23 Using Consolidation Planner

Key Concepts

The following concepts are central to using Consolidation Planner.

Source Server

An existing server that will be considered for consolidation.

Destination Server

An existing or yet-to-be-purchased server that a source server will be consolidated to. Can also be thought of as the consolidation target. These may be individual machines, virtual server pools, or an engineered system such as the Oracle Exadata Database Machine or an Exalogic Elastic Cloud system.

Consolidation Project

Defines the scope of a potential consolidation effort, including:

• The type of consolidation. In the current release, two types of consolidation schemes are supported:

  • P2V: From physical source servers to Oracle Virtual Machine (VM) destination servers

  • P2P: From physical source servers to physical destination servers

• The preliminary set of candidate source servers to consider consolidating from

• The preliminary set of candidate destination servers to consider consolidating to

• The duration over which data used to generate consolidation scenarios will be collected for the source servers

• The benchmark used to measure CPU capacities when determining how many source servers can be consolidated to a destination server

Consolidation Scenario

Each consolidation project contains one or more consolidation scenarios that are generated based on the inputs provided. Inputs provided to a scenario include:

• The source server resource requirements that a destination server must meet, including one or more of the following: CPU, memory, disk I/O, network I/O, and disk storage

• Any business, compliance or technical constraints that must be considered

• The destination servers to consider in the scenario

A set of pre-configured consolidation scenarios are provided, representing conservative, aggressive, and medium consolidation schemes. Each scenario is generated based on inputs you provide. Alternatively, you can create your own custom scenarios that best suit your situation. Once created, you can compare the various scenarios to determine which consolidation strategy best meets your requirements.

Each scenario also includes initial mappings between each source server and the destination server it may be consolidated to. You can choose to create mappings manually, or allow Consolidation Planner to create them automatically. Once all inputs are specified, you can run the scenario and evaluate the results. Subsequently, you can rerun the scenario to re-evaluate the scenario based on the previously specified conditions with the latest available data. The results of the previous analysis will be over-written. You can also create a new scenario based on an existing scenario, where you tweak certain values to customize the new scenario.

Source Server Constraints

For source servers, you define constraints on the basis of compatibility or exclusivity.

Compatible Servers

Servers are considered compatible if they match on certain property and configuration values.

Properties include the following:

• Lifecycle Status

• Department

• Location

For example, there may be situations that mandate that specific servers remain within a specific location, such as data center location or geography.

Configuration items include the following:

• Network Domain

• System Vendor

• System Configuration

• CPU Vendor

• CPU Name

• Operating System

For example, there may be an accounting policy that the same system and CPU vendor be used.

You can choose to establish compatibility on none, some, or all of these target properties and configuration items.

Mutually Exclusive Servers

You can choose to exclude servers from consolidation scope because they violate certain Oracle best practices. Set either or both of the following conditions to exclude matching servers:

• Nodes of a RAC Database–do not consolidate nodes of the same RAC database to a single destination server

• Nodes of an Oracle Cluster–do not place nodes of an Oracle cluster in the same failure group

Destination Server Constraints

For destination servers, you can scope candidates to either new or existing candidates, but constraints are primarily expressed as a percentage of CPU and memory resource utilization; that is, how much of either resource type can maximally be used on a destination server.

Creating a Consolidation Project

You will create a consolidation project for each consolidation effort, then add individual consolidation scenarios within it. You can then compare consolidation scenarios to determine which consolidation strategy makes the most sense.

After the project is defined, a Cloud Control job is submitted to collect available data for the specified servers from the Management Repository. Once the job finishes, the project becomes an active project. As long as the project is in an active state, data collection will continue.

1. From the Enterprise menu, select Consolidation Planner.

2. Click the Create Project button.

3. Enter the consolidation project name.

4. Select the consolidation type. Two types of consolidation schemes are supported: From physical source servers to Oracle VM servers (P2V), and from physical source servers to physical servers (P2P).

5. Establish operating system filtering criteria as appropriate.

   Note that for either consolidation type, only source servers running on an operating system listed in the pull down menu can be consolidated.

6. Select an appropriate benchmark from the drop-down menu.

   • Specify SPECint®_base_rate2006 for database hosts, application hosts, or mixed-workload hosts

   • Specify SPECjbb®2005 for middleware platforms

   Note that Consolidation Planner makes appropriate advisories for each selection.

7. Select the source servers to be added.

   • Click Add Source Servers to see a list of managed servers that could potentially be consolidated. Select the servers you want to add, then click Select.

   • Optionally click Remove to remove a server from the list.

8. Optionally select one or more existing servers to consolidate the source servers to.

   • If you are consolidating from physical servers to Oracle Virtual Servers (P2V), click Add Existing Virtual Servers as Destinations to view a list of existing VM-based Exalogic Elastic Cloud systems and Oracle Virtual Machine destination servers to consolidate the source servers to. Use the target type filter to differentiate the two. Select the servers you want to add, then click Select.

   • If you are consolidating from physical servers to physical servers (P2P), click Add Existing Oracle Engineered System to search for the Exadata Database Machine servers or Exalogic Elastic Cloud servers to consolidate the source servers to. Select the servers you want to add, then click Select.

9. Optionally set server I/O capacities for disk I/O request and network I/O volume capacities. Click Specify Server I/O Capacity to estimate these I/O capacities for all source and destination servers involved in the consolidation project. Note that you can subsequently fine-tune these estimates by editing the values for each server in the table.

10. Specify the duration over which data used to generate consolidation scenarios will be collected for the source servers specified in the project in the Data Collection region. This data will be used to determine the resource requirements that a destination server must meet.

    • Specify the minimum number of days to collect data. The default minimum value is 21 days. To use existing historical data to run and view consolidation scenarios immediately, set the minimum number of days to 0.

    • Specify the maximum number of days to collect data. The default maximum value is 90 days.

    • Specify when to begin the data collection process. Note that you can elect to suspend and resume data collection at any time from the Actions menu.

    • Optionally select Continue Data Collection Over the Maximum Days to purge the oldest day's data when data for a new day is added.

11. Click Pre-configured Scenarios if you want to use one or more of the out-of-the-box consolidation scenarios.

    The pre-configured scenarios will be generated when the project is created using data collected for the source servers defined in the consolidation project.

    You can also opt to create your own custom scenario once the consolidation project has been completed.

12. Click Submit when finished.

    Once the project is created, it will show up in the Consolidation Planner console. Consolidation scenarios can then be defined for this project.

Using a Pre-configured Consolidation Scenario

When creating a consolidation project, you can optionally choose to generate up to three pre-configured consolidation scenarios to add to the project. These out-of-the-box scenarios represent conservative, aggressive, and medium consolidation schemes.

These scenarios are generated using data collected for the source servers defined in the consolidation project at the time the project is created. If no data is available when the project is created, the pre-configured scenarios will be automatically generated once the minimum amount of data has been collected.

1. During consolidation project creation, click Pre-configured Scenarios.

2. Select which scenarios you want to add to the project. Note that you can modify the name of each scenario.

   By default, the scenarios are designated by the method used to aggregate daily source server resource usage:

   • Aggressive: Aggregate data based on average daily usage per hour.

     This typically results in a high consolidation (source server:destination server) ratio, because more source servers will “fit” into each destination server. But because more source servers are involved, the odds that one or more will not meet the resource requirements are higher.

   • Conservative: Aggregate data based on maximum daily usage per hour.

     This typically results in a lower source server:destination server ratio, because fewer source servers will “fit” into each destination server.

   • Medium: Aggregate data based on the 80 percentile usage.

     This typically results in a source server:destination server ratio somewhere between Aggressive and Conservative aggregations.

   Usage statistics are calculated based on the following criteria:

   • Resource Requirements: The source server requirements, such as CPU, memory (GB) and disk capacity, that must be met by destination servers.

   • Applicable Dates: The days of the week on which resource usage metrics are collected. Typically you will specify the day of highest resource usage.

   • Target Server Utilization Limit: The maximum resource utilization (percentage) that can be used on destination servers.

3. Select destination candidates by choosing either of the following options:

   • Click Use New Servers if you plan to use destination servers that do not exist yet, but you expect to be provisioned or purchased (also known as phantom servers).

     Fill in the data for each server. Provide the estimated CPU capacity if available; otherwise, Consolidation Planner will determine requirements based on the CPU configurations provided earlier in the wizard.

     Consolidation Planner will determine how many destination servers are required as part of the consolidation scenario generation.

   • Click Use Existing Servers to use the destination candidates specified in the Consolidation Scope section of the consolidation project. For a P2P project, if you did not explicitly specify destination candidates, all source targets are potential destinations for consolidation.

     Note that you can edit the CPU capacity and disk I/O fields.

4. Click OK when finished.

Creating a Custom Consolidation Scenario

You can create custom consolidation scenarios instead of or in addition to using the pre-configured scenarios. Multiple scenarios can be created within a project, enabling you to compare different scenarios before deciding on a solution. New consolidation scenarios are created within an existing consolidation project.

A wizard guides you through the creation process.

Note that you can also opt to use the pre-defined consolidation scenarios provided.

1. From the Enterprise menu, select Consolidation Planner.

2. Click on the consolidation project you will create the scenario within.

3. Click the Create Scenario button.

4. Specify the scenario details, such as scenario name.

5. Specify the source server resources to consider. Consolidation Planner will aggregate the specified resources to determine the total requirements.

   • Resource Type: The server requirements, such as CPU and memory (GB), that must be considered.

   • Scale Factor: Provide room for growth on the destination target for each source server. The resource requirement estimate uses the scale factor to pad the estimate for consolidation. So, for example, if the estimated requirement for a given source, based on usage data, is 2 GB of memory, which equates to a scale factor of 1, and you specify a scale factor of 1.1, 2.2 GB will be required to consolidate that source.

   • Applicable Days: The days of the week on which resource usage metrics are collected.

   • Resource Allocation: The method used to aggregate daily source server resource usage. Values are:

     • Aggressive: Aggregate data based on average daily usage per hour.

       This typically results in a high consolidation (source server:destination server) ratio, because more source servers will “fit” into each destination server. But because more source servers are involved, the odds that one or more will not meet the resource requirements are higher.

     • Conservative: Aggregate data based on maximum daily usage per hour.

       This typically results in a lower source server:destination server ratio, because fewer source servers will “fit” into each destination server.

     • Medium: Aggregate data based on the 80 percentile usage. This typically results in a source server:destination server ratio somewhere between Aggressive and Conservative aggregations.

   • The date ranges should define a period of time that is typical of standard resource requirements.

6. Click Estimated Requirements to view the estimated total resource requirements.

   Resource requirements are shown based on the averaged hourly requirement. The displayed requirements reflect the scale factor (if any) specified for the resource. The 24-hour requirement pattern will be used as the minimum requirements that must be met by consolidation target(s).

7. Click Next to define consolidation constraints.

   Specify business, corporate or technical constraints that must be enforced. These constraints will be used to:

   • Guide the server allocation process during automatic source-to-destination server mapping; or

   • Calculate violations if manual mapping between source and destination servers is used

8. Specify compatible servers.

   Servers are considered compatible if they have the same specified target properties and configurations. If you are consolidating multiple source servers to a single target server, only compatible servers can be consolidated together on the same target server.

9. Specify mutually exclusive servers.

   Certain types of source servers are mutually exclusive and should not be consolidated together on the same destination server due to various reasons. For example, nodes of a RAC database should not be consolidated on the same destination server; nodes of an Oracle cluster should not be placed in the same failure group. Contractual obligations may also restrict certain applications from running on the same server.

10. Optionally click Preview Effect of Constraints to view a list of source servers that are not compatible based on the defined constraints.

11. Click Next to specify destination server candidates.

12. Choose destination server candidates using either of the following options:

    • Click Use New (Phantom) Servers if you plan to use target servers that have yet to be provisioned or purchased. The Targets Planning region shows the minimum required target servers based on the resource requirements of all servers in the scenario.

      • For a P2V project, select either of the following options:

        Use Oracle Engineered System and click the search icon to select an appropriate configuration type.

        Use Generic Servers and provide the estimated benchmark rate if available; otherwise, click the search icon next to the CPU capacity input field, then select a server configuration that most closely matches your needs.

        Accept or change the estimated resource requirements.

        In a virtual environment, you can also specify a quantity of the resource to be set aside (reserved) for use by supervisory software in the database machine. This quantity is subtracted from the total capacity of the destination before consolidating source servers into the remaining resource. For example, if your estimated memory requirement is 12 GB and you specify a reserve of 2 GB, only 10 GB is available for consolidation.

      • For a P2P project, select either of the following options:

        Use Oracle Engineered System and select either Exadata Database Machine or Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Click the search icon and select a configuration type appropriate to either choice.

        Use Generic Servers and provide the estimated benchmark rate if available; otherwise, click the search icon next to the CPU capacity input field, then select a server configuration that most closely matches your needs.

        Accept or change the estimated resource requirements.

      Consolidation Planner will determine how many target servers are required as part of the consolidation results.

    • Click Use Existing Servers to specify a set of existing managed servers to use as targets for both P2V and P2P projects.

      These are the servers you specified when defining the scope for the consolidation project. Consolidation Planner will determine the available hardware resources based on collected usage data. For a P2P project, if you did not explicitly specify destination candidates, all source targets are potential destinations for consolidation.

      By default, the consolidation process will try to use as few target servers as possible. If you prefer, choose to balance the source load across all destinations.

13. Enter percentages for Maximum Allowed Resource Utilization on Destination Servers. The defaults are 75 for CPU and 90 for memory, respectively. Contrast these allowances, which provide headroom on destination servers, with the scale factor, which provides headroom for individual source servers.

14. Click Next to map the source servers to the destination servers they will be consolidated to. The objective is to fit source server requirements with each destination server's available resources as tightly as possible.

    It is recommended that you allow Consolidation Planner to perform this mapping automatically. This will allow the tool to maximize resource utilization of destination servers based on server resource capabilities and the various consolidation constraints specified.

    If you prefer to map each source and destination server manually:

    1. Click a source server in the list.

    2. Click the flashlight icon to select the destination server to map to the source server. Note that you can map a single source server to a target server or multiple source servers to a target server, but there can be only one target server.

       The resulting consolidation report will show any resource and/or constraint violations due to such manual mapping.

15. Click Next to review the consolidation scenario. Use the Back button if you need to make changes; otherwise, proceed as follows:

    • Optionally, you can save the scenario as a template, which can then be shared with other users. If you want to do this, click Save Scenario as a Template. In the dialog that opens, browse to a location in the local file system and save the template as an XML file.

    • Click Submit. A message appears confirming that a job has been submitted for further analysis of the scenario. Results appear at the bottom of the Consolidation Planner page when done.

Other Scenario Creation Options

You can also create a consolidation scenario based on an existing scenario. Select an applicable scenario under a consolidation project and then select Create Like Scenario from the Actions menu. Modify the scenario as desired and save under a different name.

If you saved a scenario as a template, you can subsequently import the scenario into another environment.

1. On the Consolidation Planner home page, select Create Scenario from Template from the Actions menu.

2. Browse to a saved template XML file in the local file system. Click Open.

3. Indicate the extent to which you want replicate the saved template; that is, in terms of the resources, constraints, and targets planning represented by the template. Click Update if you make any changes.

4. Click OK to import the saved template.

   The imported scenario opens in the wizard where you can edit and save it in Consolidation Planner.

Evaluating Consolidation Scenarios

You can view details for your consolidation scenarios using the Consolidation Planner console. After evaluating the consolidation scenario results, you can define different plans as well as rerun existing scenarios to re-evaluate them based on the previously specified conditions with the latest available data. The results of the previous analysis will be over-written. You can also create a new scenario based on an existing scenario, where you tweak certain values to customize the new scenario. This iterative process helps you obtain the optimized consolidation scenario which is generated by compromising various factors and weighing different trade-offs.

Compare the consolidation scenarios you create to determine which consolidation strategy best meets your requirements.

Your objective is to:

• Match source server resource requirements with destination servers best able to meet those requirements.

• Fit source server requirements with each destination server's available resources as tightly as possible, so you can get maximum usage of destination server capacity.

• Provide room for growth on destination servers by allowing for headroom as a factor of resource requirements.

• Optionally balance the source server workload across all available destination servers.

Note that in the current release, consolidation scenarios can be created for planning purposes only. Consolidation scenarios cannot be executed using Consolidation Planner.

1. From the Enterprise menu, select Consolidation Planner.

2. First, examine the project containing the scenario you want to view.

   • The Status column indicates the status of data collection, based on the minimum and maximum collection days specified for the project.

   • Click the Source Servers tab to view CPU, memory and disk storage data and utilization rates collected for the source servers defined in the project.

   • Click the Source Workload tab to view a graph showing source server resource usage data collected. Data is shown for each 24 hour period.

   • Click the Report button above the table when the project is selected to view summarized information and more details.

3. Next, view the data for a specific scenario. For a completed analysis, click any metric in the row to view details. Clicking the Sources metric takes you to the General tab. Clicking the remaining metrics takes you to the respective tab, as follows:

   • Destinations: The list of destination servers to which the source servers will be consolidated. Resource configuration and calculated utilization are shown for each destination server.

   • Ratio: The ratio of source servers to destination servers. By default, Consolidation Planner will try to “fit” source servers into as few destination servers as possible.

   • Mapping: The destination servers to which specific source servers will be mapped. The analysis includes estimated CPU and memory requirements and utilization, enhanced by suggested CPU and memory allocation figures to consider. These suggestions represent a reasonable compromise between requirements and destination server capacity.

   • Confidence: The percentage of the data collected for source servers that meet the source server usage requirements defined in the scenario. This value is aggregated for all source servers defined with the project.

   • Violations: The number of violations of technical or business constraints defined in the scenario.

   • Exclusions: The number of source servers that do not have a qualified mapping to a destination server. These are source servers that exceed the capacity of available destination servers. This metric is applicable only if auto-mapping of source servers to destination servers is used.

A different set of constraints may result in a different optimal scenario. Modify the constraints to come up with different scenario results.

Share Reports with Others

Select a report in the table and click Publish Report to make report contents public. This action integrates with BI Publisher, where you can:

• Save reports in a variety of formats (Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, PDF)

• Distribute generated reports to e-mail lists (users who do not have access to Enterprise Manager, for example) on a defined schedule

Managing Data Collections

Manage data collections by viewing the status of your projects.

1. On the Consolidation Planner home page select View Data Collection from the Actions menu.

2. The view lists source targets within a project where you can perform the following tasks:

   • View the latest collection status by project.

   • Select a target to see its collection history and troubleshoot potential problems with the collection.

   • Click the link under Data Collection Jobs to go to the job activity page where you can view and administer the latest data collection job.

   • Update the latest SPECint rates by following the instructions to download a CSV file with the latest rates. After downloading the file, click Browse to locate the file in the local file system and click Load to update the rates in Consolidation Planner.