Thursday, March 25, 2010

VMware vSphere 4 Guided Consolidation

I have added VMware Mylearn Demo Link (Click this Link) - for Guided Consolidation Demo

 (Doesn't work If Pop Up Blocker is there)

Article Extract From : Whugh Griffin Word Press   (Below)

Guided Consolidation is a tool that will allow you to monitor a physical computer and determine it’s potential for adding to your virtual environment. I would highly recommend it for a small to mid sized business looking for some assistance with their P2V process. It has an easy to use interface with a more simplified approach than using the full VMware Capacity Planner utility.
It is free and can be installed from the vCenter installation CD. Once installed, it can be accessed from the vCenter Home Menu. In order to scan a physical computer, you will need to make sure the credentials provided during installation must have administrative permissions on any remote Windows systems selected for analysis. This user account supplied during installation is used to run the “VMware vCenter Collector Service”, a Windows service used to connect to the remote systems.
Once the tool begins to scan the system, it will gather data and display CPU information and utilization, memory information and utilization as well as the computer name. Sometimes it may take up to 1hr before this process begins. Be prepared to allow 24 to 48hrs for this process to complete as Guided Consolidation builds a confidence metric level. Once a high enough confidence level is reached, the status of the system changes to “Ready for consolidation”.
At this point, a consolidation plan is available by selecting the analyzed computer and clicking the “Plan Consolidation” button.
This plan will include a star rating which will identify how likely the physical computer is for virtualization and will even make a recommendation for the target host. The rating system ranges from 1 to 5 stars, with 5 stars indicating the system is a high candidate for the proposed host. From the Consolidation Wizard, you can change several things, the name of the VM, the host being assigned too or even remove a VM altogether from the list.
Multiple systems can be converted to VM’s using this wizard, it’s a very simple process and by the click of one button you are off to the races converting your physical systems to virtual machines.
***Keep in mind that before using Guided Consolidation that a datacenter exists and a host is added to the vCenter Server inventory. ***
I would highly recommend looking at this pdf: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_admin_guide.pdf or picking up a copy of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 by Scott Lowe for more in-depth information on Guided Consolidation.
I hope this gives you a basic understanding of how Guided Consolidation can help you plan a smooth P2V process.

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