HP Capacity Advisor 7.2 User Guide

Step 1: Determine which systems to consolidate
From the top menu bar, select Reports→Capacity Planning→Create Consolidation Candidates
Reports...
On selecting the systems link, a screen opens listing all discovered servers for which data has been
collected (both physical and virtual machines). For the purposes of this exercise, assume that 20
physical servers are selected as targets, and that you are most interested in viewing CPU and
memory data for these servers.
Once the report is generated, viewing the columns Average CPU Use and Average Memory Use
for each of the servers reveals that the applications on all but four servers are using significantly
less than the available memory and CPU on each server. (See “Consolidation candidates report”
(page 215) for a snippet of a typical consolidation candidates report.)
This report shows that CPU on this set of legacy servers is significantly under-used when average
usage is considered. Only four of the servers are using 80 percent or more of available memory
on average.
Assume that all of the legacy systems:
• Are running applications based on the same database program, which is licensed per CPU
• Use the same LAN
• Use the same SAN
• Have minimal security requirements that are adequately provided by the corporate firewall
Related topic
• “Creating a consolidation candidates report” (page 54)
Step 2: Create a scenario
In this step, you want to build a scenario around the systems that you have identified as under-used
from the consolidation candidates report.
1. Select Tools→Capacity Planning... from the top menu bar.
2. On the Planning tab, select Create→Planning Scenario....
3. In the Create Scenario Wizard, name the scenario and describe its purpose.
4. On the Systems screen, click Add to open the list of servers available for use in the scenario.
Select the check boxes for the systems that you want to include in the scenario and click Add
again.
To understand the readiness of a system for use in a scenario, mouse over the status icon for
information. A detailed explanation of the status icons, including pointers to troubleshooting
information, is available in Capacity Advisor Help online (see “Correcting system
configuration”). The following image shows the mouseover text for a system that has sufficient
data collected for meaningful analysis.
Task: Plan server consolidation 133