Free Capacity Planner Licenses for Partner Assessment Services Projects
July 16th, 2008 | 
Author: I posted a Capacity Planner FAQ document last week. The purpose of that post was to offer technical, sales, and security answers to commonly asked questions about the Capacity Planner product. I quickly received a comment asking “what about the free licenses?” I thought what a great topic for another Capacity Planner post, but it really wasn’t relevant to content about the tool itself. Following up on that thought, this post dives into the use of the product by an authorized VMware Partner to deliver either a pre sales estimate or a professional services project. At the end of this post is a high level description of a few common Capacity Planner services projects and the deliverables associated with each service.
First things first. Yes, now VMware is providing free licenses for Capacity Planner to qualified Partners. Virtualization.info reported this announcement back in June, and as Alessandro points out.
“Partners will not be required to buy any license anymore (even if they will still have to attend a classroom course that doesn’t come cheap). They will just have to login on the online portal, create a new profile and start monitoring the customer’s infrastructure. The data will stay online for six months and then will be archived.”
Depending on the relationship between VMware, the partner, and the customer, free licenses were not uncommon before either. Either way, I want to emphasize there is an initial investment by the Partner both financially and intellectually. To get the free licenses Partners must join the Partner program, certify VCPs, and attend the Capacity Planner classes and the Virtualization Assessment boot camp.
What does this mean to VMware’s customers new and old?
Well, it’s not too much different from before. You should still ask your favorite VMware Partner and Value Added Reseller (VAR) to explain how they can leverage Capacity Planner to help you assess hardware and software costs and plan for virtual capacity and performance. Thanks to VMware, now the Partner does not have to decide if they should absorb or pass on the licensing costs. All in all, this fact makes using the tool more desirable for everyone.
The rest of this post lists some common Capacity Planner service engagements for VMware customers to consider, and I will briefly explain the differences. VMware provides data sheets for some of these projects on their Services page, but Partners are free to either deliver the packaged offering developed by VMware or construct their own.
Special note to Sales Reps and VMware customers: When considering Capacity Planner projects, be sure to understand what level of assistance is needed. There is a difference between the deliverables of these offerings, and, yes, there is cost associated with the services of the more involved analysis. I feel the confusion about assessments stem in part from the fact that all of offerings use Capacity Planner. That is, the data collector is required to be installed and configured and the best practices and methodology for using the tool (previously covered in my FAQ post) is the same. It is the objectives of the different projects that vary considerably and thus require different levels of professional services. Complete capacity analysis tends to get lost in the licensing and hardware quote’s shadow. Unfortunately, this important function is too often viewed as either in the way of the sales process or unrealistically expected to take place as a pre sales validation. That may be a fact of business, but taking the time to complete some level of a virtual assessment will make the difference in smooth migration to VI, the performance of the VMs and the ESX hosts, and achieving and maintaining the expected capacity.
Consolidation Estimates (CE / BCE)
The pre sales CE, formerly known as the BCE, is a free offering to help determine the number of VMware licenses (VI3.5 or ESX) you will need and the server hardware to run it on . Basic consolidation scenarios are automatically calculated and are delivered to the customer in a generic presentation.
CE deliverables are usually
- A VMware software quote
- A server hardware quote
- A proposal for future VMware professional services
- A quick, high level Power Point presentation about the stats collected by
Capacity Planner.
Customer’s who are best candidates for the CE pre sales study already have VMware ESX experience and do not need planning, design, or implementation help, or they are customers in the budgeting phase who need numbers for planning. The key aspect of this project to understand is that there is not any architectural design or planning services delivered.
Capacity Analysis (CA) and / or Virtualization Assessment (VA)
It’s debatable whether to group these together or not, but both a CA or VA project are paid professional services projects. Where the CE is just an automated monitoring and analysis, these projects get more intimate with the customer’s data center. Therefore, the results are a detailed and tailored roadmap and design for virtual infrastructure. For example the VCP delivering this project interviews the client’s IT team for current issues and future expectations. Time is taken to understand all aspects of the virtual migration such as networking, storage, and services infrastructure (Active Directory). The strategy and methodology of a physical data center move is followed in that all aspects of the implementation are considered .
CA / VA deliverables are usually
- Corporate level report containing detailed stats and analysis gathered from Capacity Planner along with multiple proposed consolidation scenarios.
- Virtual Infrastructure Design Visio
- Recommended P2V candidates and ESX host assignments.
- Recommended SAN configurations and VMFS design.
- Recommended network configurations and subnet / VLAN design
- Recommended directory services design
- TCO and ROI calculations
- all of the CE deliverables
Target customers for these projects are brand new to virtualization and want help understanding how to plan for not only virtual infrastructure, but also how VI changes their entire data center.
Plan and Design
The Plan and Design project starts with the CA or VA project as it’s initial phase, but then takes moves into a test implementation and validation phase. A full assessment as described in the previous section is conducted with Capacity Planner. After presenting the results of the collected performance data and the associated VI design and migration roadmap, the VMware Partner then begins a prototype implementation with the customer. Using either the proposed new hardware or similar existing and available hardware, implementation of the design begins for a subset of the complete VI solution. This subset can be a “dress rehearsal” or put directly into production, but the purpose is to be an exercise to validate, document, and provide knowledge transfer to the customer so that they can complete the design on their own.
Plan and Design deliverables are usually:
- Capacity and Financial Analysis
-
- Includes TCO and ROI calculations
- Includes all the deliverables from the CE pre sales project
- Includes all the deliverables from the CA / VA project
- Detailed documentation including
-
- VI Architecture Design
- VI Assembly and Configuration Guide
- VI Standard Procedures
- VI Test Plan
- VI Roll out Plan
- Design enablement and knowledge transfer using
-
- Side by side implementation following VMware best practices
- Utilization of a prototype proof of concept infrastructure
Target customers for the Plan and Design project mirror the CA/VA project as well as include customer’s with specialized application needs in virtual environments. For example, large database or messaging applications, usage of unique hardware devices shared to VMs, or non traditional deployment scenarios are all good reasons to engage in a Plan and Design services project.
Whether you are already running virtual machines or just now ready to migrate to virtual infrastructure, a VMware Partner using Capacity Planner can help you tailor and optimize a virtual infrastructure specific to your needs. If you are interested in more details for any of the projects discussed in this post you can contact me and I’ll be glad to talk to you about our offerings at Optimus Solutions (Optimus Solutions is now a Softchoice company). 
Related Posts
Posted in VAC, capacity analysis, capacity planner, partner | 
Tags: bce, CA, capacityplanner, CE, esx, P2V, partner, SAN, VA, VAC, vmware
-
d
