Performance and capacity management

We have seen that there are two sets of metrics. Before we go into the metrics, we need to cover one more thing so that we are clear about the scope of our discussion.

The word "management" in SDDC covers the entire spectrum of activity required to keep the SDDC running well. In some situations, we need to use a narrower word, such as monitoring, planning, or troubleshooting.

Since the book focuses on performance and capacity, let's distinguish the areas within them:

• Performance management has two sub-activities:
  • Monitoring
  • Troubleshooting
• Capacity management has two sub-activities:
  • Planning
  • Monitoring

Performance

In a virtual environment, performance monitoring and performance troubleshooting are relatively more distinct from each other than they are in a traditional physical environment. As resources are shared, performance management becomes more important in order to reduce the need to troubleshoot often. Here is a breakdown of the differences between performance monitoring and performance troubleshooting.

The preceding differences directly impact how we use the vRealize Operations dashboards. From experience, performance troubleshooting requires on-demand dashboards in addition to the dashboards used for performance monitoring. Depending on the symptoms, we would either clone existing dashboards or create a brand new one. The dashboard may require new super metrics, groups, views, or tags. Depending on the complexity of the problem, we may need to create multiple widgets or dashboards. This is why this book devotes almost 100 pages to covering all the counters, as you need to know exactly what they mean. Even if you choose the right counters, the wrong interpretation will still lead to the wrong conclusion.

Because of this wide variation, this chapter only focuses on monitoring. Creating troubleshooting dashboards on the fly is a skill best picked up with experience.

Capacity

We saw that there are two aspects of capacity: planning and monitoring. Let's compare them in more detail now:

This book will focus on capacity monitoring; it will touch on capacity planning only briefly.

As a summary, the book will cover performance monitoring and capacity monitoring. Performance troubleshooting and capacity planning will not be covered.

With the preceding concept in mind, we are ready to choose the correct counters for monitoring.