The ESXi Capacity dashboard supports the Cluster Capacity dashboard and is also required for the non-clustered ESXi.

Design Considerations

See Capacity Dashboards for common design considerations among all the dashboards for capacity management.

How to Use the Dashboard

The Summary heat map provides an overall view of the ESXi Host capacity, grouped by their clusters.

  • Each ESXi host is represented by a box, displaying their capacity remaining.
  • The ESXi host size is made constant for ease of use. If your ESXi sizes are not standardized, consider using the number of physical cores or Total CPU GHz to display the difference in sizes. Ensure that the smallest ESXi is not too small.
  • Wastage is displayed by a new color. Dark gray indicates wastage as capacity is not used. The performance problem due to low utilization can be caused by a bottleneck elsewhere.
The ESXi Hosts Capacity widget lists all the ESXi hosts in your environment, grouped by their parent cluster.
  • The standalone ESXi are displayed at the bottom under No Group.
  • In a large environment with many data centers, you can zoom into a specific vCenter or data center. You can also filter or search for specific ESXi hosts matching certain names.
  • The 99th Percentile Performance column takes the 99th percentile value of the ESXi Performance (%) metric. To rule out the outlier, the worst performance (which is equivalent to 100th percentile) is not considered. Also, the performance threshold is set to be stringent.
Select one of the ESXi hosts from the ESXi Hosts Capacity widget. All the three line charts automatically display the trend of selected ESXi host.
  • Displays both total and usable utilization in terms of RAM and CPU.
  • Utilization is displayed for three months and not one week. The daily average is displayed and not the hourly average and the focus is on RAM consumed and not RAM active.

Points to Note

  • Add a drill-down to the ESXi Capacity dashboard. A logical place to initiate this drill-down is in the Cluster Capacity List widget. Link this widget into the table of ESXi host in the destination dashboard.
  • A technology refresh is often used to address the capacity shortage. Consider adding a property widget that displays the hardware model and specification to help you determine the age of the hardware.