Capturing virtual capacity insight with VKernel

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

As industry watchers tout the need for IT resource planning, data center managers embracing VMware virtual server environments are learning firsthand how important it is to know where capacity is stored and how it's being used.

View this service in a slideshow.

Jon Blomeier, data center analyst at Hershey Entertainment & Resorts in Hershey, Pa., says using VMware's VirtualCenter provides a sufficient real-time monitor for the company's ESX Server 3.5 deployment on IBM System x3650 servers, but he isn't able to get forward-looking or trend data across the 74 virtual machines running in production, test and disaster recovery environments.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

As industry watchers tout the need for IT resource planning, data center managers embracing VMware virtual server environments are learning firsthand how important it is to know where capacity is stored and how it's being used.

View this service in a slideshow.

Jon Blomeier, data center analyst at Hershey Entertainment & Resorts in Hershey, Pa., says using VMware's VirtualCenter provides a sufficient real-time monitor for the company's ESX Server 3.5 deployment on IBM System x3650 servers, but he isn't able to get forward-looking or trend data across the 74 virtual machines running in production, test and disaster recovery environments.

"VirtualCenter is great for point in time data, but it is not going to tell me about data over a certain period of time. There isn't strong forecasting or projecting in the product at this time," Blomeier says.

About a year ago Blomeier went looking at start-ups taking on virtual systems management, such as Veeam and Vizioncore, but landed on VKernel's tool set and opted to sign with the newcomer and put several products to use.

Specifically, Capacity Analyzer provides Blomeier with the insight he needed to prevent over-usage and tight capacity from overwhelming his virtual servers. The software, delivered via a virtual appliance, determines the capacity available for new virtual machines and prevents bottlenecks from occurring. He says getting such information helps him to better plan resources for the environment and also understand how one server or virtual machine's performance will impact others'.

"I can look at a more generalized report, a 24-hour snapshot for example, or I can look for the top 10 CPU consumers or top memory consumers. VKernel tells me how many virtual machines I can fit on a server," Blomeier explains. "It immediately let us know that our server environment was getting old so we are considering a move to blades in the future."

Blomeier also uses VKernel's Chargeback tool, but more as a reality check for resource consumers than a formal chargeback mechanism. "It is kind of being put to use as a gauge to determine how we can show the validity of resources consumed," he says.

Blomeier also downloaded VKernel's free tool SearchMyVM, which the vendor says provides a “Google-like” interface to search more than 75 attributes across virtual machines, hosts, clusters, storage, resource pools, files, snapshots, VMware tools, applications and configuration information.

And while Blomeier plans to expand his use of VKernel's tools, he also expects the vendor to add enhancements in future releases. For one, he says he would like to see more reporting features and be able to dig deeper into data beyond the host to the C-drive level. He also wants an updated product to include the capability to do one-to-many template deployments, lessening the need for the "one-by-one tedious process."

"It would be cool if we could go out and query more of the environment, gathering more specific data," he says. "I'd like to see them continue to add new features quickly."

Do you Tweet? Follow me on Twitter here. 

Read more about infrastructure management in Network World's Infrastructure Management section.

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.