Recon

This is a workload profiling, analysis and planning solution that provides new levels of intelligence, visual analysis and forecasting for optimizing the data center. Platespin Recon collects inventory and workload utilization statistics for a clear and concise picture of the application services running in the data center and how their resources are being used. With broad multiplatform support, Platespin Recon takes the guesswork out of complex server consolidation, disaster recovery, capacity planning and green data center initiatives.

Rapidly collect inventory and utilization data across thousands of servers.

Save time and effort by automating the collection of server inventory, workload and resource utilization data.

• With PlateSpin Recon, you can remotely discover server hardware and software assets across your entire data center—regardless of the various virtual machines, operating systems and hardware platforms you have. PlateSpin Recon:
• Supports Windows, UNIX and Linux platforms.
• Collects detailed information about each server in the network, including the operating system, installed and running applications or services, patch levels, CPU, memory, network and disk resources (both local and SAN).
• Identifies workloads and monitors utilization data over days, weeks or months to determine utilization trends.
• Helps you make sure your data center is always optimized. It collects the key data points you need to assess and match workload sizes and resources.
• Lets you import system performance data from HP Operations Center and Microsoft Operation Manager (MOM). In addition, PlateSpin Recon provides integration with VMware VirtualCenter to provide greater visibility into virtual data center environments.

Plan data center initiatives based on concrete data, analysis, trending and forecasting.

Take the guesswork out of data center initiatives and achieve optimal results based on detailed analysis.

PlateSpin Recon offers the most advanced scenario modeling, forecasting and planning capabilities available for data center initiatives. With PlateSpin Recon, you can:

• Create scenarios for distributing workloads across virtual hosts to maximize utilization and minimize resource contention.
• Use powerful “what-if” modeling to determine different combinations of hardware and virtual hosts. This feature makes it possible to proactively account for future growth by using forecast workload and utilization values.
• Enter your own experimental hardware builds to compare and cost-justify different scenarios based on power and cooling, total cost of ownership, consolidation ratio and rack space needs.
• Properly group and size workloads according to their resource requirements to generate a successful consolidation or recovery plan.

Speed up data center initiatives by automatically generating executable plans.

Ensure a rapid return on investment from data center initiatives with automated planning and execution.

Together, PlateSpin Recon and PlateSpin Migrate provide the only solution that automates project assessment, planning and execution from start to finish. That means you can accelerate data center initiatives by using PlateSpin Migrate to execute PlateSpin Recon plans and stream physical servers into virtual environments. By combining PlateSpin Recon and PlateSpin Migrate, you can:

• Consolidate and protect your servers using virtual and blade infrastructures.
• Use the most effective way to consolidate your workload on the resources you have.
• Reduce conflicts between resources.
• Lower your overhead for ongoing migration. PlateSpin Recon helps you balance workloads across target servers.

PlateSpin Recon Features

Remote Data Collection

PlateSpin Recon remotely collects inventory and performance data with no need to physically touch data center servers. PlateSpin Recon's run-once inventory collector gathers comprehensive server inventory data. Performance data is collected regularly via standard OS instrumentation capabilities. You can also import utilization data directly from your existing monitoring tools.

Enterprise-level Scalability

Robust data collection, analysis and planning for all servers in the network puts PlateSpin Recon in a class all its own for large-scale data center consolidation projects. You can aggregate data from geographically-dispersed PlateSpin Recon data collectors for centralized data warehousing, analysis and planning. This also accommodates larger implementations.

Workload Analysis

The PlateSpin Recon Capacity Planning Module automatically analyzes the five critical dimensions of workload—CPU, disk, memory, network and time—across thousands of servers simultaneously. This gives you consolidation plans that maximize utilization while minimizing resource contention.

Planning

Automatically generate server consolidation plans based on detailed workload analysis to ensure the optimal fit between server workloads and virtual resources. Stagger multiple workloads evenly across virtual hosts and account for hourly peaks and valleys inherent in server utilization trends. The ability to use forecasted data ensures that plans are built to accommodate future growth.

Scenario Comparisons

Create multiple custom scenarios with user-defined target server specifications, including server templates or existing virtual machine servers, to create an optimal consolidation plan.

Rich Data Modeling

Make better consolidation choices based on sophisticated analysis of resources, workloads and utilization trends. Tight integration with VMware vCenter (formerly VirtualCenter) provides greater visibility into your virtual infrastructure, improving data center management and operations.

Workload and Utilization Forecasting

Predict future workloads and resource utilization based on historical trends to better plan for server consolidation and infrastructure growth. This lets you be more proactive in your systems management. Forecasting data on CPU, disk, memory and usage trends is presented in easy-to-read charts, reports and plans.

Power and Cooling Analysis

Compare and contrast potential power and cooling cost savings and ROI derived from different consolidation scenarios. Custom fields allow power and cooling requirements for major hardware platforms to be inputted and maintained in a central database. This lets you analyze and cost-justify green computing initiatives.