Sizing with Sizer (and without)

Sizing Nutanix successfully is driven purely from the data gathered from a customer and the SE’s understanding of the customer’s intended solution. The Nutanix Sizer tool provides an easy to follow wizard driven input method but sometimes quick number crunching while on-site can be useful.

Data gathering

Objective: promote the key areas where data extraction influences the design

Explore the customer’s environment with these sample questions

  • Data gathering
    • Application(s) hosted on the virtualised estate
    • Current hardware deployment(s)
    • Quantity of DCs
    • LAN / WAN (including bandwidth and latency)
    • Current hypervisor(s) and management tool(s)
    • vCPU / RAM / Disk
    • BCP and DR
      • Today
      • Aspiration
    • Backup
      • Rate of change (daily)
  • Tools
    • VMware environments can be scanned using a free tool called RVTools, this outputs all details of the VMs to a .CSV file which can be imported directly into Nutanix Sizer
    • Nutanix Collector, available in The Support Portal can review and export data to a .CSV file. Review the User Guide for the tool’s capabilities
    • Dell’s DPACK can scan and capture physical and virtual workloads over a period time providing utilisation metrics, better for environments where peak workload processing periods need to be taken into consideration

Nutanix Sizer walkthrough

Objective: demonstrate Nutanix Sizer

  • Create a first pass BoM for general server virtualisation and discuss these influential areas
    • HA (N+1, etc…)
    • vCPU : pHTcore ratio
    • RAM density choice
    • SSD balance
    • What % values do the CPU and RAM sit at? Remove a node from the quantity, what now? Anything over 80%?
  • Review the graphs and discuss the outputs and reports

Manual Sizing walkthrough

Objective: follow a manual sizing exercise to prepare an SE for on-the-fly whiteboard BoM creation

Run through a scenario using paper or a whiteboard

  • Show how a customer’s CPU, RAM and storage requirements can quickly steer the design in a first pass

Replaying back the solution to the customer

Objective: items that should ideally be presented back to the customer as part of the solution

  • SpecInt baseline of the existing customer kit versus the proposed solution
  • Document your assumptions and constraints