Configuring policies in v c ops

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Configuring Policies in vCenter Operations Manager

Sunny Dua

Solution Architect

vCOps Policies – Simplified!

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RANK 1RANK 2RANK 3

The policies are ranked

according to how they

appear in this list.

• Policies are applied as per Ranks.

• Hence if an object falls under Policy “TECH-SUMMIT” & “PROD”.

• In this case “TECH-SUMMIT” will apply.

Define GROUP TYPES

here to easily identify

groups. Such as

Production or Application

etc.

Set your preferences as to

how you want to see the

VIEWS under

PLANNINNG TAB and the

period on the REPORTS.

Canned Policies

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Are

aggressive on

rightsizing and

conservative

on buffers!

Are a great

starting point,

but require

modifications

as per the

environment

Can be used

effectively to

exclude

objects from

Analysis/Repo

rts

Configuring Badges in a Policy

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Configures badge

thresholds for

INFRASTRUCTURE

OBJECTS – Hosts,

Datastores & everything

except VMs

Configures badge

thresholds only for

VIRTUAL MACHINES

within the policy

Empty sliders

means disabled

thresholds.

Click to

enable/disable

NOTE

Thresholds just change

the badge color. Alerts on

threshold breach need to

be configured separately.

** Group Badge Thresholds can be used to generate threshold alerts for custom groups – Example a three tier application group with App, Web & Database VMs

Capacity & Time Remaining Configuration

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CONSERVATIVE

Behind the scenes it

changes the Average VM

profile to use Effective

Demand instead of Limited.

Results in a larger VM

Profile and hence lesser VM

Remaining

Capacity Remaining

Calculations should be

done on the basis of

Usable Capacity only. This

allows to reserve for HA

and other Buffers.

Use Cyclical Planning

to consider past

deployment behaviors.

Provisioning buffer is

the time it takes to

acquire new hardware.

Will need a

PIZZA

to explain this…

Demand Based Planning

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Allocation Based Planning

“Some want more while some don’t want any”

“More aggressive way of looking at things”

“Shows the real hunger of the workloads”

“Overcommit till the environment allows”

“Each one gets what is pre-decided”

“Conservative – Calculative – Controlled”

“Does not bother about the needs & wants”

“Overcommit till the policy allows”

What is Allocation?

• Allocation uses simple mathematics to do capacity planning. Works only on containers & datastores

• Reduces the CPU, VM or DISK SPACE allocated to a VM from the total available.

• The total available can be hypothetically increased by using Over commitment Ratios

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Over commitment

will only be

considered if

ALLOCATION is

selected.

What is Demand?

CPU Demand

• Amount of CPU resources an object would have used if there was no contention

• Demand (Mhz) for CPU comes from vCenter Metrics. Derived as Percentage by vCOps

• Demand can be Greater than , Equal to or Less than Usage

Memory Demand

• Derived by vCOps by using Active Memory + Overheads

Network Demand

• Derived by vCOps using network usage per vNic as a percentage of the bandwidth.

Disk Demand

• Sum of the queued IO commands and the outstanding IO commands as a percentage of the overall capacity. It is derived by vCOps.

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Should I chose Demand or Allocation?

The answer is – “it Depends”…

Customer Use Case :

I want to overcommit CPU by 4:1, Memory by 50% and Disk by 20%, however, I want to make sure that I stop creating new workloads if there is contention!

Recommendation :

Check both Demand and Allocation options. While you will have the option to over-commit, vCOps willtell you if the Demand does not allow you to over commit to the desired level. The most constrainingmeasure will be used to determine VMs Remaining & Days Remaining.

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Let’s Look at Another Use Case

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Customer Use Case :

I am running SAP Dialog instances and Oracle Databases in the virtual infrastructure. These are

critical machines and I do not want to overcommit at all. I want 1:1 for vCPU to Core, 0% memory

& disk over commitment.

Recommendation :

In case of business critical applications, you might not worry about consolidation. Hence, you can

use Allocation Model for CPU, Memory & Disk Space with 0% over-commitment. This will ensure

that you have no contention and hence the best possible performance.

TIP: You can add such VMs to a new group and apply an additional policy to ignore them

from Oversized VMs Calculations.

When to track Usage?

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Define the usage

hours of the

Workloads to

ensure that Usage

is tracked during

the appropriate

Days & Time.

Determine What is Usable!

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Allows you to define

Buffers for CPU,

Memory, Disk IO, Disk

Space & Network IO &

HA Configuration.

Buffers are subtracted

from the total capacity

Capacity

Calculation with

Last Known uses

the Average

Capacity as of

TODAY, while

Actual Capacity

Uses the Average

of the Viewing

Period.

Lets talk about waste management now!

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• Pretty straight forward as it looks at the Power State of the VM to detect “POWERED OFF”

• Uses CPU, Disk IO & Network IO to determine the Idle VMs

• %age of Time is being calculated as per the viewing period of the data. So if you have monthly views then 90% is

30 Days x 24 Hours = 720 Hours90% of 720 Hours = 648 Hours

Oversized & Undersized

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Here is the default configuration!

What does this mean?

VM will be listed as oversized, if CPU or Memory Demand of the VM is Less than 30% for 1% of the Report Period.

So if Report Period = 30 Days (Default)

30 Days x 24 Hours = 720 Hours1% of 720 Hours = 7.2 Hours

Chances are that all your VMs will fall in this report, either because of CPU or Memory or BOTH.

Oversized & Undersized – A better way to do this!

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Translates to 432 hours out of 720. Hence if the VM CPU or Memory Demand is less than 15% for 60% of the time in last one month, call it OVERSIZED.

Translates to 7.2 hours out of 720. Hence if the VM CPU or Memory Demand is More than 80% for 1% of the time in last one month, call it UNDERSIZED.

Same as

Oversized &

Undersized, but

applies only to

Containers

Alerts Configuration – This is simple

CONFIDENTIAL 16

Select what you want and uncheck what you don’t!!

Configuring policies in v c ops

Technology

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