Product Flyer PlateSpin® Recon: Virtual Capacity Management and Consolidation Planning Solutions: Successful virtualization initiatives require Virtualization and Workload considerable up-front planning to ensure maximum Management Products: ROI. But it doesn’t end there. Because resource PlateSpin Recon utilization changes over time, regular reassessment and management are required to maintain optimal PlateSpin Recon takes the guesswork out of complex efficiency. PlateSpin® Recon from Novell is a server consolidation and capacity sophisticated workload analysis, planning and planning initiatives, and provides ongoing management of the real management solution that provides new levels physical resources—and costs— of intelligence, visual analysis and forecasting of your virtual infrastructure. for optimizing the data center. PlateSpin Recon: A Clear and Concise Picture of Your Data Center With broad, multiplatform support, PlateSpin Recon collects inventory and workload utilization statistics for a clear and concise picture of all the hardware and application services running in the data center, including how and when those resources are being used. PlateSpin Recon takes the guesswork out of complex server consolidation and capacity planning initiatives, and provides ongoing management of the real physical resources—and costs—of your virtual infrastructure. Figure 1. PlateSpin Recon provides advanced scenario modeling, trending, forecasting and planning capabilities to take the guesswork out of data center initiatives. Use powerful what-if modeling to determine optimal combinations of hardware and virtual hosts to ensure maximum resource utilization. Extend the Capacity of With broad support for Windows, Your Virtual Infrastructure Linux and UNIX platforms and scalability Without effective management, virtual machines can rapidly proliferate, leading to to accommodate even the world’s largest poor resource utilization and an unwieldy data centers, PlateSpin Recon provides infrastructure. The virtual capacity manage- ment capabilities in PlateSpin Recon find a true enterprise-scale workload analysis, unused resources in virtualized IT environ- planning and management solution. ments, even when the virtualization platform shows 100 percent allocation. By reporting on the actual available resources, PlateSpin PlateSpin Recon is a Key Benefits Recon from Novell enables allocated resources sophisticated workload Improve Consolidation Ratios with to be reclaimed and reassigned—to new analysis, planning and Comprehensive Workload Profiling virtual machines, or to other virtual machines management solution Previously, data center managers had to rely that require more resources—deferring the that provides new levels on best guesses to identify underutilized need to purchase new hardware and maxi- of intelligence, visual physical servers and virtual hosts, and to mizing the return on the investment in your analysis and forecasting allocate sufficient resources for current and current hardware. for optimizing the future needs. The unique workload profiling data center. in PlateSpin Recon tracks actual CPU, disk, Increase Visibility across memory and network utilization over time, on Multiplatform Environments both physical and virtual hosts. Every server With broad support for Windows*, Linux* workload and virtual host has utilization and UNIX* platforms and scalability to ac- peaks and valleys, and PlateSpin Recon commodate even the world’s largest data can build consolidation scenarios based centers, PlateSpin Recon provides a true on interlocking these peaks and valleys. enterprise-scale workload analysis, planning This capability minimizes resource contention and management solution. Data can be and ensures higher consolidation ratios aggregated from multiple PlateSpin Recon compared to other approaches that use only data collectors for centralized data warehous- a single snapshot or record only peak usage. ing, analysis and planning to accommodate And higher consolidation ratios mean better larger enterprises. When combined with use and longer life for your current hardware, PlateSpin Migrate, the Novell® multiplatform and fewer new servers that you need to buy workload migration solution, organizations in the future. gain a complete end-to-end solution with tightly integrated planning and execution for data center initiatives. Figure 2. PlateSpin Recon provides customizable graphical reporting to view and manage workloads and ongoing resource utilization. View summary workload sizing and power and cooling data or drill down to point-in-time granular levels using detailed tabular reports and time-series charts. Key Features Scenario Comparisons PlateSpin Recon: PlateSpin Recon enables you to create Virtual Capacity Management Remote Data Collection multiple custom scenarios with user-defined and Consolidation Planning PlateSpin Recon remotely collects inven- target server specifications, including server tory and performance data with no need templates or existing virtual machine servers, to physically touch data center servers. to create an optimal consolidation plan. PlateSpin Recon features a run-once inven- www.novell.com tory collector, which gathers comprehensive Rich Data Modeling server inventory data while performance PlateSpin Recon helps you make better data is collected regularly via standard OS consolidation choices based on sophis- instrumentation capabilities. You can also ticated analysis of resources, workloads import utilization data directly from your PlateSpin Recon gives you and utilization trends. Tight integration with existing monitoring tools. the visibility and intelligence VMware* vCenter (formerly VirtualCenter) you need to plan successful Enterprise-level Scalability provides greater visibility into your virtual data center initiatives infrastructure, improving data center man- Robust data collection, analysis and planning and optimize your server for all servers in the network puts PlateSpin agement and operations. workloads. Let PlateSpin Recon in a class all its own for large-scale Recon take your data data center consolidation projects. Data can Workload and Utilization Forecasting center initiatives to the be aggregated from geographically dispersed Predict future workloads and resource next level. PlateSpin Recon data collectors for central- utilization based on historical trends to ized data warehousing, analysis and planning, better plan for server consolidation and or to accommodate larger implementations. infrastructure growth, and enable more pro- active systems management. Forecasting Workload Analysis data on CPU, disk, memory and usage The PlateSpin Recon Capacity Planning trends is presented in easy-to-read charts, Module automatically analyzes the five reports and plans. critical dimensions of workload—CPU, disk, memory, network and time—across thou- Resource Reclamation sands of servers simultaneously, providing PlateSpin Recon resource reclamation consolidation plans that maximize utilization reports identify gaps between allocation while minimizing resource contention. and actual utilization. Minimizing these gaps maximizes the virtual resource capacity of Planning the existing infrastructure, extending useful With PlateSpin Recon, you can automatically service life and postponing new hardware generate server consolidation plans based purchases. on detailed workload analysis to ensure the optimal fit between server workloads and Virtual Machine Performance Analysis virtual resources. You can also stagger mul- PlateSpin Recon can help you improve the tiple workloads evenly across virtual hosts performance of your workloads by identifying and account for hourly peaks and valleys hidden configuration errors in virtual machines. inherent in server utilization trends. The abil- ity to use forecasted data ensures that plans Power and Cooling Analysis are built to accommodate future growth. Compare and contrast potential power and cooling cost savings and ROI derived from different consolidation scenarios. Custom fields allow power and cooling requirements for major hardware platforms to be inputted and maintained in a central database, enabling organizations to analyze and cost-justify green computing initiatives. Get Started Today PlateSpin Recon from Novell can optimize your data center, increase visibility, improve virtual infrastructure management and much more. For more information, visit: www.novell.com/products/recon www.novell.com Virtual Machine Growth Reporting Custom Report Creation and Delivery Run virtual machine growth reports to PlateSpin Recon allows you to define monitor the proliferation of virtual machines resource and workload parameters, and Contact your local Novell and avoid the administrative headaches generate custom visual reports to accelerate Solutions Provider, or call associated with virtual machine sprawl. data center assessments and server consoli- Novell at: dations. You can quickly identify consolidation 1 800 714 3400 U.S./Canada Flexible Chargeback Reporting candidates based on resource utilization 1 801 861 1349 Worldwide Because virtualization creates a pool of trends and compare workload character is tics 1 801 861 8473 Facsimile computing resources, it can be difficult to before and after consolidation. Scheduled manage and monitor how virtual resources report delivery via e-mail or FTP ensures Novell, Inc. are being used and by whom. PlateSpin easy access to remote data and provides 404 Wyman Street Recon allows organizations to effectively