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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?

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So, I spent most of my day today preparing for a VMware Capacity Planner Virtualization Assessment that I will be starting next week. In typical fashion, the client had many questions and concerns about preparing for the installation of the data collector in their environment. To answer those questions I assembled a very informative and lengthy list of common questions and answers from the official VMware FAQs and I am posting the results of that effort here at VM /ETC.

The FAQs I used to create this post seem to be only available to VAC partners who’s accredited VCPs have completed the necessary Capacity Planner services training. Upon completing the training a VCP is assigned a log in to the VMware Data Warehouse Portal where Capacity Planner data collector’s uploads are processed into consolidation scenarios. Here, from this portal, is where these FAQ documents can be downloaded. I happen to be an accredited VCP, so I have access to the FAQs. All of the FAQs clearly state they are customer documents so I am now providing this information here. I’m not sure why these documents aren’t publicly available because I am sure they would help generate more interest in Virtualization Assessment service projects.

The remainder of this post combines VMware’s information from 3 different documents - the Capacity Planner Technical, Security, and Sales FAQs. The individual documents are provided on the VM /ETC Files page and are linked at the bottom of this post. I have trimmed down or omitted most of the FAQs in this post (and it’s still a lot of info to read), but check out the full .pdfs for more details and other FAQs I left out.

I recommend you at least skim through some of these very popular Q & A’s:

• How is Capacity Planner sold?
• Why should we add Capacity Planner when we already have so many other tools installed?
• What ports need to be open?
• What operating systems does it discover?
• What impact does collection have on my network?
• What impact does collection have on my servers?
• How are the utilization figures determined?
• What are the security features within the software?

Go get a fresh cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and then enjoy!

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I am headed to San Diego today for VMware Partner Exchange 2008. It should be another great week of learning and networking. I am looking forward most to the hands on labs for Site Recovery Manager, ESXi, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and Lab Manager. There is also separate technical solution tracks for beginner, intermediate, and advanced breakout sessions. The exhibit pavillion, called the VMware Experience, sounds interesting too. Quoting the event website:

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Over the past several weeks I have attended VMware’s latest VMLive web seminar about VDI as well as a local partner training session. Both the web seminar and the training session provided some great information about the new Virtual Desktop Manager product or VDM 2. The following post is a summary of my notes and some of the slides from the web session. Click on the slides to view a larger version.

VDI & VDM Architecture

With VDM 2 the VDI architecture is scalable and flexible. Multiple installations of VDM allow for larger numbers of users and desktops. Securing virtual desktop access from the Internet is also possible.

When you install VDM 2 you have three choices for the Desktop Manager installation type:

• Standard (first Connecton Server),
• Replica (copies of first server) servers
• Security Server - ssl tunneling, 2 factor authentication - can be installed in DMZ

VDM installs

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Australian VAC Partner Oriel has created a clever Virtualization Calculator that illustrates how virtualization is good for the planet. Based on the statistic that the average 2 cpu server produces 12.5 tons of CO2 per year, the calculator not only tells you how much money you can save in hardware and power but it also provides comparable environmental benefit examples such as planting trees, reduced car emmissions, and reduced cow emissions.

I entered 200 servers in the calculator and received the following results (click on the screen shot to see a larger image):

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What is VMware’s Capacity Planner tool and how do you get a copy? It’s a common question. Bottom line is that Capacity Planner is not a tool that can be downloaded by a Systems Administrator, but it is a tool that VMware partners use to perform a Capacity Analysis for Virtualization services project.

To understand the Capacity Planner tool let’s first back up and understand the Capacity Analysis services project. When you start to consider how to migrate your data center to VI:

• You need to size server hardware which will become ESX hosts, and you need to know how many ESX hosts you’ll deploy.
• You’d like to explore different vendor hardware platform scenarios for your ESX hosts.
• You need to understand which of your physical servers will consolidate well and which ones are not good virtualization canidates.
• You’d like to figure out a good VM to Host consolidation ratio.
• You need to estimate your total disk storage for the VI solution.

Capacity Planner helps you

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Shortly after Oracle announced their new free Xen-based virtualization product VMware sent an email to all it’s partners addressing the confusion caused by Oracle’s claims. The following is a cut and paste from the email I received:

What Was Announced?

Oracle announced Oracle VM at their Oracle OpenWorld user conference. Oracle VM is a Xen hypervisor based on Oracle Enterprise Linux. Oracle also announced that the Oracle Database, Oracle Application Server middleware and selected applications would be certified when run in Oracle Enterprise Linux virtual machines on Oracle VM. Oracle claimed that Oracle VM is more efficient than other virtualization products. Oracle VM is free, but annual support costs are $499 for two-socket systems and $999 for unlimited sockets.

Oracle Press Release:

• “Oracle Unveils Oracle VM”

Press/Blog Coverage:

• “ Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization” - Information Week
• “Analysts call Oracle’s virtualization bluff” - ZDnet

VMware Summary Response:

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If you are getting an error trying to remotely connect to an ESX host via ssh it is because root ssh access is disabled by default. Therefore winscp, putty, or any other remote console tool will fail.

These steps are taken from the VMware Partner Plan and Design toolkit document tilted “VI Assembly and Configuration Guide” written by Pang Chen. Here are the steps necessary to enable root to have ssh remote access.