Perhaps just a coincidence, but I got this question during two customer presentations this week – is there a way in vCenter CapacityIQ what-if scenarios to point out which resource is causing the capacity shortfall? In other words, is there a way to see which resource is the bottleneck before and after a what-if scenario is modelled?
Let’s walk through this use case in more details with some screenshots. Before you run a what-if scenario, vCenter CapacityIQ provides the time remaining information in two screens. First, you can see this in the CapacityIQ Dashboard.
You can see that CapacityIQ trends each resource independently and highlights the one with least time remaining as the potential bottleneck. In this case, I am likely to run out of storage in my small vSphere lab in 55 days.
You can see the same information in the “Virtual Machine Capacity – Summary” view, as shown below. I had to minimize few columns to fit the screen – check the last column.
Next let’s run a what-if scenario to add a new 500GB datastore – here’s the review screen just before finishing up the what-if scenario.
Now, if you go back to “Virtual Machine Capacity – Summary” view, under the “Time Remaining” section, you will see the new resource bottleneck responsible for capacity shortfall.
As you can see, storage is no longer the bottleneck after running the what-if scenario. Instead memory is the now the potential bottleneck for my vSphere lab – running out in 237 days.
Hope this post shows how you can use the “Virtual Machine Capacity – Summary” view to understand capacity bottlenecks before and after a what-if scenario is modelled.
