Guided Consolidation Product Support Engineering VMware Confidential

VI4 - Mod Slide 2 Module 2 Lessons Lesson 1 – vCenter Server High Availability Lesson 2 – vCenter Server Distributed Resource Scheduler Lesson 3 – Fault Tolerance Virtual Machines Lesson 4 – Enhanced vMotion Compatibility Lesson 5 – DPM - IPMI Lesson 6 – vApps Lesson 7 – Host Profiles Lesson 8 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS ) Lesson 9 – Web Access Lesson 10 – vCenter Server Update Manager Lesson 11 – Guided Consolidation Lesson 12 – Health Status

VI4 - Mod Slide 3 Module 2-11 Lessons Lesson 1 – Overview of Guided consolidation Lesson 2 – Guided Consolidation Prerequisites Lesson 3 – Guided Consolidation Settings Lesson 4 – Finding and Analyzing Physical Systems Lesson 5 – Viewing analysis Results Lesson 6 – Converting Physical Hosts to Virtual Machines Lesson 7 – Troubleshooting Guided Consolidation

VI4 - Mod Slide 4 Guided Consolidation Guided Consolidation, recommended for smaller IT environments, enables you to streamline your datacenter by moving business applications, spread across multiple disparate physical systems, into a centrally managed virtual environment. In the virtualized environment, the physical systems that run your business applications are transformed into virtual machines. Multiple virtual machines can be hosted on a single physical system, enabling more efficient use of computing resources.

VI4 - Mod Slide 5 Guided Consolidation Consolidating your datacenter involves the following process: Find – You search for and select the physical systems in your datacenter that you want analyzed. Analyze – Selected physical systems are analyzed and performance data on each selected system is collected. Generally, the longer the duration of the analysis phase the higher the confidence in the vCenter Server’s recommendations. Consolidate – Performance data is compared to the resources available on the virtual machine host systems. The selected physical systems are converted to virtual machines and imported into vCenter Server on the recommended hosts where they are managed along with other components of your virtual environment.

VI4 - Mod Slide 6 Consolidation Prerequisites Ensure that the following prerequisites are met: Ensure that the Converter Enterprise and Guided Consolidation extensions are installed and enabled in the vSphere Client. At least one datacenter inventory object exists. At least one host is registered with vCenter Server. Consolidation services require local administrator privileges on the vCenter Server. The collector service must be run with local administrator privileges. The account used must also be granted the Logon as service privilege. If Active Directory is deployed on your network, the credentials used to run consolidation services must also have sufficient privileges to query the Active Directory database. Consolidation services also require administrator access to the systems selected for analysis. The collector service uses these credentials to connect to and retrieve configuration and performance data from the physical systems under analysis.

VI4 - Mod Slide 7 About Consolidation Services Consolidation services can be installed together with vCenter Server, or can be installed on a separate host. For best performance, install Consolidation services on a separate host.

VI4 - Mod Slide 8 About Consolidation Services Guided Consolidation include the following services: vCenter Collector Service Discovers domains and systems within domains. Collects performance data on those systems. vCenter Provider Service Helper service to vCenter Collector Service. Communicates with target systems and passes the data back to vCenter Collector Service. vCenter Guided Consolidation Coordinates all communication among Guided Consolidation components. Saves the performance data collected by the vCenter Collector Service. Analyzes the data and generates placement recommendations. Also communicates with vCenter Server to perform conversion.

VI4 - Mod Slide 9 Specify Consolidation Settings The first time you use the Consolidation feature, you are prompted to specify consolidation settings The system ‐ level credentials are used by vCenter Server to access the systems selected for analysis The configured default system ‐ level credentials can be overridden When adding systems for analysis, you have the option to specify the credentials you want to use for the selected systems. At anytime, you can specify the credentials you want to use for systems you select in the Analysis tab.

VI4 - Mod Slide 10 Specify Consolidation Settings To specify consolidation settings 1. Select Home -> Guide Consolidation -> Configuration -> Default System Credentials tab. 2. Click Change  Default System Credentials – Used to access systems that are selected for analysis but for which no administrator credentials are specified.

VI4 - Mod Slide 11 Specify Consolidation Settings 3. Enter a domain ‐ qualified user name (for example, DOMAIN\username) and password. 4. Confirm the password and click OK.

VI4 - Mod Slide 12 Specify Consolidation Settings 5. Click Add in the Active Domains panel Guided Consolidation discovers the systems in the domains selected on a daily basis and updates the containment information 6. Select the Domain from the List and click OK.

VI4 - Mod Slide 13 Specify Consolidation Settings The Health Status shows the components that are required by the Guided Consolidation Service

VI4 - Mod Slide 14 Find and Analyze Physical Systems The Add to Analysis dialog box enables you find systems on your network and select the ones you want to analyze. You can search for systems by : Computer name, IP address or range of IP addresses, or file name. You can also search for all systems within a domain.  If there are many systems in the domain and you are having trouble finding the ones you want, you can filter the list by computer name, IP address, domain, or by systems under analysis. The first time a domain is selected, it might take some time for vCenter Server to discover and list the systems it finds. After that, the list is cached so that subsequent searches take less time.

VI4 - Mod Slide 15 Find and Analyze Physical Systems To find physical systems in your datacenter 1. Access the Add to Analysis dialog box by using one of the following methods:  In the Getting Started tab, click Analyze physical computers for consolidation.  In the Analysis tab, click Start Analysis.

VI4 - Mod Slide 16 Find and Analyze Physical Systems 2. Select one of the following options:  Manually specify the computers to consolidate  Select the computers to consolidate by domains

VI4 - Mod Slide 17 Find and Analyze Physical Systems 3. If you chose to manually specify systems, provide computer names, IP addresses, a range of IP addresses, or path to a file that contains the computer names or IP addresses of the systems you want according to the following rules:  Separate multiple computer names, or IP address, with a comma.  Multiple IP ranges are not permitted.  If you chose to use a file, each computer name or IP address must be on a separate line in the file. The file must be accessible to the VI Client. Click Add to Analysis.

VI4 - Mod Slide 18 Find and Analyze Physical Systems 4. If you chose to select systems by domain, select the systems you want to analyze. You can optionally filter the list of systems by selecting filters and entering your criteria into the text field. You can turn filters on and off by clicking the down arrow to the left of the text box. You can also sort the list by clicking on column headings. 5. Click Add to Analysis.

VI4 - Mod Slide 19 Find and Analyze Physical Systems 6. Select whether you want to use the configured default system ‐ level administrator credentials, or whether you want to supply a different set of credentials. If you chose override the default credentials, ensure that you enter a domain ‐ qualified user name (for example, DOMAIN\username) and password. 7. Click OK.

VI4 - Mod Slide 20 Find and Analyze Physical Systems The Physical Computer is now added to the List being analyzed After some time ……

VI4 - Mod Slide 21 Viewing Analysis Results Analysis results are displayed in the Analysis tab. When analysis is complete, the following information is displayed: Physical Computer – Displays the host name of the physical system being analyzed or imported. CPU Info – Displays the number of CPUs and their clock speed. Memory Info – Displays the amount of RAM on the system. Status – Displays the progress of the analysis. Confidence – Indicates the degree to which vCenter Server is able to gather performance data about the system and how good a candidate the system is based on the available data. CPU Usage – Displays the system’s average CPU usage over time. Memory Usage – Displays the system’s average memory usage over time.

VI4 - Mod Slide 22 About the Confidence Metric One important metric displayed in the Analysis tab is the Confidence metric. During the analysis phase, performance data about each selected system is collected. This data is compared to host resources to determine a recommendation for each candidate. The recommendation indicates how well suited, based on the collected data, a candidate is to a particular virtual machine host system Confidence refers to the reliability of the recommendation and it is a function of the duration of the analysis. Recommendations based on longer periods of analysis – and therefore more performance data – receive a higher level of confidence.

VI4 - Mod Slide 23 Consolidating Candidates After you have analyzed your datacenter, you are ready to convert candidates to virtual machines. In this phase, you select the systems you want to convert vCenter Server selects appropriate destinations and configuration parameters for each resultant virtual machine. If more than one virtual machine host is available, you can select the host you want. NOTE It is highly recommended that you virtualize one candidate at a time. Consolidating multiple candidates simultaneously could cause all virtualization operations to fail if the host does not contain an adequate amount of storage space

VI4 - Mod Slide 24 Consolidating Candidates To convert systems using vCenter Server recommendations 1. In the Analysis tab, select the systems you want to consolidate and click Plan Consolidation.

VI4 - Mod Slide 25 Consolidating Candidates 2. The Consolidation Wizard Appears Specify the Hosts to be considered as potential destinations for the new Virtual Machines. Guided Consolidation analyzes these hosts and recommends the best destination for the Virtual Machine

VI4 - Mod Slide 26 Consolidating Candidates 3. Optionally change the name displayed in the Physical Computer column by double ‐ clicking it and entering a new name. 4. Optionally change destinations, if alternative destinations are available, by clicking in the Destinations column and selecting from the drop ‐ down menu. The number of stars displayed in the Destination Rating column indicate the degree to which the host system can comfortably accommodate the estimated resource needs of the resultant virtual machine.

VI4 - Mod Slide 27 Consolidating Candidates 5. Review the Details for this consolidation plan and Click finish

VI4 - Mod Slide 28 Consolidating Candidates A conversion task is instantiated. You can view task progress in the Recent Tasks pane. You view additional information about the task in the Tasks tab

VI4 - Mod Slide 29 Consolidating Candidates Manually To convert systems manually 1. In the Analysis tab, right-click on a system and select Convert to Virtual Machine > Manually. The menu option is available only if the VMware vCenter Converter Enterprise Client is installed and enabled on your VI Client. You can verify whether VMware vCenter Converter Enterprise Client is installed and enabled through the Extension Manager (Plugins > Plugin Manager).

VI4 - Mod Slide 30 Consolidating Candidates Manually 2. Complete the Import Wizard Enter the Authentication Details for the specified machine that you are Importing Click Next

VI4 - Mod Slide 31 Consolidating Candidates Manually 3. Select the Volumes to be Imported and the New Disk space size If required, select the option :  Ignore page file and hibernation file  Create a separate disk for each volume You can choose to create a separate disk for each volume, however, active and system volumes will not be separated onto individual disks if they are currently together in one.

VI4 - Mod Slide 32 About Disk Resizing During the conversion process, physical disks are typically resized to conserve space on the datastore while providing room for growth on the resultant virtual disk. The following formula is used to resize converted disks: Amount of space used on physical disk * 1.25 = resultant virtual disk size Virtual disks can not be smaller than 4GB.

VI4 - Mod Slide 33 Consolidating Candidates Manually 4. Provide a name for the new virtual machine and select a location in the inventory Virtual Machine names can contain up to 80 characters and must be unique within each inventory folder

VI4 - Mod Slide 34 Consolidating Candidates Manually 5. Select the cluster, host or resource pool from which you wish to run the Virtual Machine

VI4 - Mod Slide 35 Consolidating Candidates Manually 6. Select the datastore from which you wish to run the Virtual Machine Click on the Advanced button to select individual datastores

VI4 - Mod Slide 36 Consolidating Candidates Manually 7. Select the number of NICs required and the Network that you want to connect the Virtual Machine

VI4 - Mod Slide 37 Consolidating Candidates Manually Choose which options of the guest operating system you would like to customize of Virtual Machine  Install VMware Tools  Customize the identity of the Virtual Machine  Remove System Restore Checkpoints

VI4 - Mod Slide 38 Customizing the identity of the VM If the Customize the identity of the Virtual Machine is greyed out, you need to copy the SYSPREP files to the relevant location on the VMware vCenter Server

VI4 - Mod Slide 39 Consolidating Candidates Manually 9. Choose when to run the task  Run the task immediately  Schedule Later

VI4 - Mod Slide 40 Consolidating Candidates Manually 10. Confirm your selections and click Finish

VI4 - Mod Slide 41 Consolidating Candidates Manually A conversion task is instantiated. You can view task progress in the Recent Tasks pane. You view additional information about the task in the Tasks tab

VI4 - Mod Slide 42 Viewing Consolidation Tasks A task is created for each system being converted. Recent tasks are displayed in the Recent Tasks pane. You can filter the list of tasks by entering criteria in the search field and selecting any combination of the following: Name Target Status Initiated by Start Time Complete Time

VI4 - Mod Slide 43 Troubleshooting Consolidation Guided Consolidation tasks are resource intensive. If you notice a negative impact on vCenter Server, consider the following: Guided Consolidation caches information about discovered systems, and a very large cache can negatively impact vCenter Server performance. Do not run Guided Consolidation against more than 20,000 systems. Up to 500 (or 100 if Guided Consolidation is collocated with vCenter Server) systems can be simultaneously analyzed. If you select more than five hundred systems, systems will be added, in the order they appear, until the maximum number of systems is reached.

VI4 - Mod Slide 44 Troubleshooting Consolidation Use the following options to remedy performance issues: Disable consolidation and continue to run the collector service. This method prevents consolidation tasks from starting, but does not stop the collector service from gathering data. Disable consolidation, and stop and disable the collector service. This method prevents consolidation tasks from starting, and stops the collector service from gathering data. The collected data is not destroyed and can be used if the service is started again. Uninstall the collector service. This method removes Guided Consolidation, and the data it has collected will no longer be usable.

VI4 - Mod Slide 45 Disable Consolidation To disable consolidation 1. Select Administration > vCenter Server Settings …. 2. Select Advanced Settings. 3. Enter the following in the Key field: dontStartConsolidation 4. Enter the following in the Value field: true 5. Click Add 6. Restart the vCenter Server.

VI4 - Mod Slide 46 Disable the Collector Service To disable the collector service 1. Open the Services control panel. 2. Stop the VMware Capacity Planner Services.  VMware Capacity Planner Collector & VMware Capacity Planner Provider 3. Disable the VMware Capacity Planner Service.

VI4 - Mod Slide 47 Uninstall Guided Consolidation To uninstall Guided Consolidation 1. Open the Add or Remove Programs control panel. 2. Remove VMware Capacity Planner for vCenter Server. 3. Remove Guided Consolidation Service 4. (Optional) Remove VMware vCenter Converter Enterprise for vCenter Server.

VI4 - Mod Slide 48 Location of Guided Consolidation Logs VMware Capacity Planner Collector Logs D:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Guided Consolidation Server\Collector\CollectorServerHost\collector.log VMware Capacity Planner Provider Logs D:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Guided Consolidation Server\Collector\ProviderServerHost\provider-server.log

VI4 - Mod Slide 49 Location of VMware vCenter Converter Logs VMware vCenter Converter logs can be found at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Converter Enterprise\Logs as vmware- converter-server*.* VMware vCenter Converter Client logs can be found at C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.VI40\Local Settings\Application Data\VMware\VMware VMware Converter Enterprise\Logs as vmware-converter-client*.* WARNING: Logs are stored on a temporary basis, and should be retrieved as soon as possible.

VI4 - Mod Slide 50 Lesson 2-11 Summary Understand Guided consolidation Analyzing Physical Systems Converting Physical Systems to Virtual Machines Learn how to troubleshoot Guided Consolidation

VI4 - Mod Slide 51 Lesson 2-11 – OPTIONAL Lab 1 Optional  Find and Analyze Physical Systems  Convert Physical Systems to Virtual Machines  Troubleshoot Guided Consolidation