HP Matrix Operating Environment Software - Manual (Page 31)

The power caps settings shown are provided by the administrator who is managing power
consumption of servers. Capacity Advisor obtains these settings and the enforcement data for
reporting purposes from HP Insight Power Manager. For information on how to generate a
Capacity Advisor report that includes power usage data, see
“Producing graphs and reports”
(page 67) .
Automating solution generation: HP Smart Solver
HP Smart Solver: Types of solutions
These planning scenario simulations can be automated:
Consolidation to virtual machines You can simulate the consolidation of existing physical systems
into virtualized resources, thereby converting the physical systems into VM guests hosted on
VM hosts. To create the simulation, you can use data from existing VM hosts or create
template-generated “what-if ” systems based on characteristics that you specify. This feature
makes it possible for you simulate a replacement or upgrade of existing legacy systems to fewer
systems hosting virtual machines.
Workload stacking You can simulate stacking individual workloads onto existing servers
and/or onto template-generated “what-if” systems based on characteristics that you specify. This
facility allows you to consolidate existing workloads into as few systems as possible.
Load balancing You can simulate balancing system loads across several servers, virtual machines,
or virtual machine clusters, such that workloads are distributed evenly across a set of resources,
without overloading the subset of the servers.
TIP: Use a Scenario comparison report to compare the headroom stars rating for saved scenarios.
Determining trends in Capacity Advisor
Determining trends from collected utilization data can be a challenging task. Accurate trend
analysis requires adequate historical data and an understanding of the cyclic nature of the data
being analyzed as well as any special events that might be found in the historical data.
• Trends are frequently small values, on the order of percents or fractions of a percent per
month.
• The cyclic data can easily be orders of magnitude greater than the trend (heavy calculations
the day before payroll distribution, floods of users logging on after work on the East coast,
and so on).
• Special events can also be orders of magnitude greater than the trend (seasonal promotions,
once per year calculations such as taxes).
Any algorithmic analysis must be able to deal with these problems. HP Insight Capacity Advisor
software combines aggregation of points based on known business cycles to deal with cyclic
patterns with exclusion of points to deal with special events, to provide data for a linear regression.
Automating solution generation: HP Smart Solver 31