Optimize Your VMware Capacity Planning Report

I have noticed many partners lately complaining about their Capacity Planning report having below expected VM per server Density, & has normally been granted access to their Capacity Planning Project to optimize the report. I have decided I will share the info on here on which parameters to change in order to  get a decent VM per Server Density in your CP report. Although I have been using these numbers successfully During my job for a while, and I know that many of my colleagues are following the same I provide no explicit/implicit guarantee of the results nor my employer. If you think your capacity planner report got out of hand on results (Ex 1000 vm per host), then please check what you have done wrong or contact your local VMware SE, or feel free to leave me a comment below. I will repeat use at your own risk, & ensure to use your judgement before submitting the report to customers.

Bumping up CP consolidation ratios Procedures:

1- First Make sure you are using Consolidation Analysis (CA) rather than Consolidation Estimate (CE) before you follow up any of the below procedures, else you will never find out the required tabs. You can always choose to run Consolidation Estimate (CE) when first creating the CP project in VMware Capacity Planning, but what if you already have a project running as Consolidation Estimate (CE) then you can follow the below procedure to convert it to Consolidation Analysis (CA).… Read More

VMware Capacity Planner still missing the Intel Nehalem processor

I know many Virtualization Consultants who all are still wondering where is the Intel Nehalem processor in the VMware Capacity Planner. The Nehalem processor has already hit the market more than 6 months back, VMware still has not update their Capacity Planner to include it. We all know that the Nehalem processor is providing a great performance & efficiency enhancement comparing to the prior Intel processors & this change should be taken into the consideration When doing Capacity Planning.

Customers has been as well wondering why the capacity planner report is made with an older processor, as they will be buying the Nehalem one. The only way I had found around this is to build your custom hardware inside the VMware Capacity Planner with a faster CPU frequence, but even this still not too accurate. I am hoping VMware will address this soon. If any one has any updates or VMware plans for this topic & would share it with us. it would be of a great value to everyone.… Read More

VMware Capacity Planner on System without internet

Offline VMware Capacity Planner:

I have mostly done online VMware Capacity Planner as most customers usually don’t mind it, though when I started offering VMware Capacity Planner for Banks & Ministries that’s when Offline VMware Capacity Planner came handy. Many of the companies & ministries mind you sending data online directly, where they are OK with you sending it after they inspect it. As VMware Capacity Planner allow you to queue all your inventory data & performance data on the Capacity Planner system and upload it from another system or at another time that problem can be over come by what I like to call Offline VMware Capacity Planner. Although you will need to use the same methodology if the system running the capacity planner does not have an internet & you want to upload the data at a later time using another machine with internet access. The procedure of Offline VMware Capactiy Planner is below as documented by VMware KB#1896:

Follow these steps:

  1. Register the Database ID from the primary (originating) collector. The secondary (sending) collector does not need to be registered to the Company ID. For more information see: Viewing and Adding Collector Database IDs to a Client Registration (1891) .
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