What-If? What if we add VMs? What if we add physical servers supporting those VMs? What if we plan to migrate some workloads to the Cloud? Yep, VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) can help with workload planning, physical infrastructure planning, and cloud migration planning. It's available as the "What-If Analysis" under the Optimize Capacity pillar.
In vROps 7.0 there were three tiles:
In vROps 7.5, a Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) tile was added. This allows the user to plan for HCI node expansion.
vROps 8.0 introduced two new tiles and adjusted titles to give them a more robust description.
The user now has the ability to plan VM expansion on traditional hardware or HCI. Physical infrastructure planning can be done based on traditional hardware or HCI. Finally, migration analyses can be performed for public and private clouds. Let's explore these.
1. Workload Planning: Traditional
ADD VMs - this allows you to plan new application deployments in your environment. You can choose the Datacenter and Cluster, along with VM configuration:
Click on VIEW DETAILS to see the projects for CPU, Memory, and Disk. This will give you more details on the scenario as well as projections.
The REMOVE VMS button is very similar to what we've discussed above, just for removing VMS.
2. Workload Planning: Hyperconverged
This allows users to plan projects to be deployed on their HCI, in this case their VMware vSAN enabled Clusters. The ADD VMS and REMOVE VMs buttons are similar to those listed above.
3. Infrastructure Planning: Traditional
ADD HOSTS allows you to add physical servers to a Datacenter/Cluster combination.
It allows you to choose the the server model as well: selecting from All Server Types available by default with vROps, All Server Types already in the Cluster, or Custom Server configurations.
After clicking RUN SCENARIO, the user will be presented with projections for CPU and Memory based on the new hardware.
The REMOVE HOSTS button is very similar to what we've discussed above, just for removing physical servers.
4. Infrastructure Planning: Hyperconverged
You can perform infrastructure planning by adding or removing HCI nodes in vSAN enabled clusters and running scenarios against them. vROps displays the cost, time remaining, and capacity remaining for CPU, memory, and disk space in the scenario results.
5. Datacenter Comparison: Private Cloud
Evaluate the possibility of moving VMs across different Datacenters/Clusters in your private cloud. Compare VM cost across all Datacenters/Clusters to determine the most cost effective location.
Click the RUN SCENARIO button and you'll be presented with the VM, the Cluster you previously selected (or the cheapest available) and your costs to run the VM there.
You can select the ADD button in the tile on the right to see costs in other Datacenter/Cluster configurations for comparisons. You can now see what this same VM will cost in each Datacenter/Cluster.
7. Migration Planning: Public Cloud
Evaluate the possibility of moving VMs across different clouds. Compare capacity and cost of VMs across VMC on AWS, Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or any other public cloud provider by uploading its rate card.
Select a public cloud provider, configure CPU, Memory, Disk, OS, and number of VMs you have in mind, then clock RUN SCENARIO to see what this will cost in the selected public cloud. Once in you can select ADD in the far right tile to add additional public cloud costs. This allows you to see the most cost effective location for your proposed VM/s.
