HP Insight Capacity Advisor:

a look under the hood

A technical white paper
Table of contents
Executive summary...................................................................................................................................3
Product overview......................................................................................................................................3
Capacity planning challenges.....................................................................................................................4
Taking capacity planning to a new level......................................................................................................5
Gain deep insight and advanced virtualisation for better decisions...............................................................5
Quickly analyse scenarios for optimal configurations...................................................................................5
Leverage real-time placement information for ongoing rebalancing...............................................................6
Enable energy-aware planning for a greener data centre.............................................................................6
How it works............................................................................................................................................7
Meta structure........................................................................................................................................7
Central Management Server (CMS).........................................................................................................7
Managed nodes...................................................................................................................................7
Data collection.......................................................................................................................................7
Data gathering via software agents (‘utilisation providers’).........................................................................7
Agentless data gathering.......................................................................................................................8
Support for data gathering from non-HP hardware....................................................................................8
Data gathering standards......................................................................................................................8
Use cases..............................................................................................................................................8
Consolidating servers............................................................................................................................9
Rebalancing workloads.........................................................................................................................9
Adding new workloads.........................................................................................................................9
Special use cases for the HP Integrity server environment........................................................................... 10
HP Serviceguard planning................................................................................................................... 10
HP Instant Capacity planning............................................................................................................... 10
Using the tools: basic steps.................................................................................................................... 10
Step 1: Install the software on the Central Management Server................................................................. 11
Step 2: Set up data collection for managed nodes.................................................................................. 11
Step 3: Create scenarios for selected systems......................................................................................... 11
Step 4: Set utilisation limits................................................................................................................... 11
Step 5: Run HP Smart Solver scenarios.................................................................................................. 12
Step 6: Create utilisation forecasts........................................................................................................ 12
Step 7: Generate reports..................................................................................................................... 13
Key features........................................................................................................................................... 13
HP Smart Solver.................................................................................................................................... 13
Five-star rating system............................................................................................................................ 13
Forecasting and trending....................................................................................................................... 14
Utilisation limits..................................................................................................................................... 14
Power planning..................................................................................................................................... 14
Load-balancing..................................................................................................................................... 14
Reporting............................................................................................................................................. 14
Integration with other HP tools................................................................................................................ 15
HP Systems Insight Manager................................................................................................................ 15
Logical server management.................................................................................................................. 15
HP Virtualization Manager................................................................................................................... 15
HP Server Migration Pack.................................................................................................................... 15
Putting HP Capacity Advisor to work for ongoing optimisation..................................................................... 15
HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem with ProLiant servers............................................................................... 15
HP Integrity servers and Integrity blades.................................................................................................. 15
Licensing.............................................................................................................................................. 15
Putting HP Capacity Advisor to work for one-time consolidation efforts......................................................... 16
HP Insight Capacity Advisor Consolidation software................................................................................. 16
Achieve better business outcomes............................................................................................................. 16
For more information.............................................................................................................................. 16
Executive summary In this paper, we provide a detailed look at how
you can put HP Capacity Advisor to work in your
environment. The discussion encompasses an overview
In their efforts to make better use of resources while
of the software’s key capabilities and a look at how
enhancing application performance, data centre
it is deployed and used on a day-to-day basis. In
managers and system administrators are often held
addition, the paper summarises the software’s most
back by inadequate capacity planning tools. HP
important features and offers other information
Capacity Advisor software helps your organisation
relevant to organisations that are considering
overcome these challenges. It provides the detailed
deploying HP Capacity Advisor to consolidate an
information your administrators need to increase
environment, balance resources on an ongoing basis,
server utilisation, reduce power consumption, improve
and take capacity planning to a new level.
application performance, and meet other business-
driven objectives. This powerful tool helps you create
an adaptive infrastructure that can increase business
flexibility, reduce operational costs, and deliver higher
Product overview
quality of service. HP Capacity Advisor is a real-time capacity planning
tool that provides you with both real-time and historical
HP Capacity Advisor is a member of the HP Insight
system utilisation and power 1 data for HP ProLiant, HP
software portfolio and is delivered as part of the
BladeSystem, and HP Integrity servers. The software
HP Insight Dynamics – VSE suite for ProLiant servers.
has the ability to collect and analyse more than a
HP Insight Dynamics – VSE provides a powerful toolkit
thousand data points per server per day from both
for planning capacity and power continuously,
virtual and physical resources. It gathers data as often
provisioning infrastructure consistently, and balancing
as every five minutes to create a clear record of server
physical and virtual resources. HP Capacity Advisor
resource utilisation – including processors, memory,
enables the continuous analysis and optimisation that
disk input/output (I/O), network I/O, and energy.
is a core benefit of HP Insight Dynamics – VSE. In
addition to its availability in the HP Insight Dynamics This data can be used to easily detect systems that
– VSE suite, HP Capacity Advisor is part of the HP are over- or under-utilised. Drawing on this data, HP
Virtual Server Environment for HP Integrity servers. Capacity Advisor arms you with the insights you
A limited-time use licence of HP Capacity Advisor need to proactively rebalance and consolidate
is also available for planning consolidations from server workloads to increase utilisation, reduce
legacy environments. power consumption, improve application
performance, and meet other objectives.

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To aid in the capacity planning process, HP Capacity
Advisor includes unique Smart Solver technology,
developed by HP Labs. Smart Solver analyses
historical HP Capacity Advisor data and provides
recommendations on the best fit for various server
workloads. Recommendations are displayed along
with a simple five-star rating system, so you can
easily see which physical servers or virtual machines
are better matches for particular workloads. In
addition, HP Capacity Advisor makes it quick
and easy to simulate different configuration or
consolidation scenarios and ask what-if questions
based on real data.
HP Capacity Advisor also includes capabilities that
allow you to model utilisation limits in order to define
service level objectives on system resources, including
CPU, memory, disk, and network bandwidth. These
limits can be applied to all workloads or customised
for individual workloads. HP Smart Solver takes
limits into account when recommending targets for
application workloads and showing available
headroom on different servers under different
scenarios. This technology is especially useful for
what-if analysis and consolidation of multiple
workloads onto fewer physical servers.
In addition, HP Capacity Advisor includes innovative
power capping estimator capabilities. For systems with
power capping enabled, HP Capacity Advisor can
estimate the time that a single-system power cap will
be activated, and it can provide data that helps you
set appropriate power caps.
Capacity planning
challenges
If you help keep an enterprise data centre up and
running, you have undoubtedly wrestled with capacity
planning questions. How should we go about
consolidating legacy systems? How can we re-balance
workloads to improve application performance and
take greater advantage of our available processing
power? Where should we stack individual workloads
within our existing environment? Can we fit new
workloads onto our existing servers, or do we need
new servers?
Elsewhere within the enterprise, executive managers
may be asking a complementary set of questions. How
can we gain more value from our server investments?
What can we do to control rising data centre costs
while still maintaining an infrastructure that will support
business growth? What more can we do to reduce
data centre energy consumption and rising power and
cooling bills? How can we increase the agility of our
IT organisation to enable new business initiatives and
drive better business outcomes?
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To help answer questions like these, companies turn to
capacity planning. In some cases, data centres have
teams of dedicated experts who use complex software
tools to analyse capacity needs, usually for a limited
number of mission-critical applications. In other cases,
server administrators engage in an ad hoc process that
uses spreadsheets and guesswork to develop estimates
of the capacity needs of various applications. To plan
large consolidations, many companies use service
providers for analysis and planning projects. These
one-time recommendations don’t factor in the frequent
change that takes place in many environments, so they
don’t help address creeping server and virtual machine
sprawl. Prior to the widespread use of virtualisation,
capacity planning often meant one server per
application, regardless of the resources the
application needed.
When a formal capacity planning team is in place, a
planner might produce one capacity plan per server
per week, focusing on a single server running a single
application. That plan will most likely be devoted to a
mission-critical application. Applications that are less
important to the business might may never be part of
a capacity plan. Some issues like power consumption
may never play into the capacity planning process.
Regardless of the approach or scope of their capacity
planning efforts, many organisations are held back by
a lack of readily available, detailed and quantitative
information on historical and current server workloads,
utilisation levels, and power usage. In the absence of
such information, server administrators often have little
choice but to over-provision resources just to be sure
that systems can meet the peak loads of certain
applications. As a result, capacity waste is often
a routine part of day-to-day business.
To gain more value from your server investments,
your capacity planners need better knowledge of
your environment, including accurate information on
utilisation trends, resource consumption, and best-fit
scenarios. Still, data alone isn’t enough. You also
need tools that can quickly sort through and analyse
potentially massive amounts of data and then
generate meaningful information that you can
use in your capacity planning efforts.
This sharply targeted information is one of the keys
to allocating virtual and physical resources in a more
flexible manner, avoiding over-provisioning, conserving
energy, and controlling costs – while meeting the peak
demands of the applications you support.
This is where HP Capacity Advisor software comes
into play. It arms you with the tools you need for
capacity planning and resource optimisation in
your data centre.
Taking capacity
planning to a new level
Drawing on innovative technology such as Smart
Solver, HP Capacity Advisor allows you to take
capacity planning to a new level – and gain a wide
range of business benefits. Here are a few of the ways
that HP Capacity Advisor can help your organisation.
Gain deep insight and advanced
virtualisation for better decisions.
HP Capacity Advisor collects and analyses thousands
of historical data points from virtual and physical
resources each day. With minimal intrusion, it gathers
data as often as every five minutes to create a clear
record of server resource utilisation – including
processors, memory, disk input/output (I/O), network
I/O, and power. Then, using the HP Smart Solver, HP
Capacity Advisor identifies the best fit for workloads
and highlights opportunities to consolidate servers to
improve utilisation and cut power and cooling costs.
Quickly analyse scenarios for
optimal configurations.
The analysis tools in HP Capacity Advisor change
the ground rules for capacity planning. You can now
quickly evaluate different scenarios for consolidating
older and underutilised physical servers onto virtual
machines. You can simulate different workload
configurations on different sets of server resources,
and then generate reports comparing configurations.
You can automatically find best-fit solutions for up
to 100 servers at a time. You can easily see which
alternatives use the least computing power, the fewest
systems, and the least energy – information that helps
you contain data centre costs.
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Figure 1. Meta structure at a glance
HP Capacity Advisor leverages a Central Management Server that consolidates data collected from managed nodes. Data can be
collected via software agents installed on managed nodes (shown), or it can be collected without agents via the management tools
embedded in compatible systems (not shown).

CMS Managed system

Command line parameters

System names
Utilisation
System names daemon
OS types
Writes

HP SIM Licences WBEM

Capcollect
server Utilisation files

WBEM credentials Reads

Workloads
System
attributes Utilisation
‘VSE resource provider
members’
gWLM DB
CMS SSL Profile
certificate files

Leverage real-time placement Enable energy-aware planning

information for ongoing for a greener data centre.
rebalancing. Beyond processing power, HP Capacity Advisor helps
you overcome your power and cooling challenges
HP Capacity Advisor gives you the information you
by enabling energy-aware capacity planning. For
need to make load balancing part of your day-to-day
example, you might run scenarios that show what
data centre operations. On an ongoing basis, you
happens to energy consumption under different
can identify servers that often run short of resources,
consolidation approaches and then compare
and then work proactively to shift loads to servers
configurations to determine the more efficient options
that are underutilised. When you need to deploy a
for power utilisation. The software’s five-star rating
new workload, HP Capacity Advisor’s five-star rating
system shows you the most energy-efficient choices
system lets you instantly see the best placement for
for provisioning and redeploying servers.
the workload within your existing infrastructure.

Table 1. Comparison of Agent-based Agentless

agent-based versus agentless Utilisation Provider (UP) (Agentless Configuration File)
data collection
Available for HP-UX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows systems Available for Windows systems only

Equally useful in data quality, accuracy, and richness

Requires hosting and updating the UP agent Leverages existing data on the system; no additional
agent hosting or update required

Not susceptible to downtime in the network or the CMS; Susceptible to network or CMS downtime as data
collected data is held for a maximum of 30 days by the UP is continuously collected by the CMS across the network
for transfer to the database on the CMS from each managed system

No additional load on CPU or memory resources Small additional load on CPU and memory resources incurred
incurred on the CMS by the agentless data collection service running on the CMS

Low network traffic impact – can store data up to 30 days Potential impact on network traffic due to frequent
locally and send data at off-peak hours daily or on-demand communication between node and CMS
(allowing for better scaling)

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Figure 2. HP Capacity Advisor
HP Capacity Advisor helps you collect and analyse utilisation data so you can optimise your use of resources.

1. Collect 2. Analyse 3. Optimise

Utilisation data For best-fit placement Resources continuously

These kinds of insights help you reduce energy
consumption through better utilisation of power and
cooling resources and better placement of workloads.
By quickly identifying and consolidating inefficient
servers onto fewer, more power-efficient ones, you
can reduce energy consumption and cut your
operational costs.
Central Management Server (CMS)
HP Capacity Advisor is controlled through a Central
Management Server that is installed on a server. The
CMS consolidates data collected from managed
nodes and makes it available to tools that analyse
the data. The CMS builds on and resides within the
framework of HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM), the
central point of administration for complete resource-

How it works lifecycle management for HP servers and

multi-operating system environments.
So how does HP Capacity Advisor actually work? Managed nodes
Let’s take a look under the hood of this high-powered HP Capacity Advisor is set to automatically collect data
software product. from all discovered managed nodes that are licenced
to run HP Capacity Advisor and from managed nodes
Meta structure that have HP Insight Capacity Advisor Consolidation
The purpose of data collection is to retrieve utilisation software. Managed nodes can be HP ProLiant, HP
data from managed nodes and store it on the Central BladeSystem, HP Integrity, and certain non-HP
Management Server (CMS) in a format suitable for Windows® -based x86 servers.2
use with scenarios. To do this requires information
from a number of local and remote sources: Data collection
• Utilisation data from the utilisation provider on Data gathering via software agents
each managed node (‘utilisation providers’)
In a typical HP Capacity Advisor installation, software
• Information about the managed node from other
agents are installed on managed nodes. These agents,
Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM)
also known as ‘utilisation providers’, collect system and
providers on the managed node (not shown
power utilisation data and send it to the CMS for
in Figure 1)
analysis. The actual data collection consumes less
• Information about the managed node from HP than 1 per cent of the CPU cycle of the managed
Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) node where the data is being collected.
• Information about the VSE workloads or resources
Data is collected once every five minutes for five
associated with the managed node from the HP
different metrics: CPU, memory, disk I/O, network
Global Workload Manager (gWLM) database
I/O, and power utilisation.1 Over the course of a day,
(for both ProLiant and Integrity servers)
HP Capacity Advisor collects more than 1,000 data
• Information about the managed node stored points for each monitored server, providing a rich
during previous collections from the database set of granular data.

7
These data points provide the foundation for a HP Capacity Advisor can also import Sun Solaris
detailed historic profile of system and power utilisation data (SPARC or x86) originally gathered using HP
trends. Drawing on this data pool, HP Capacity Software Performance Agents.
Advisor allows you to create utilisation graphs that
Data gathering standards
show historical utilisation, data peaks, peak durations,
Data is gathered from systems specified using Web-
data trends, and forecasted utilisation.
Based Enterprise Management, a set of Web-based
The data gathered by the software agents can information services standards. A WBEM provider
be stored on managed nodes and the Central agent offers access to a resource. WBEM clients
Management Server. Historical data can be kept send requests to providers to get information about
on the managed systems for up to 30 days before registered resources and to access the registered
it is over-written. The CMS database can store up resources. The WBEM credentials for the systems
to four years of data per workload. are configured during the initial setup of HP
Systems Insight Manager.
Agentless data gathering
In a variation on the typical installation, HP Capacity
Use cases
Advisor can now be deployed without software agents
installed on the managed nodes. With this approach, HP Capacity Advisor lets you test configuration
HP Capacity Advisor gathers data via capabilities built changes before actually making the changes, and
into Microsoft ® Windows server operating systems. it helps you manage existing resources to improve
their utilisation. Using the data collected from your
Support for data gathering from non-HP hardware environment, HP Capacity Advisor can calculate what
In another new capability, HP Capacity Advisor can resource utilisation would look like if a workload’s
now gather and analyse data from non-HP hardware. utilisation were increased or decreased. Further, it can
This includes certain Dell, IBM, and Hitachi Windows- simulate what resource utilisation might look like if
based x86 servers. workloads were combined or if a new workload
were added to a server.
Licensing for non-HP servers is achieved through ‘HP
Insight Capacity Advisor Consolidation software’, a For example, HP Capacity Advisor assists you in
limited-time use licence for energy-aware capacity answering questions such as these:
planning. It enables you to collect detailed server
• Is there room on this system to support
utilisation data across several key metrics for a
additional work?
period of up to six months after licence activation
on your legacy systems. The legacy systems can be • Will this particular workload fit on this system?
older HP ProLiant or HP Integrity servers, as well • Can these physical servers be consolidated as
as certain x86 Dell, IBM, or Hitachi servers virtual machines on a single server or multiple
running Microsoft Windows. servers?

For ongoing capacity planning with unlimited-time • What are the estimated power costs for different
use, HP Capacity Advisor is available as part of the system configurations?
HP Insight Dynamics – VSE suite for ProLiant or the
HP Virtual Server Environment suite for HP Integrity
servers only.

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• What does a comparison of several what-if Rebalancing workloads
scenarios reveal about the analysed alternatives? HP Capacity Advisor makes it easy to balance system
• What is the historic behaviour of a system or loads across several servers or virtual machines, such
workload? that workloads are distributed evenly across a set of
resources, without over- or under-utilising the subset
To illustrate HP Capacity Advisor’s capabilities, let’s of the servers. Load balancing is based upon CPU,
take a look at the software in action in some common memory, network I/O, and disk I/O capacity, along
use cases. These use cases include consolidating with utilisation limits and headroom. The goal is
servers, rebalancing workloads, and adding new to distribute workloads so that each system has
workloads. comparable headroom.
Consolidating servers Example:
HP Capacity Advisor lets you quickly evaluate different
To maintain application performance and optimise
scenarios for consolidating older, underutilised, and
resource utilisation, you want to rebalance workloads.
often power-hungry physical servers onto virtual
In particular, you want to avoid cases where one
machines. Using the actual, historical utilisation for
application is running out of resources while other
each server, you can simulate different workload
applications have far more resources than they need.
configurations on different sets of server resources. You
can automatically find best-fit solutions for up to 100 Key steps:
servers at a time. You can easily see which alternatives • Put HP Smart Solver to work to automatically balance
use the least over-all computing resources, the fewest workloads across a selected set of existing servers
systems, and the least energy. or virtual machines hosts.
Example: • Use the five-star rating system to identify an ideal
HP Capacity Advisor shows you that within a balance of workloads across physical servers or
particular pool of servers, some machines have very virtual machines
low utilisation while a few are approaching 100 per • Rebalance loads, based on HP Capacity Advisor’s
cent utilisation – that means they are starved for recommendations, to give each workload about
resources. To optimise resource utilisation, you decide the same amount of headroom.
to consolidate these systems onto virtual machines
Adding new workloads
that run on a smaller pool of host servers.
Adding a new application or set of applications to an
Key steps: existing server environment requires careful planning.
• Select the systems for potential consolidation based Deciding where to add the new workload can be
on utilisation information from HP Capacity Advisor. challenging. Can it be placed on an existing server?
Or is a new system required? With HP Capacity
• Define the parameters of the target systems, such
Advisor, the planning can be based on real data and
as the number and type of processors, memory,
realistic modelling to analyse where a new workload
and network bandwidth and the desired utilisation
can be added to the current environment.
limits to apply.
• Use HP Smart Solver technology to analyse your HP Capacity Advisor enables you to create scenarios
consolidation options for the selected group of for what-if planning and forecasting resource usage for
servers. In evaluating your consolidation options, systems and workloads. In these scenarios, you can
you have the option to use existing VM hosts or to create systems, remove systems, edit system attributes,
create template-generated ‘what-if’ systems based and move virtual machines. You can create workloads,
on characteristics you specify. Smart Solver shows collect utilisation data for existing workloads, import
you how many virtual machines you need, how existing workload profiles, edit workload demands,
many physical hosts you need, and the placement move workloads between systems, park workloads,
of the virtual machines on the physical hosts. and delete workloads. After you have run multiple
what-if scenarios, you can then compare them to
• View HP Capacity Advisor’s suggested best-fit
analyse differences and determine your best options
solutions for consolidation. The five-star rating system
for moving forward.
confirms that workloads are well balanced among
the physical servers, giving you the confidence to
move forward with your consolidation efforts.

9
Figure 3. Utilisation reports
HP Capacity Advisor provides
valuable summaries and details
on resource usage for CPU,
memory, network, and disk I/O
bandwidth, and power
consumption and costs.

Example: HP Serviceguard planning

You need to deploy a new workload into a virtualised In an HP Integrity clustered server environment, HP
server environment. You want to make sure that the Capacity Advisor can be configured to collect data
workload gets the resources it needs without affecting for a workload within an HP Serviceguard high
the performance of existing applications. availability cluster. This association allows HP Capacity
Advisor to track workloads moving from one system to
Key steps: another as a result of a Serviceguard migration. It also
• Use HP Capacity Advisor to run several scenarios allows HP Capacity Advisor to show an uninterrupted
to simulate the addition of the workload into history of utilisation data for a workload across
different physical systems and virtual machines. migrations.
• Generate a scenario comparison report to compare In addition, you can use HP Capacity Advisor to run
key values for two to four scenarios at a time. what-if scenarios to determine the best target servers
You can easily look across scenarios to see the for failover packages in a Serviceguard environment.
differences in the results of each.
HP Instant Capacity planning
• Use the five-star rating system to immediately
HP Integrity Servers are available with the option of
determine the best place to put the workload
HP Instant Capacity (iCAP). With this option, reserve
within your environment.
iCAP processors, cell boards, and memory are
• Add the workload with the confidence that your purchased at a fraction of their regular price and
existing systems can accommodate the additional installed in a server – inactive but ready for use. If you
demands. have the iCAP option available to you, the utilisation
view provided by HP Capacity Advisor can help you
Special use cases for the HP understand if you need to activate iCAP resources
Integrity server environment permanently or for limited periods of time.
HP Capacity Advisor is a single software product that
can be deployed in HP ProLiant, HP BladeSystem, and Using the tools: basic steps
HP Integrity environments. However, when deployed So what does it take to get started with HP Capacity
in an HP Integrity environment, HP Capacity Advisor Advisor? Here are some of the basic steps involved
can explore and answer an expanded set of questions in deploying and using the software.
that stem from certain capabilities and features of
Integrity systems.

10
Figure 4. Scenario comparison
reports
Scenario comparison reports
help you understand the
implications of different
consolidation scenarios. This
image shows a comparison
of scenarios for power usage
and power costs.

Step 1: Install the software on the Central
Management Server.
As noted above, HP Capacity Advisor is controlled
through a Central Management Server (CMS). The
software is installed on a server with other components
of the HP Insight Dynamics – VSE suite or the HP
Virtual Server Environment (VSE), so no separate
installation is required on the CMS. To use HP
Capacity Advisor, you must have a valid licence.
Step 2: Set up data collection for managed nodes.
Once the software is installed on the CMS, it’s time to
begin data collection. In this step, you configure HP
Capacity Advisor to collect data automatically from all
licenced VSE resources added to HP Systems Insight
Manager, which provides a consolidated view and
central point of administration for your infrastructure.
HP Capacity Advisor collects data via agents installed
on managed nodes or via an agentless approach.
With the agent-based approach, HP Capacity Advisor
uses the same data collection agents as the HP
Virtualization Manager in HP Insight Dynamics –
VSE and HP Virtual Server Environment.
To collect data, you select the target system or systems,
schedule the collection task for a later time period or
immediate run, and start the task. Upon installation,
HP Capacity Advisor is set to automatically collect
data from all discovered managed nodes that are
licenced to run HP Capacity Advisor and from
managed nodes that have HP Insight HP Capacity
Advisor Consolidation software. The data download
to the CMS is set to start at midnight on the CMS’s
time clock. This is called the nightly data download.
It occurs automatically at this time unless it is
rescheduled to a different time.
Step 3: Create scenarios for selected systems.
With your data gathering tools in place, you can
begin creating scenarios for selected systems. HP
Capacity Advisor allows you to create scenarios
to model system behaviour by performing ‘what-if’
operations based on collected data. These scenarios
are collections of systems and workloads, both real
and ‘what-if’ creations.
When preparing to collect data for use in scenarios
or for obtaining historical activity reports, consider:
• The list of servers from which you want to collect data
• Whether you need to collect data for the first time,
update a data collection, or import previously
collected data into HP Capacity Advisor
• When you want to collect the data
While scenarios are based on real data, you can edit
scenarios to modify parameters and model changes
to the environment and the configuration of systems
and workloads. You can save scenarios for later
analysis and print graphically rich reports that
summarise your findings.
Step 4: Set utilisation limits.
With HP Capacity Advisor, you have the ability to
specify when a system is full. For example, you might
set utilisation limits along these lines:
• Do not exceed 80 per cent utilisation for more than
30 minutes.
• Never exceed 90 per cent utilisation.
• For 99 per cent of the time, utilisation must be
under 90 per cent.

11
Figure 5. Five-star rating system
With HP Smart Solver’s five-star
rating system, you can easily
see which physical servers are
better matches for particular
workloads.
In the absence of user-defined limits, the default
utilisation limits used globally across HP Capacity
Advisor are:
• CPU utilisation cannot exceed 70 per cent of the
capacity for more than 15 minutes at a time.
• Memory utilisation cannot exceed 100 per cent
of the capacity.
Beyond overall system utilisation, you can tailor
utilisation limits to specific service level objectives
for workloads. These limits place service level
objectives on one or more specific utilisation metrics
(CPU, memory, network, or disk utilisation) for any
given workload. When making changes, such as
the automated system consolidation suggested by
the HP Smart Solver, these utilisation limits are
honoured. This is true for both automated load
balancing of servers and virtual machines and
for automated workload stacking.
Step 5: Run HP Smart Solver scenarios.
HP Smart Solver automates the manual process of
repeatedly moving workloads onto different systems
to determine an optimal solution to a problem. The
Smart Solver recommends where to place workloads HP Capacity Advisor provides tools for analysing
within a pool of selected servers to reduce the number utilisation data to calculate trends and to combine
of servers used or to balance workloads across the
servers.
The Smart Solver technology uses workload traces to
quantify the demands placed by the workloads on the to produce a forecast model. The forecast model can
servers. It also uses workload traces to recommend then be used to provide a better, more accurate
viable placement solutions, subject to user-defined
constraints, such as workload utilisation limits and
the specific resources that may be used.
Smart Solver can perform scenarios for:
• Consolidation to virtual machines – Automated
system consolidation analysis helps you understand
your opportunities to consolidate your existing
physical systems into virtualised resources, thereby
converting the physical systems into VM guests that
reside on VM hosts. You can use existing VM hosts
or create template-generated ‘what-if’ systems
based on characteristics you specify.
• Workload stacking – Automated workload stacking
analysis allows you to stack individual workloads
onto existing servers and template-generated
‘what-if’ systems that are created based on system
characteristics. This facility allows you to consolidate
existing workloads into as few systems as possible.
• Load balancing – Automated load balancing
analysis of servers or VMs gives you the capability
to balance system loads across several servers or
VMs, such that workloads are distributed evenly
across a set of resources, without overloading
any subset of the servers.
Step 6: Create utilisation forecasts.
existing utilisation data with trend information to
produce projected forecasts. These tools allow you
to combine a range of historical data (the forecast
data range) with the annual projected growth rate
estimate of future utilisation.
These capabilities allow you to better understand
how the utilisation of resources is changing over time
and to create precise forecasts of future utilisation.
12
Step 7: Generate reports.
HP Capacity Advisor utilisation reports provide
valuable summaries and details of resource usage
for CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O bandwidth,
and power consumption and costs. These reports are
useful for understanding current resource utilisation or
planning for future requirements. Reports can present
resource utilisation for a scenario, or for one or more
complexes, systems, or workloads.
HP Capacity Advisor can generate both graphical
and tabular data for presentation. Its Profile Viewer
presents data for one entity at a time within a browser-
based application that allows you to manipulate
the data view, including panning through graphical
presentations, changing utilisation limit values, and
instantly collecting more data or selecting a different
period of data to view.
Utilisation reports are produced as HTML pages that
can be viewed immediately or downloaded in a
compressed file for viewing offline in a Web browser.
Full reports can be obtained for all utilisation resource
types (CPU, memory, network I/O, disk I/O, and
power usage) for one scenario at a time or for one
or more systems or complexes and their associated
workloads.
A scenario comparison report helps you to compare
key values for two to four scenarios at a time in a
format that makes it easier to look across the scenarios
at one time. Comparison reports are also produced in
HTML format and are available in a downloadable
compressed file for later viewing in a Web browser.
Key features
HP Smart Solver
HP Smart Solver technology, included in the HP
Capacity Advisor product, analyses historical
utilisation data and provides recommendations on the
best fit for various server workloads. You can simulate
different workload configurations on different sets of
server resources and quickly evaluate scenarios for
consolidating older and underutilised physical servers
onto virtual machines. HP Smart Solver helps you
automatically find best-fit solutions for up to 100
workloads at a time, and easily see which alternatives
use the least computing power, the fewest servers,
and the least energy.
Five-star rating system
HP Smart Solver recommendations are displayed
along with a simple five-star rating system, so you can
easily see which physical servers are better matches
for particular workloads. Here’s what the stars tell you:
• 0 stars – Violates one or more utilisation limits
• 1 star – Meets utilisation limits but there may be no
room for growth
• 2, 3, and 4 stars – Has room to grow by 25, 50,
or 75 per cent, respectively
• 5 stars – Has room for the workload to double
in size
13

Table 2. Supported systems
(summary)
HP Capacity Advisor works with
a wide range of systems, including
those shown here. For full details,
including exact release and update
versions, please see the QuickSpecs
document at
www.hp.com/go/capad.
Forecasting and trending
In addition to tracking current and historical utilisation
information, HP Capacity Advisor arms you with
powerful forecasting and trending capabilities. You
gain the information and visual representations to see
and understand trends in growth rates and to predict
system utilisation and workloads demands for the
weeks and months ahead. You can generate forecasts
that are global, scenario specific, or workload specific
for fixed or floating intervals of time.
Utilisation limits
HP Capacity Advisor allows you to set limits on the
usage of system resources, such as CPU, memory, or
network I/O, by an application. Utilisation limits are
expressed as a per cent of the system capacity and
the amount of time an application is allowed to exceed
this limit. You can specify when a system is full. For
example, you might specify something like:
• Do not exceed 70 per cent utilisation more than 10
per cent of the time.
• Do not exceed 90 per cent utilisation more than 15
minutes at a time.
Limits are used pervasively throughout the HP Capacity
Advisor tool. HP Smart Solver uses limits to know when
a system is full. Limits are used in five-star calculations.
Violations of limits are reported for manual planning.
The use of limits helps you avoid the over- or under-
provisioning of resources and gain an objective
view of trends that could affect the performance
of applications.
Server hardware Operating systems running
on applicable hardware
• HP ProLiant ML/DL 100/300/500 • Windows Server 2008
• HP ProLiant c-Class BladeSystem servers • Windows 2003
• Non-HP x86 running Windows: Dell (2000, • Windows 2000
6000, r800, r900); IBM (eServer e300 • Red Hat Linux
series, x300 series, and Blade HS and LS
• SUSE Linux
servers); and Hitachi (Blade Symphony and
• HP-UX 11i
HA8000)
• Red Hat EL IPF
• HP Integrity servers and blades
• SUSE Linux IPF
• HP 9000 servers
Power planning
As energy costs rise, energy consumption becomes an
increasingly important part of the capacity planning
process.1 HP Capacity Advisor makes it easy to
evaluate and incorporate energy considerations in
your planning processes. When you are planning a
server upgrade, consolidation, or redeployment, you
can run and compare different scenarios to evaluate
the power and cooling needs of different solutions. In
addition, you can use HP Capacity Advisor’s power
capping estimator capabilities to set appropriate
power caps.
Load-balancing
Drawing on Smart Solver capabilities, HP Capacity
Advisor enables automated load balancing analysis of
servers or virtual machines. It gives you the ability to
balance system loads across several servers or virtual
machines, such that workloads are distributed evenly
across a set of resources, without overloading the
subset of the servers.
Reporting
HP Capacity Advisor offers sophisticated reporting
capabilities, including the ability to generate both
graphical and tabular data for presentation. You can
easily manipulate the data view, including panning
through graphical presentations, changing utilisation
limit values, and instantly collecting more data or
selecting a different period of data to view.
Virtualisation platforms
• VMware ESX
• VMware ESXi 3.5 embedded hypervisor
• Microsoft Virtual Server
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• HP Integrity Virtual Machines
14
Utilisation reports are produced as HTML pages that
can be viewed immediately or downloaded in a
compressed file for viewing offline in a Web browser.
Full reports can be obtained for all utilisation resource
types (CPU, memory, network I/O, disk I/O, and
power usage) for one scenario at a time or for one
or more systems or complexes and their associated
workloads.
HP Server Migration Pack
The full version of HP Insight Dynamics – VSE includes
an unlimited-moves licence for HP Server Migration
Pack. This software allows you to move existing servers
and their content to compatible physical servers
and virtualisation platforms. This makes it easy to
implement HP Capacity Advisor’s consolidation and
workload balancing recommendations.

A scenario comparison report helps you compare

key values for two to four scenarios at a time in a
format that makes it easier to look across multiple
Putting HP Capacity
scenarios at one time. Comparison reports are also
produced in HTML format and are available in a
Advisor to work for
downloadable compressed file for later viewing in
a Web browser. ongoing optimisation
Integration with other HP tools HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem
HP Capacity Advisor is closely integrated with various with ProLiant servers
HP management software tools and features. These With HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem servers, HP
include HP Systems Insight Manager, logical server Capacity Advisor is available as part of the HP Insight
management, HP Virtualization Manager, and HP Dynamics – VSE software suite.
Server Migration Pack.

HP Systems Insight Manager

HP Capacity Advisory is closely integrated with
HP Systems Insight Manager, the central point
of administration for complete resource-lifecycle
management for HP servers and multi-OS
environments. This software – that ships with all HP
ProLiant, HP BladeSystem, and HP Integrity servers –
provides a consolidated view of everything you need
to manage your HP infrastructure from anywhere.
Logical server management
HP Capacity Advisor plays a key role in the logical
server management capabilities of the HP Insight
Dynamics – VSE suite. A logical server is a server
profile that is easily created and freely moved across
physical or virtual machines. By detaching the logical
identity from the physical resource, you can create or
move logical servers on any suitable virtual or physical
machine – on demand. In the HP Insight Dynamics –
VSE environment, HP Capacity Advisor works in the
background to collect and analyse data and guide
decisions on the movement of workloads and logical
servers. It displays the previously mentioned five-star
ratings to help you make intelligent placement
decisions.
HP Integrity servers and
Integrity blades
With Integrity servers, HP Capacity Advisor is
available as part of the HP Virtual Server Environment
suite and the HP-UX 11i Operating Environments – the
Virtual Server Operating Environment and the Data
Center Operating Environment.
Licensing
In the most common approach, licensing is based
on the number of nodes that HP Capacity Advisor
manages. For HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem
servers, licences are paid for on a per-server or per-
server-blade basis. For HP Integrity servers, pricing is
based on the number of CPU cores that are managed
by HP Capacity Advisor. There is no additional charge
for the Central Management Server.
In addition, HP Capacity Advisor is also available
via a limited-time licence, discussed below.

HP Virtualization Manager
HP Virtualization Manager provides access to the tools
that create, manage, and move logical servers. It can
be launched directly from HP Systems Insight Manager
to display and manage logical servers, as well as
other resources in the HP Insight Dynamics – VSE
and the HP Virtual Server Environment. HP Capacity
Advisor keeps track of all the systems that fall under
the Virtualization Manager umbrella. HP Capacity
Advisor is aware of where workloads are and how
they fit together.

15
 Putting HP Capacity Achieve better business
Advisor to work for outcomes
one-time consolidation The shift to real-time capacity planning can make a big
difference in your data centre. With this new approach
HP Insight HP Capacity Advisor
Consolidation software
HP Capacity Advisor software may be purchased via
a limited-time licence that may be suitable for certain
system consolidation projects. Under an HP Insight
Capacity Advisor Consolidation software licence,
you can collect detailed server utilisation data across
several key metrics for up to six months after licence
activation. This licence gives you access to the full
power of HP Capacity Advisor, including Smart
Solver technology, to analyse and optimise server
capacity and power utilisation for HP and certain
non-HP Windows-based x86 servers.
to capacity planning, you’re not locked into the rigid
allocation of over-provisioned resources. You can now
complement your long-term consolidation initiatives
with routine capacity planning and the ongoing
optimisation of resources.
Through this more advanced approach to capacity
planning, you can increase utilisation of your servers,
improve the performance of the applications, and
make better use of your power and cooling resources.
In addition, better capacity planning can help you
save valuable floor space, avoid costly expansion
projects, and extend the life of your data centre.
These are the types of benefits that can make a
difference in your company’s bottom line. Ultimately,
better capacity planning can lead to better business
outcomes.

For more information

To learn more about HP Capacity Advisor, visit
www.hp.com/go/insightdynamics.

1. Power data is gathered for instrumented systems that support 2. For details, see the ‘Supported systems’ matrix near the end of this
power metering. In addition, power can be estimated for what-if paper.
configurations.

Technology for better business outcomes

To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/insightdynamics
Linux is a U.S. registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
© Copyright 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject
to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express
warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as
constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions
contained herein.
4AA2-4245EEW, January 2009