Capacity Management Using vRealize Operations

By Jason Gaudreau

In the physical world, we tend to overprovision because experience tells us when you have enough resources, there shouldn’t be problems. If you apply this mindset to a virtualized environment, you’ll negate the benefits of server consolidation.

What are some of the key goals of operations management?

• Delivering high-quality infrastructure, services and applications
• Operate IT assets as efficiently and cost-effective as possibly
• Implement and adhere to IT policies, standards and regulatory requirements

Using a tool like vRealize Operations can assure that you are getting the most out of your technology investments by providing proactive insight into the operations of your data center. It provides greater visibility into your virtual infrastructure fabric, which decreases the amount of downtime for your business-critical applications.

Moreover, an important part of operations capacity management is helping IT leadership understand the trade-off between business demand and cost. For instance, being able to predict the impact of adding 10 more virtual machines into our Gold Cluster may result in having to purchase additional server resources or a server host. Coupled with a charge-back model and support service-level agreements (SLAs), business leaders can then decide if the new application or project should go into the Gold Cluster or a lower tier. In fact, with this kind of insight, they may decide the project should be on hold until the next budget cycle to avoid problems.

vRealize Operations can provide valuable insight into capacity planning and trending into your data center environment, and help ensure you have the required resources to meet business demand. You can learn all the details by reading the vRealize Operations 5.8 Guide.