1 introduction – HP Matrix Operating Environment Software User Manual
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1 Introduction
This document describes how to use Capacity Advisor to plan for changes in resource usage in
a virtualized server environment. Checklists and examples help you with common planning
tasks. This document is for technical professionals working in data center operations,
administration, and planning. Some understanding of system administration is assumed.
HP Insight Capacity Advisor software is a program that allows you to monitor and evaluate
system and workload utilization of CPU cores, memory, network and disk I/O, and power. With
this information, you can load your systems to make best use of the available resources.
You can monitor and evaluate one or more systems that are connected in a cluster configuration
or to a network. A single system can include multi-core or hyper-threaded processors.
Capacity Advisor helps you evaluate system consolidations, load balancing, changing system
attributes, and varying workloads to decide how to move workloads to improve utilization. The
quantitative results from Capacity Advisor can aid the planner in estimating future system
workloads and in planning for changes to system configurations. With Capacity Advisor, you
can perform the following tasks within an easy-to-navigate, clearly notated graphical user
interface:
•
Collect utilization data on CPU cores, memory, network and disk I/O, and power
•
View historical resource utilization for whole-OS and monitored workloads on HP-UX and
OpenVMS systems and whole-OS workload resource utilization on Microsoft Windows and
Linux systems.
•
View historical workload resource utilization and aggregate utilization across the partitioning
continuum (nPars, HP-UX vPars, HP-UX Virtual Machines)
•
Generate resource utilization reports
•
Plan workload or system changes, and assess impact on resource utilization
•
Assess resource utilization impact for proposed changes in workload location or size
•
Evaluate trends for forecasting resource needs
Capacity Advisor can be used to simulate changes in system configuration, such as the following:
•
Consolidating several systems into one system
•
Re-sizing a system for an upgrade
•
Re-sizing the demands on a system to reflect a forecast
•
Replacing older, small to mid-sized systems with virtual machines
Capacity Advisor can use data collected over time to show the results of these configuration
changes in many ways. Graphical views are available so you can see what the effects of the
changes are over time. Tables are available that give the percentage of time and the degree to
which the system is busy; this information is valuable in comparing resource utilization and
before and after a change. Other tables show how many minutes per month the
system is unacceptably busy–a measure valuable for both quality of service and for estimating
TiCAP bills. Because Capacity Advisor works from data traces collected over time, it is much
more accurate than using only
data or
data in understanding your systems and the
workloads they support.
The significant advantage in using Capacity Advisor, rather than ad hoc processes or guesswork,
is that it provides a quantitative basis for examining the usage of current resources. Additionally,
it provides the capability to try simulations (
) for moving workloads or other
resources before you actually implement a move.
Capacity Advisor incorporates numerical values of several components in its analysis and
modeling, including:
•
Number of CPU
•
CPU speed
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