© 2013 ibm corporation ibm smartcloud monitoring capacity planner powervm placement – topology...

© 2013 IBM Corporation

IBM SmartCloud Monitoring Capacity Planner

PowerVM Placement – TOPOLOGY VIEW

Girish B Chandrasekhar


As a end user of the Capacity Planner I wanted to see some good graphical user interface which help me visualize my environment and

analyze the LPARS of placement… Sure, we are trying to improve Capacity Planner user interface. For

the power placement we have introduced ‘TOPOLOGY VIEW’

which provide the better GUI experience

‘Topology view’ for power placement, sounds interesting…. Can you tell me more about the

same….

When Capacity Planner does the LPARS placement, it suggests

optimized way to place the LPARS based on their utilization and system capacity. How does it sounds to you if we show your current environment details, Capacity planner suggested environment and LPAR movement

details in one place… don’t you want some thing like that?


Hmmm…. It all sounds interesting.. But I don’t believe it unless I see it

myself…Let me explain more about the

‘Topology view’ we have introduced for Power Placement.

Let us say, using the Capacity Planner you run the placement

algorithm and it does the suggestion of LPAR sizing and optimized

placement

Ok… now how does ‘topology view’ visually represents optimized

environment suggestion?

‘Topology View’ shows your Physical Server, with in which you see two groupings.

‘CURRENT Topology’ and ‘SUGGESTED Topology’. Current topology will have all the

LPAR details of your current environment. As you will guess ‘SUGGESTED topology’ shows

all the LPARs Capacity planner suggested after optimization and applying the rules.. I

hope you know that you have apply your own rules during optimization.. Take a look at

Topology view for placement..


I see lot of boxes… Can you explain more what do they

represent? If my environment has hundreds of LPARS will Topology view handle it? How can I see all

those LPARS.. Wouldn’t they become very small to see what they

are

Let me explain more about what you are calling ‘boxes’.. Each box

represents a LPAR. Topology view has zoom in and zoom out facility… so if you have hundreds of LPARS you can still see all of them and you

can further zoom in to view more closely

Hmmm… what are those big grey boxes.. What are those yellow,

green and red boxes?

Let me explain to you what each colored ‘boxes’ represents.. I will also

show by zooming in further


Physical server

EXISTING Topology Group

SUGGESTED Topology Group

HMC managing Physical Sever

LPARS Group

VIOS GroupUser Define CPU

Pool Group

Default CPU Pool Group

Dedicated CPU Group

NOT PLACED LPAR Group


AIX LPARFictitious AIX

LPAR

Discovered LINUX LPAR

Zoom In Zoom Out Fit to windowYour position in the Topology view when Zoomed in

Discovered AIX LPAR

To search item


Ah ha… so now I am seeing some usefulness of Topology view.. So Grey boxes represents Physical

Servers and with in which Existing/Suggested Topology. With

in which it furthers groups as LPARS and VIOS. With in each

LPARS group, its further groups as Dedicated, Default Pool and User

Defined pool LPARS.

You are right! Doesn’t it grouping helps you visualize your

environment better?

I assume you represent Existing LPAR with yellow background and

Suggested LPAR with green background

Right!! Did you also observe if during the analysis, if

some LPARS are not able to be placed, especially

when colocation/anti colocation rules are applied, those not placed LPARS are grouped separately on top

near HMC. They are represented with red

background

So Fictitious LPARS are represented with ‘?’ mark to differentiate

That is correct. User creates the Fictitious LPAR to do ‘WHAT-IF’ analysis and its represented with ‘?’ mark.

LPARS without ‘?’ are discovered one which are loaded via ‘load configuration’.


Now I can see Physical servers and LPARS. Is there a way I can see

details about them?

Yes. Just double click on the item whose details you want to see Or you can also right-click and select ‘properties’ menu. It will show you properties dialog

So if I double click on Physical Server, it will show the details of the physical server and if I do the same on LPARs it shows the details of the

LPAR

Correct!!.. For physical server it shows model

details, activated cores, memory available etc. For

LPARS it shows Entitlement, Memory

assigned, OS details etc. For LPARS it also shows

the utilization details

If you just the bring mouse over each of the node, it shows ‘mini’ details….

Physical Server Properties LPAR Properties

SUGGESTED Topology Group Properties

Model Details

LPAR Details

Utilization Details

Summary of the group


‘Mouse over’ will show the details about the item

I see lot of colored arrows in each LPAR. Do they represent some

thing?

Oh yes.. Each colored arrow has specific meaning. Just by

looking at it you can visualize what happed to LPAR during the

placement

At the bottom of the view you see list of arrow which

represents the ‘status’ of the LPAR. Black background for Discovered LPAR and grey

background for Fictitious LPAR

Discovered FictitiousNo LPARS

Blue Arrow – LPAR PLACED on same Server

Green Arrow – LPAR PLACED on different Server

red Arrow – LPAR NOT PLACED

yellow Arrow – VIOS created during placement

NO LPARs on CURRENT Topology –

New server with No LPARs

NO LPARs on SUGGESTED

Topology – Server ready for

‘RETIREMENT’

current suggested


Current Fictitious LPAR moved to different Server

Current Discovered LPAR NOT PLACED

Suggested Discovered LPAR moved in from

same Server

Suggested Discovered LPAR moved in from

different Server

Current Discovered LPAR moved to same

Server (not moved LPAR)

Current Discovered LPAR moved to

different Server (moved LPAR)


Is there a search facility? If I have too many LPAR and I want to look for specific LPAR, is it possible?

I understand your concern. If there are hundreds of LPAR

how to locate a specific LPAR. You can achieve it by using the

search facility

You can click on ‘Search’ button on top, that will open search

dialog. You can search based on the Physical server name or

LPAR name

If I want to see only LPARS that are moved to different server.. Is it

possible

Yes. That is also possible to selecting the status icon at the

bottom

Start typing the item you want to search, filtering of data happens

Centers the selected item in the topology view

Highlights the selected item in the view by blurring rest of the

items

Clears the search and highlights all the items back to original

position

HA2 item selected is highlighted.Click Search->’Clear Search’ to

clear the search

Click on ‘Current Discovered’ icon. All the ‘Current Discovered’

nodes get highlighted

You can also select multiple icon. Its highlights all of the

selected ones. You can also see the Filtered item count

If I have so many LPARs and many physical servers. If during the

placement if the LPAR is moved to different server is there a way I can see which server it went to? Or if

there is a LPAR in Suggested topology can I see from which server that LPAR came from

Yes… you can do that also!! All you have to do is right click on

the node. You will see the context menu. Select which ever

you want.

Shows a arrow to the VIOS which this LPAR uses for I/O

hides arrow to the VIOS which this LPAR uses for I/O if already shown

Shows a arrow to the LPAR from/to which this LPAR moved to/ came from

hides arrow to the LPAR from/to which this LPAR moved to/ came from if already displayed


Dotted arrow showing from which server to

which server the LPAR is moved during the

placement

Solid arrow showing which VIOS the current

LPAR uses for I/O


I feel these LPAR movement representation help me analyze the placement suggested by Capacity

planner… I feel this is very powerful capability

You can also see all the movement once. Also note that you have save the topology as image or you can printout the

same.

DO ‘YOU’ ALSO FEEL TOPOLOGY VIEW REPRESENTATION ENHANCE THE USER VISUALIZATION EXPERIENCE FOR PLACEMENT?

PLEASE DO LET US KNOW………

© 2013 ibm corporation ibm smartcloud monitoring capacity planner powervm placement – topology...

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