© 2013 IBM Corporation IBM SmartCloud Monitoring Capacity Planner PowerVM Placement – TOPOLOGY VIEW Girish B Chandrasekhar

© 2013 IBM Corporation As a end user of the Capacity Planner I wanted to see some good graphical user interface which help me visualize my environment and analyze the LPARS of placement… Sure, we are trying to improve Capacity Planner user interface. For the power placement we have introduced ‘TOPOLOGY VIEW’ which provide the better GUI experience ‘Topology view’ for power placement, sounds interesting…. Can you tell me more about the same…. When Capacity Planner does the LPARS placement, it suggests optimized way to place the LPARS based on their utilization and system capacity. How does it sounds to you if we show your current environment details, Capacity planner suggested environment and LPAR movement details in one place… don’t you want some thing like that?

© 2013 IBM Corporation Hmmm…. It all sounds interesting.. But I don’t believe it unless I see it myself… Let me explain more about the ‘Topology view’ we have introduced for Power Placement. Let us say, using the Capacity Planner you run the placement algorithm and it does the suggestion of LPAR sizing and optimized placement Ok… now how does ‘topology view’ visually represents optimized environment suggestion? ‘Topology View’ shows your Physical Server, with in which you see two groupings. ‘CURRENT Topology’ and ‘SUGGESTED Topology’. Current topology will have all the LPAR details of your current environment. As you will guess ‘SUGGESTED topology’ shows all the LPARs Capacity planner suggested after optimization and applying the rules.. I hope you know that you have apply your own rules during optimization.. Take a look at Topology view for placement..

© 2013 IBM Corporation

I see lot of boxes… Can you explain more what do they represent? If my environment has hundreds of LPARS will Topology view handle it? How can I see all those LPARS.. Wouldn’t they become very small to see what they are Let me explain more about what you are calling ‘boxes’.. Each box represents a LPAR. Topology view has zoom in and zoom out facility… so if you have hundreds of LPARS you can still see all of them and you can further zoom in to view more closely Hmmm… what are those big grey boxes.. What are those yellow, green and red boxes? Let me explain to you what each colored ‘boxes’ represents.. I will also show by zooming in further

© 2013 IBM Corporation Physical server EXISTING Topology Group SUGGESTED Topology Group HMC managing Physical Sever LPARS Group VIOS Group User Define CPU Pool Group Default CPU Pool Group Dedicated CPU Group NOT PLACED LPAR Group

© 2013 IBM Corporation AIX LPAR Fictitious AIX LPAR Discovered LINUX LPAR Zoom InZoom OutFit to window Your position in the Topology view when Zoomed in Discovered AIX LPAR To search item

© 2013 IBM Corporation Ah ha… so now I am seeing some usefulness of Topology view.. So Grey boxes represents Physical Servers and with in which Existing/Suggested Topology. With in which it furthers groups as LPARS and VIOS. With in each LPARS group, its further groups as Dedicated, Default Pool and User Defined pool LPARS. You are right! Doesn’t it grouping helps you visualize your environment better? I assume you represent Existing LPAR with yellow background and Suggested LPAR with green background Right!! Did you also observe if during the analysis, if some LPARS are not able to be placed, especially when colocation/anti colocation rules are applied, those not placed LPARS are grouped separately on top near HMC. They are represented with red background So Fictitious LPARS are represented with ‘?’ mark to differentiate That is correct. User creates the Fictitious LPAR to do ‘WHAT-IF’ analysis and its represented with ‘?’ mark. LPARS without ‘?’ are discovered one which are loaded via ‘load configuration’.

© 2013 IBM Corporation Now I can see Physical servers and LPARS. Is there a way I can see details about them? Yes. Just double click on the item whose details you want to see Or you can also right-click and select ‘properties’ menu. It will show you properties dialog So if I double click on Physical Server, it will show the details of the physical server and if I do the same on LPARs it shows the details of the LPAR Correct!!.. For physical server it shows model details, activated cores, memory available etc. For LPARS it shows Entitlement, Memory assigned, OS details etc. For LPARS it also shows the utilization details If you just the bring mouse over each of the node, it shows ‘mini’ details….

Physical Server Properties LPAR Properties SUGGESTED Topology Group Properties Model Details LPAR Details Utilization Details Summary of the group

© 2013 IBM Corporation ‘Mouse over’ will show the details about the item

I see lot of colored arrows in each LPAR. Do they represent some thing? Oh yes.. Each colored arrow has specific meaning. Just by looking at it you can visualize what happed to LPAR during the placement At the bottom of the view you see list of arrow which represents the ‘status’ of the LPAR. Black background for Discovered LPAR and grey background for Fictitious LPAR DiscoveredFictitious No LPARS Blue Arrow – LPAR PLACED on same Server Green Arrow – LPAR PLACED on different Server red Arrow – LPAR NOT PLACED yellow Arrow – VIOS created during placement NO LPARs on CURRENT Topology – New server with No LPARs NO LPARs on SUGGESTED Topology – Server ready for ‘RETIREMENT’ currentsuggested

© 2013 IBM Corporation Current Fictitious LPAR moved to different Server Current Discovered LPAR NOT PLACED Suggested Discovered LPAR moved in from same Server Suggested Discovered LPAR moved in from different Server Current Discovered LPAR moved to same Server (not moved LPAR) Current Discovered LPAR moved to different Server (moved LPAR)

© 2013 IBM Corporation Is there a search facility? If I have too many LPAR and I want to look for specific LPAR, is it possible? I understand your concern. If there are hundreds of LPAR how to locate a specific LPAR. You can achieve it by using the search facility You can click on ‘Search’ button on top, that will open search dialog. You can search based on the Physical server name or LPAR name If I want to see only LPARS that are moved to different server.. Is it possible Yes. That is also possible to selecting the status icon at the bottom

Start typing the item you want to search, filtering of data happens Centers the selected item in the topology view Highlights the selected item in the view by blurring rest of the items Clears the search and highlights all the items back to original position

HA2 item selected is highlighted. Click Search->’Clear Search’ to clear the search

Click on ‘Current Discovered’ icon. All the ‘Current Discovered’ nodes get highlighted You can also select multiple icon. Its highlights all of the selected ones. You can also see the Filtered item count

If I have so many LPARs and many physical servers. If during the placement if the LPAR is moved to different server is there a way I can see which server it went to? Or if there is a LPAR in Suggested topology can I see from which server that LPAR came from Yes… you can do that also!! All you have to do is right click on the node. You will see the context menu. Select which ever you want. Shows a arrow to the VIOS which this LPAR uses for I/O hides arrow to the VIOS which this LPAR uses for I/O if already shown Shows a arrow to the LPAR from/to which this LPAR moved to/ came from hides arrow to the LPAR from/to which this LPAR moved to/ came from if already displayed

© 2013 IBM Corporation Dotted arrow showing from which server to which server the LPAR is moved during the placement Solid arrow showing which VIOS the current LPAR uses for I/O

© 2013 IBM Corporation I feel these LPAR movement representation help me analyze the placement suggested by Capacity planner… I feel this is very powerful capability You can also see all the movement once. Also note that you have save the topology as image or you can printout the same. DO ‘YOU’ ALSO FEEL TOPOLOGY VIEW REPRESENTATION ENHANCE THE USER VISUALIZATION EXPERIENCE FOR PLACEMENT? PLEASE DO LET US KNOW………