The Storage Policy Genie tab provides recommendations, to improve the performance or capacity of a cluster, based on changes to the Storage Policy-Based Management, and other configuration changes such as deduplication and compression.

Note: The vRealize AI Cloud Storage Policy Genie feature is available only as Tech Preview and to select customers of vRealize Operations Cloud.

Preconditions

Storage Policy Genie works only on VMware vSAN clusters that have at least three hosts. There must be at least one All-Flash attached to vRealize Operations Cloud. Storage Policy Genie selects configuration details based on the predominant storage policy inside the cluster.
Note: If there is no storage policy, then the default storage policy or a random policy is selected.

Where You Find the Storage Policy Genie

From the vRealize AI Cloud page, click the Storage Policy Genie tab in the collapsible pane on the right side. This tab displays an overview of the configuration scores and the number of recommendations for the data centers and clusters which vRealize AI Cloud is monitoring.

Viewing Recommendations for a Cluster

To see a list of recommendations for a cluster, click a score for the cluster that you are interested in. Storage Policy Genie displays the baseline score and a list of recommendations which improves the baseline score. By default, the recommendations are to improve the performance of the cluster. You can change this to improve the capacity, by clicking the OBJECTIVE drop-down selection. The recommendations are in descending order, with the highest score on top and the lowest score at the bottom.

The baseline values and the changes to these values are displayed for the following parameters:
  • Average write latency in milliseconds. This is a key performance indicator for the score.
  • Average read latency in milliseconds. This is a key performance indicator for the score.
  • Capacity in terabytes. The capacity improves or deteriorates based on the recommendation. This is the expected available logical capacity.
  • Policy configuration changes. The settings in the policy that changes based on the recommendation. This might include the cluster level configuration changes (deduplication and compression).

The Recommendations section shows the changes to the baseline parameters and the resulting improvement in score, when it is 5% above the baseline. The Others section displays a degradation to the objective chosen, based on the baseline parameters and the corresponding change in score.

Viewing Details About the Recommendation

Click a recommendation to see a detailed view which compares the baseline values, and the changes that the recommendation can bring. The detailed view has the following sections:
Score Breakdown
A spider graph which helps you visualize how the key metrics are impacted by the recommendation, against the current predominant storage policy inside the cluster. The green shading in the graph shows the predicted outcome based on the selected recommendation, as compared to the gray shading which represents the active storage policy.
Storage Policy Details
The details about the recommended changes to the storage policy and the expected outcomes. This displays numerically how the recommendation affects the key metrics. It also displays static metrics about the environment which are not expected to change due to the policy configuration changes.
Hardware Information
Information about the type of hardware used in the host. Click the chevron to see more details.