VMWare Capacity Planning Tool - Power Assesment

[Basher]

Hi Guys,

I have a quick query I’m hoping you can help me with – I’ve just been informed that VMWare’s Capacity Planning tool collects the actual power usage of the defined estate over the period of the data collection. Is this true? If so in your experience is that data actually reliable and provide an accurate representation of the servers power profile?

Cheers,
James

 

[sidethink]

I don't think that tool can measure power consumption - not even sure how that would be possible inside an OS.

Anyway, I suspect it can measure the components in the system and extrapolate a voltage draw. I'm sure its as reliable as anyone's assumptive arithmetic can be.

I wouldn't put much stock in what VMWare would tell me about potential power savings - leave that tool to tell you how many VMs you might be able to get on to certain boxes and then use other tools, like www.dell.com/calc , to tell you how much your newly chosen hardware will cost you to run.

 

[mr.bond]

Not sure about VMWare, but dell (who i use) have a fearure within Openmanage to monitor power consumption.

If you've Dell servers this is pretty easy to get going. I'm guessing most large vendors will have similar tools.

 

[Stolly]

Hi Guys,

I have a quick query I’m hoping you can help me with – I’ve just been informed that VMWare’s Capacity Planning tool collects the actual power usage of the defined estate over the period of the data collection. Is this true? If so in your experience is that data actually reliable and provide an accurate representation of the servers power profile?

Cheers,
James

It takes a random guess, and then times it by the number of clouds in the sky divided by the number of cars that pass in the next 12 minutes.

Its not accurate, its based on the manufacturers specs and thats only any use if their server database is up to date which it hasn't been when i used it.

 

[m4cc45]

I don't know what tool it was but there was a tool that monitored the power usage that our HP servers were using and then converted this to how much we'd save moving to various HP bladecentres and kit.



M.