrics to monitor on Cisco switches. For more information, refer to the documents listed in
the References section of this paper.

Component Metric

CPU  CPU Utilization (%)

Memory  Memory Utilization (%)

Interface  Interface Utilization (%)

Cisco Unified Computing System

In a Cisco UCS, a fault is a mutable object that is managed by Cisco UCS Manager. Each fault represents a
failure in the Cisco UCS instance, or an alarm threshold that has been raised. Refer to the Cisco UCS Manager
Configuration Guide for information on how to set up UCS system monitoring.

The following are key components in a Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) where faults may arise.

Components
 Chassis
 Fabric Interconnect
 I/O Module
 Memory
 Network
 Processor
 Server
 Service Profile

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 15

Considerations for Choosing a Toolset
Conventional monitoring and capacity management tools struggle in the virtual world. There are many
considerations that need to be taken into account when evaluating capacity management toolsets for virtualized,
converged infrastructures like Vblock Infrastructure Platforms. The following sections provide some considerations
to keep in mind when evaluating and choosing toolsets.

Monitoring Tools Considerations

Over the past few years, organizations have realized the benefits of virtualization, but have been reluctant to move
too swiftly. This was due in part to the lack of available tools to efficiently monitor a virtualized environment. Today
however, most Enterprise Monitoring Solutions offer feature-rich applications for monitoring virtual machines that
can include security, backups, reporting, alerting, or automation.

The virtualized environment is dynamic, with complex features such as VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler,
vMotion™, and High Availability (HA). A monitoring solution that is capable of monitoring and managing change is
vital to avoid and control VM sprawl. Whether choosing a native solution or selecting a third party tool, it is
important to understand your environment and your future needs. One deciding factor for many organizations
when choosing a toolset is the integration into an existing solution. Most organizations have invested in a
monitoring solution and do not necessarily want to redesign their entire monitoring environment. Any new
complementary toolset that is introduced into this environment must be able to integrate seamlessly into an
existing product.

In addition, consider the following when evaluating and choosing a monitoring toolset. A monitoring toolset should:

 Have end-to-end visibility into both the physical and virtual stacks including physical servers,
storage, and network; and virtual machines (VMs), virtual disks, virtual networks, and applications.
 Provide auto-discovery, a beneficial feature in a virtualized environment with limited resources and
time.
 Perform (or collaborate with existing tools on) root cause analysis.
 Provide reporting at different levels of granularity to suit various types of users.

Capacity Management Tools Considerations

In addition to monitoring, other aspects of capacity management are impacted by virtualization. For example, it is
not only important to have the necessary infrastructure to support your business needs; it is just as important to be
able to plan. The main goal is to find the right balance to avoid either over-provisioning or under-provisioning your
environment. Properly sizing for maximum efficiency can be a daunting task; however much focus from vendors in
recent years has been on designing solutions to facilitate the process of capacity management since this process
has become even more important in a virtualized world. Interaction with monitoring tools is a key deciding factor,
as accurate performance data is needed to perform the proper analysis of your current environment. This
"complete picture" is also important to enable performing precise what-if scenarios, and correctly forecasting if
additional infrastructure is necessary to support future business.

Consider the following when evaluating and choosing a capacity management toolset. A capacity management
toolset should:

 Consolidate historical performance data from all the different data center infrastructure stacks into a
single CDB from all the different stacks in the data center.
 Perform trending and forecasting, which are critical components of the capacity management
process and important features in a capacity management toolset.
 Enable performing “what-if” scenarios related to business requirements.
 Analyze workloads and identify unused or over-allocated capacity, in order to eliminate waste.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 16

  Be able to accurately report the outcome of capacity requirement modeling in business terms to the
various stakeholders.
 Manage or interact with a tool that audits changes to your converged infrastructure.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 17

Conclusion
In a virtualized environment, all resources must be shared, which presents some new and unique challenges to
the data center when determining actual resource requirements. Ensuring that every virtual server and virtualized
business-critical application has the resources it requires when it requires them presents a complex resource
allocation challenge.

To achieve consistent, acceptable service levels, at a known and controlled cost, define a capacity management
strategy that includes:

 Defining the processes, workflows, approvals, and schedules associated with the workloads in your
virtualized environment
 Identifying and collecting metrics critical to managing the performance and capacity of the resources
in your environment
 Measuring current performance and establishing baselines
 Collecting and using workload forecasts from consumers to establish current and future resource
requirements
Following the guidelines for implementing capacity management for Vblock Infrastructure Platforms outlined in this
paper will enable the development of a cost-effective capacity management strategy that assures high
performance of business-critical applications and prevents performance bottlenecks.

Choosing the right monitoring and capacity management toolsets for the specific environment is critical to the
success of a capacity management strategy. The considerations for evaluating and choosing toolsets given in this
paper can assist in making the right choice.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 18

References
For additional information, see the documents listed below.

Note: Documents on the EMC Powerlink site may require an EMC Powerlink user ID and password.

VMware vSphere virtualization software

 http://pubs.vmware.com/vsp40u1_e/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#href=admin/c_performanc
e_metrics.html

Cisco Nexus Switches

 Cisco Nexus 5000 and Nexus 2000 MIBs Reference
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/mib/reference/NX5000_MIBR
ef.html
 Cisco MIB Locator
http://tools.cisco.com/ITDIT/MIBS/servlet/index
 MIBS
http://www.cisco.com/public/sw-center/netmgmt/cmtk/mibs.shtml

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)

 Cisco UCS Manager Configuration Guide, Release 1.3(1)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/gui/config/guide/1.3.1/b_UCSM_GUI_C
onfiguration_Guide_1_3_1.html
 Cisco UCS Faults Reference
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10477/tsd_products_support_series_home.html

EMC Celerra
 Configuring Celerra Events and Notifications v6.0
http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/Technical_Documentation/300-009-
973.pdf

EMC CLARiiON
 EMC Navisphere Event Monitor Administrator’s Guide Version 5.x
http://powerlink.emc.com:80/km/live1/en_US/Legacy_Conversion/PL_Support/Doc_Library/6001037
0.pdf

EMC Symmetrix
 Monitoring EMC Symmetrix Using the Solutions Enabler Event Daemon Technical Notes
http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1//en_US/Offering_Technical/Technical_Documentation/300-010-
522.pdf

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 19

ABOUT VCE
VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment Company formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel,
accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that dramatically reduce the
cost of IT while improving time to market for our customers. VCE, through the Vblock platform, delivers the industry's first
completely integrated IT offering with end-to-end vendor accountability. VCE's prepackaged solutions are available
through an extensive partner network, and cover horizontal applications, vertical industry offerings, and application
development environments, allowing customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating and
managing IT infrastructure.
For more information, go to www.vce.com.

Copyright © 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Vblock and the VCE logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company,
LLC. and/or its affiliates in the United States or other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

© 2011 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. 20