Offline VMware Capacity Planner:
I have mostly done online VMware Capacity Planner as most customers usually don’t mind it, though when I started offering VMware Capacity Planner for Banks & Ministries that’s when Offline VMware Capacity Planner came handy. Many of the companies & ministries mind you sending data online directly, where they are OK with you sending it after they inspect it. As VMware Capacity Planner allow you to queue all your inventory data & performance data on the Capacity Planner system and upload it from another system or at another time that problem can be over come by what I like to call Offline VMware Capacity Planner. Although you will need to use the same methodology if the system running the capacity planner does not have an internet & you want to upload the data at a later time using another machine with internet access. The procedure of Offline VMware Capactiy Planner is below as documented by VMware KB#1896:
Follow these steps:
- Register the Database ID from the primary (originating) collector. The secondary (sending) collector does not need to be registered to the Company ID. For more information see: Viewing and Adding Collector Database IDs to a Client Registration (1891) .
- On the originating Collector computer export the inventory data into a .CSV file. First setup the task to export only and process any Linux inventory data. Click Admin > Options > Modules > Data Synchronize. Delselect all items except Export collection data for systems, and Import Collection Data for Systems.
- Click Tasks > Run Manual Tasks > Run Data Synchronization Task. Wait for the process to finish.
- Using Windows Explorer open the Capacity Planner base directory, typically %ProgramFiles%\VMware\VMware Capacity Planner. Open the outbox folder.
- Copy the files from outbox folder on the originating Collector to the outbox folder on the sending Collector. For each file copied, verify that the copy is intact before you delete that file from the source computer.
- From the sending Collector upload the files copied into its outbox folder. Click Tasks > Run Scheduled Jobs > Run Scheduled – Data Synchronize. The data is now be securely uploaded from the sending Collector to the IW.
Important: As of the current release (version 2.6.0), the Support Dashboard does not display the files from the originating Collector that are sent from the sending Collector. While files do not appear in the listing, the dashboard does process the data. You notice that on the Server Stats tab, the Performance Data Collector Success Rate by Week graph gradually increases for the current week as more data is received. You might have to observe this progress over several days to verify data is being received and processed.
I hope that help some one find the instruction faster, as it took me some time to find them out few months back. Enjoy the tip & please leave me a comment if that help some one.
12 responses to “VMware Capacity Planner on System without internet”
You may want to give Lanamark Suite a try – it’s a great alternative to VMware Capacity Planner that supports multiple virtualization platforms and provides you with the option not to upload customer data.
You can learn more here:
http://www.lanamark.com/product/solution-providers/overview
I sure will do that. I hope some readers will leave feedbacks about this.
Thanks for this info. Just one question. Do i have to manually upload daily (if there is no internet connection for the data collection server) or can i just leave it running for week and then upload it as a single file? Pardon me if this question sounds stupid as i am doing this for the first time.
Hi Ben,
I don’t think the question you asked sound stupid at all, actually the only stupid question I was able to find is the question that has never been asked :).
Ok, the answer of your question is yes. You can actually leave it running for a week or a month at the customer side then upload all the files at once. Actually this is the way it meant to be done.
Though ensure you have a sufficient space to collect the log files for the period you are planning to run the capacity planner for. In addition, make sure you follow the steps mentioned without skipping any one of them specially running the data synchronization.
I hope that help, and keep coming back.
>>> “You can actually leave it running for a week or a month at the customer side then upload all the files at once. Actually this is the way it meant to be done”
No, it’s not really “the way it is meant to be done” – uploading it daily allows you to remotely check the data, that all the servers are being polled, and that the data is good.
That said, if the internet link goes down for a day or two, the data will still be collected & stored at the collector PC, and will be uploaded when the internet link is restored. You can use Notifications and Subscriptions within the tool to inform you of such events.
Hi Hodders,
I respect your answer & totally agree with you in case if you are doing an online Capacity planner & have internet access on the machine you are running capacity Planner from, but I believe you had missed the topic in here.
In this post as well Ben question, was involving the offline method of capacity planner, which you might have to do for sensitive customers like banks and ministries or where the customer does not provide you with internet access on the machine you will run capacity planner on. In this case, it will be a really tough task to go and get the data and upload it daily, speciallay if the customer location is not next door. I hope this clear the confusion.
Thanks for you help. I recently visited Bank and send files automatic is not allowed for me.
You may want to give up.time 5.0 a try, it gives detailed VMware and physical hardware capacity information. It can run locally for as long as you need and then reports can either be run their or the data can be migrated to a different host for analysis.
If you want to see the tool first hand, uptime software will be at VMworld 2009 in San Fran this year. We have a very cool VMworld promo, as we are giving away more than $80k of up.time 5 IT Systems Management software at the booth. http://www.uptimesoftware.com/VMworld-2009.php
can we upload this data if we register the destination collector only, because the orginal DB ID registered by another company and the customer need more than two company to do the same assessment
I try to change the DB ID within access DB but on dashboard still message appear not enough data collection.
thanks in adv
Hi vmode,
I am sorry if this is too late, but I have been fully booked lately with many larger projects that kept me of my blog for some time. Though if you still curious about that answer:
Usually it takes uninstall of the data collector & delete its folder to change the collector ID. The other method to change the collector ID that I have used earlier, but not sure if it still work with the most recent collector would be:
To stop the service.
Delete the MDBs files
Restart the Service
Enjoy,
Eiad
Hello,
Thank you for posting this. Do you know how to run capacity planner collection scripts manually on Windows machines?
Thanks a lot
Hi Cfgmgr,
I am not sure what you exactly mean by running the capacity planner collection scripts manually on Windows machines, as the capacity planner does not run any script on windows machines. It just use the windows built in performance reporting tools like perfmon and WMI to collect the performance data. Further, just doing the collection manually once will not get you much of data, as you will need to get multiple samples at different time and for a minimum of a week.
From your e-mail, I can tell that you have access to IBM tools. If you want to do a manual capacity planning for one system without sending data at all to the internet you might want to ask access to CDAT from IBM. I used it before when I was a part of GBM & that can do a single scan to a single system and report results immediately if all you need to do is a single system, manually, and without internet accessing. Though something to remember, you need to really capture the system for a while depending on its business cycle to make sense of any capacity planning tools no matter what tool u end up using.
I hope this help,
Eiad