Automatically and Continuously Optimizing Workload Configurations In Your Virtual Environment

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1 Automatically and Continuously Optimizing Workload Configurations In Your Virtual Environment EXECUTIVE SUMMARY It s so simple to add resources to a virtual machine to thwart performance issues that it s easy to end up over-provisioning in the virtual data center. Similarly, with initiatives to increase virtual machine density and gain greater efficiency of virtualized infrastructure, it s just as simple to have resource shortfalls that could lead to performance degradation or outages. VMTurbo Operations Manager identifies under-/over-sized workloads within your infrastructure. It takes capacity, system constraints, service level priorities and real-time performance characteristics into consideration to automatically and continuously rightsize workloads. Rightsizing reduces capital and operational costs without introducing risks to application performance. This white paper covers workload rightsizing in virtualized data centers, and VMTurbo s capabilities in making specific recommendations to maximize infrastructure efficiency and remediate performance risk issues VMTurbo, Inc. All Rights Reserved. VMT-WP-RIGHTSIZING0913.

2 VMTURBO SOFTWARE-DEFINED CONTROL VMTurbo s Software-Defined Control (SDC) system controls the virtualized data center in a desired state: A state in which application performance is assured while the underlying infrastructure is utilized as efficiently as possible. By controlling your environment in the desired state, VMTurbo SDC prevents potential bottlenecks and performance degradations while increasing the utilization of the underlying infrastructure. VMTurbo SDC significantly reduces your ongoing operational costs by reducing the number of incidents you need to troubleshoot and firefight. VMTurbo SDC continuously analyzes the state of the environment and drives a broad set of actions (see table) to control the environment in the desired state. The desired state is driven based on the performance metrics across the entire virtualized IT stack and data centers, taking into account all configuration and business constraints and workload policies. Action Automation Level ()* Virtual Machine Actions: Move Storage Move Reconfigure Resize Host Actions: Storage Actions: Move Resize Virtual Data Center Actions (Provide or Org): A. M, Resize * Automation levels: A = automated, M = manual actions allowing end users to select and execute from the UI, R = recommendations only, and D = disabling of action, where VMTurbo will not consider the action as an option when identifying the desired state. 2

3 VMTurbo SDC triggers rightsizing actions when the resource configuration of workloads needs to be changed in order to control the environment in the desired state. Given the definition of the desired state, the workload configuration is impacted not only by its own resources, such as vmem or vcpu, but also by the resources of the underlying hosts and datastores, as well as other workloads, hosts and datastores in the environment. Configuring the individual workload based only on its own resource state may lead to undesired consequences and may exaggerate existing degradations. VMTurbo SDC analyzes the state of the workload resources based on: Real time and historical performance and utilization of data centers, hosts, virtual machines, datastores, and applications (guest workloads), including peak utilization values Peaks and historical values, which carry a weight to assure workloads are not downsized below peaks The topological dependencies of the virtualized infrastructure (e.g., virtual machines on hosts, or datastores) Configuration and business constraints Workload placement policies The rate of resize in compliance with your business and change management process (low means reach the desired state in conservative increments, where high means reach the desired state in one step) VMTurbo continuously analyzes all these metrics and topological dependencies across the entire virtualized IT stack and across the entire data center to drive actions (such as workload configuration and placement, resource configuration, allocation and provisioning, and more) to control the environment in the desired state, VMTurbo SDC either increases or decreases resource configuration as needed to assure the workload has the right amount of resources it needs when it needs it. VMTurbo SDC: 1. Configures the vmem, vcpu and vstorage of the virtual machine with the exact amount required by the workload 2. Configures the right amount of reserved vmem (Gb) and vcpu (MHz) needed (if reservations are used) 3. Configures the limits (if limits are used) 4. Reclaims unused or underutilized resources 5. Consolidates workloads for efficiency Rightsizing actions are handled in a few ways, based on preferences: VMTurbo automatically executes the triggered actions, delivers them as recommendations in a To Do list in the user interface, sends notifications to an external system, or details specifics in the VM Rightsizing report. 3

4 The VM Rightsizing report contains all the rightsizing actions in a single report, including the actions, exact values of what resource needs to be adjusted and why, as well as a view into the Peak vmem and Peak vcpu utilization values over the last 60 days of the virtual machine. VMTurbo also provides a costing factor to provide at a glance which clusters require investment or additional workload-level capacity, and which virtual machines yield savings via reclamation of unused resources without impacting quality of service. VMTurbo Rightsizing Report showing actions that manage workload with reservations, limits and others that are resized to match service offering templates. CONCLUSION This paper details VMTurbo s approach to controlling workloads and the virtualized infrastructure in the desired state, leading to significant improvements in infrastructure efficiency and operational cost savings while assuring the storage performance of virtual workloads. 4

5 ABOUT VMTURBO Founded in 2009, VMTurbo is a company founded on the belief that IT operations management needs to be fundamentally changed to allow your organization to unlock the full value of today s virtualized infrastructure and cloud services. Our charter is to transform IT operations in cloud and virtualized environments from a complex, labor intensive, and volatile process to one that is simple, automated and predictable delivering greater control in maintaining a healthy state and consistent service delivery. VMTurbo provides the only software-defined control system for businesses running mission-critical applications on virtualized or cloud infrastructure. The Company applies proven economic principles to deliver a control system that continuously ensures performance while maximizing utilization to transform IT operations to scale to the complexities and dynamics of a software-defined world. First launched in 2010, the VMTurbo platform is now used by more than 9,000 cloud service providers and enterprises worldwide, including Société Générale, Xerox Corporation, Reed Elsevier, H&M, CSC, Canadian Tire, Aon Corporation and BMO Financial. VMTurbo is headquartered in Massachusetts, with offices in New York, California, the United Kingdom and Israel. One Burlington Woods Drive, Suite 101 Burlington, MA