In this example, an IT administrator at a financial data center must plan for an increase in workloads as tax season approaches. To evaluate whether additional workloads can be added to existing virtual infrastructure, the administrator runs a what-if scenario.

Prerequisites

The administrator must have credentials for operating vRealize Operations and managing vCenter Server objects.

Procedure

  1. From the left menu, the administrator clicks Plan > Capacity
    The Capacity Plan screen appears. Click the What-If Analysis card.
  2. Clicks Add VMS in the Workload Planning: Traditional pane.
    The Workload Planning: Traditional screen appears.
  3. Enters Workload Tax 2018 in the SCENARIO NAME field, then selects DC-Chicago-16 (vc_10.27.83.19) from the list under LOCATION - WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD YOUR WORKLOAD?
    The field to the right populates with the words, Any cluster. The administrator selects Cluster - Mich2long from the list.
  4. The administrator clicks the Configure radio button.
  5. For the CPU row, the administrator increments the count to 4. For the Memory row, enters 18. For the Disk Space row, enters 65. Enters 45% in the Expected Utilization column. For number of VMs, enters 20.
    The configuration is nearly complete.
  6. The administrator clicks SAVE
    The What-If Analysis screen appears. The data entered on the previous screen appears under in the list.
  7. The administrator researches the time period for which the workload is needed online.
    The administrator identifies the start and end dates.
  8. Back at the What-If Analysis screen, the administrator selects Workload Tax 2018 in the list and clicks EDIT in the command bar.
    The Workload Planning screen appears with the data filled in for the requested scenario.
  9. In the DATE area, the administrator selects 3/25/18 and 5/30/18 as the start and end dates, respectively, then clicks RUN SCENARIO.
    The scenario runs and the results appear. To the administrator's surprise, the workload does not fit.
  10. At the top right of the screen, the administrator selects a different cluster: Cluster - Mich3long. Then clicks the RUN SCENARIO button to the right of the list.
    The scenario runs and the results appear. This time the workload fits. It is projected to cost $84/month to run in the VMware hybrid cloud.

Results

The administrator identifies a location in the virtual infrastructure where the required workload can reside and support the coming increase in production requirements.

What to do next

Assuming this plan is the best of the scenarios the administrator has run, it can be implemented in time to support the added workload. The administrator can monitor the workload performance using the Workload Optimization and Capacity Optimization features.