Capacity Advisor is a utility with which the user monitors and
evaluates system and workload utilization to help make the most of
the available systems. The systems under consideration can be a single
system or multiple systems that are connected in a cluster configuration
or to a network. A single system can include multicore or hyperthreaded processors.
Capacity Advisor helps the user evaluate the effect of varying
workloads and decide how to move workloads to improve utilization.
The quantitative results from Capacity Advisor can aid the planner
in estimating future system workloads and in planning for changes
to system configurations. With HP Integrity Essentials Capacity
Advisor, the user can perform the following tasks:
Collect utilization data on CPUs and memory
View historical utilization for customized workloads
View historical workload utilization and aggregate utilization across the partitioning continuum
(nPars, HP-UX vPars, HP-UX Virtual Machines)
Generate utilization reports
Plan workload or system changes and assess impact
on utilization
Assess utilization impact for proposed changes in
workload location or size
Evaluate trends for forecasting
Capacity Advisor can be used to
pose questions about changes in system configuration. Changes, such
as the following, can be tested:
Consolidating several systems into one system
Resizing a system for an upgrade
Resizing the demands on a system to reflect a forecast
Replacing older, small to mid-sized systems with virtual
machines
Capacity Advisor can use data collected over time to
show the results of these configuration changes in many ways. Graphical
views are available so you can see what the effects of the changes
are over time. Tables are available that give the percentage of time
and the degree to which the system is busy; this information is valuable
in comparing utilization and quality of service before and after a
change. Other tables show how many minutes per month the system is
unacceptably busy–a measure valuable for both quality of service
and for estimating TiCAP bills. Because Capacity Advisor works from
data traces collected over time, it is much more accurate than using
only peak data or average data in understanding your systems and the workloads they support.
The significant advantage in using Capacity Advisor, rather
than ad hoc processes or guesswork, is that it provides a quantitative
basis for examining the activity of current resources. Additionally,
it provides the capability to try out what-if scenarios for moving
workloads or other resources before implementing a move.
Capacity Advisor incorporates numerical values of several components
in its analysis and modeling, including:
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