Capacity Planner - reports don't work in 2.8.0

After the recent upgrade of Capacity Planner to version 2.8.0 a number of minor changes have been introduced some of which has been mentioned in a previous post. But there is one change in particular which has been giving me grey hair.

The problem was the Reports link did not work: The first project I created, after the upgrade, was done in the regular fashion using the wizard, choosing CA or CE etc. After this I registered the Collector database ID and started uploading data. Data was sent fine. But it did not show up in the Dashboard even after a week of waiting. In the projects overview it stated for the project that there was 'not enough data' and the collector success rate was at 0%. Clicking on the project gave the following info: 'Cannot display dashboard: no statistics data has been collected'.

But there are two tabs on the Dashboard front page of which the default is Projects and the other one is Companies. My data was showing under the Companies tab, not under Projects, as I had not created a separate project for this customer/company.

And here's the part that was driving me nuts. Even though I could see the data, I could not run the reports. When I tried clicking the reports link nothing happened - there was no drop down box and mouse-over on the link showed 'javascript:void(0)'. This is quite a big deal as I'm usually using the Assessment reports as the final product of the Capacity Planner for the customer.

The trick to fix it was to create a new project and attach it to the existing customer (this can be done during the wizard - after the customer has been created). And then, also as part of the wizard, you can choose the relevant servers to be included in that particular project (I chose all). And then you have to wait a one or two days for the data warehouse to process the changes (yes it can take a couple of days...). After this, the Reports -> Optimization Reports link will be available again.

Capacity Planner - uploading to Dashboard without internet access

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been setting up a Capacity Planner at a customer site (not full time, though). There have been the usual complications of not receiving user accounts with the proper access rights but also this time there was trouble uploading data from the Collector to the Dashboard. The customer uses a proxy server and even though we had specified as a requirement that TCP port 80 and 443 outbound should be opened, they weren't. I could register the collector but no files were transferred to the Dashboard and files stayed in the 'outbox'. After a while they found another proxy that could be used, and right away after reconfiguring the proxy from within the collector, I could see files started transferring (It's quite nice to see when the tool actually works as expected - because it doesn't always in my opinion...)

So I was looking around for another way to upload the files and it turns out, that this can be done fairly easily. The process is fairly straight forward. On the primary collector you generate the files to be uploaded but then you leave them in the outbox. Then you copy the files from the outbox and put them in the outbox of another collector that works and has proper internet access. This secondary collector does not need to registered to the specific project or customer as the files have already been tagged with an ID and the Dashboard will know where to put the files. I followed this KB article to move files to another collector.

Another learning point was that if you're unsure that your files are actually uploaded all the way to the Dashboard and you want have a backup, then enable the 'archiving' function on the collector. That way you will keep all info and will be able to re-upload at a later stage. See this KB article for reference. Make sure to have enough disk space available. After one week of collecting data without sending any to the Dashboard for 150 servers - the log files amounted to about 1 GB of data (for a full CA analysis).

And bonus info: After the update to 2.8.0, they have change Dashboard somewhat. Now, data can end up both under a given 'project', which is the default view when you login, or it can end up under the 'customer' tab (there are two different tabs in your customer overview). This, to me, was quite confusing as I was expecting to see data arriving under the 'projects' tab which was reporting 'no data collected' for the customer even though I had been uploading data for almost one week.

Capacity Planner 2.8.0 released

A new version of VMware Capacity Planner v2.8.0 build 46460 has been released (only available to partners). The most notable new features are support for desktop assesments and that multiple assesments can be grouped under one company. The collector interface is more or less unchanged.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like VMware is spending too many resources developing this tool.

More importantly, support for Windows 2008 server for the collector has been added (see installation guide page 8, requires login)

Below is the "what's new" part of the release notes:

WHAT'S NEW IN CAPACITY PLANNER 2.8

The following items are the main changes in this version.

· Desktop Assessments. In addition to CA and CE assessments, users can create Desktop Assessments. These assessments facilitate analyzing a Desktop environment for virtualization. To support Desktop assessments, additional objects are collected for analysis.

· Collector or Dashboard Inventory Additions. Information about Users, Login Profiles, Logon Sessions, User Groups and Networks is collected in addition to the existing objects in CP 2.7.x. The Dashboard provides different views that help users identify the Users, Locations, Networks and Desktops that are View Ready.

· Separate Projects and Companies. Instead of creating a separate company for each type of Assessment, users can create multiple CA, CE, or Desktop projects within the same company. They can use the same data collected within a company to perform different Assessments. The landing page is redesigned to show separate Projects and Companies tab.

· Hardware Profiles. Hardware Profiles allow tags to describe the Hardware. Hardware Profiles can represent different types of Hardware such as CPU, Chassis, Adaptor NIC etc. Users can create Hardware Profiles representing specific devices and have the option to mark them View Ready. This information is used in identifying whether Desktops having the corresponding hardware are View ready.

· Reporting Enhancement. Optimization reports have been modified to include View Readiness information for Users, Networks, Locations, and Desktops.

· Templates Update. Cluster and Shared Storage templates are added to specify Cluster and Shared Storage configuration. These templates can be included in Scenarios for placement of systems.

· Scenario Improvement. The scenario can now be marked for Desktops or Servers. Users have the Cross Boundaries option for Networks. The Scenarios can now build clusters considering shared storage.

Prerequisites - Capacity Planner analysis

Before starting a Capacity Planner excercise, there is a number of things that should be in place. The following is typically what I send to customers and ask them to have in place beforehand:

No.	Prerequisite	Status
1.	Account with administrative rights on all servers to be surveyed, so: A Windows account(s) that have administrative privileges on local servers.	Username: Password: Domain:
2.	1 x Windows 2k3 or 2k8 server that we can install the Capacity Planner application on: Windows 2003 SP2 standard with min. 1 GB mem, 1 cpu 5 GB free on D-drive. Can be virtual. Should be joined to the domain where we collect data. We should have RDP-access to this server. This server can be virtual. The server needs internet access as performance data will be uploaded to optimize.vmware.com on port 80 and 443 TCP outbound.	Servername: Specifications: Domain: RDP available: Internet access:
3.	Local windows firewall should be disabled on clients to be surveyed or the following ports must be opened in local firewalls, inbound: TCP/UDP Ports: 135-139 and 445 (They are used for communication between Capacity Planner Data collector and windows hosts).	Firewalls disabled: Or ports opened:
4.	WMI and Remote Registry services should be running on all servers to be surveyed (typically they are running by default)	WMI is running: Remote Registry is running:
5.	A list of servers to be surveyed	List in .csv or .xls:

It is recommended that performance data is collected for a period of minimum 30 days and no less than 14 days.