HP Capacity Advisor 7.2 User Guide

Table 25 Checklist — Determining where to put a workload using automated solution finding (HP
Smart Solver)
Related Procedure(s)Task
• “Creating a consolidation candidates report” (page 54)
Determine which workload(s) to move. See also
“Task: Understand current resource usage”
(page 131).
• “Creating a planning scenario” (page 65)
Create a planning scenario.
• “Editing a workload” (page 81)
• “Editing a system” (page 74)
• “Automated solution finding: Workload stacking” (page 96)
Edit the scenario:
• Modify the workload(s) as desired.
• Modify potential host systems as desired.
• Move the workloads using automated solution
finding.
• “Creating a scenario utilization report” (page 52)
Evaluate new quality of service.
• “Creating a cost allocation report” (page 55)
Estimate new cost allocation on the VM host.
Example: Determining where to put a workload
1. Obtain data from a test machine
The most accurate models are based on real data, collected over a long enough period of
time to capture the variations in load due to periodic peaks in usage (such as events happening
“late Thursday night” or “the first and 15th of the month”). Collect data for at least a week,
and preferably for long enough to capture any periodic variations. If you cannot collect data
from a test machine and have data from a similar application running on an existing system,
you can create a new workload based on the existing data and scale it to provide a “best
guess” model of the new application's resource utilization.
2. Create a scenario
Follow the procedure in “Creating a planning scenario” (page 65) to create a scenario with
the test system running the new application and all the candidate host systems.
3. Edit the workload
Follow the procedure in “Editing a workload” (page 81) to make any modifications to the
data collected on the workload necessary to reflect estimated future production loads. This
might include increasing the processor load and/or memory usage.
4. Move the workload
Follow the procedure in “Automated solution finding: Workload stacking” (page 96)to move
the workload from the test machine it has been running on to one of the potential host machines.
The bar graphs on the screen provide a rough estimate of the effect of moving the workload
to each of the candidate hosts.
5. Estimate the new quality of service
a. Follow the procedure in “Using the Profile Viewer” (page 46) to obtain a quick overview
of the resource utilization of the system with the added workload.
b. Follow the procedure in “Using the report wizard” (page 49) to generate a detailed report
on the new configuration.
In addition to the quantitative measures of the “goodness” of a system, it is important to use
your knowledge of such things as how the system will be used, system ownership, and future
constraints. This is an area where your knowledge of the context the application will be run
in can be as important as the estimated resource utilization.
148 Planning with Capacity Advisor