Before you start the installation process for Guided Consolidation, you must first have an ESX Server up and running, vCenter installed, a datacenter created in vCenter, and the ESX Server added to vCenter. From there, you can start the Guided Consolidation installation process.
Guided Consolidation is typically installed on the vCenter server. The installation files are on the vCenter installation DVD. So, insert your vCenter install DVD and the autorun will bring up the install menu, as you see in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1
From here, the installation process is very straightforward. You'll have to enter the name and admin credentials for the vCenter server.
Once the server side is installed on the vCenter server, you need to checkout your vSphere Client plug-ins.
To do this, open your vSphere client and click on the
Plug-ins drop-down menu. In the new window that opens, look for the
Installed vs
Available Plug-ins. Ensure that the
vCenter Guided Consolidation plug-in is installed.
Go ahead and install the
vCenter Converter plug-in as well as we will assume that you will be converting physical machines to virtual machines.
Once installed, in the vSphere Client, click on the
Home menu then on the
Guided Consolidation application (or go up to
View, to
Solutions and Applications, and to
Guided Consolidation)
.
Figure 2
Before you start using it, you should go to the
Configuration tab. Check the
Health Status of Guided Consolidation to ensure that the Collector Service, Converter Service, and vCenter Server are all running.
Enter the
Default System Credentials and the
Active Domains. These will be used to find the physical servers (active domains) and login to the physical servers to collect hardware and performance stats. Here is what it looks like:
Figure 3
From here, go to the
Analysis tab and click
Start Analysis. You'll be asked what physical computers you want to add to the analysis. You can specify these by computer name, IP address range, using a text file, or by using all computers in the domain.
Here I am analyzing one server from my list of domain computers:
Figure 4
Immediately when you add a computer to be analyzed, GC will start collecting information. Be patient as the analysis will take some time (minimum, a few hours). To be honest, this analysis area of GC is the only negative I have seen. There is no log, in the GUI, where you can see the immediate status of what is happening with the analysis. I recommend that they add some kind of immediate feedback and real-time status.
Once some time has passed, your screen might look similar to this:
Figure 5
Here you can see that one server has been found and basic info about it has been discovered (the SHUTTLE server has 2x2.5Ghz CPU, 4096MB RAM, CPU usage is about 100Mhz on average, and RAM utilization is about 3081MB) but the analysis continues. Still, the "confidence" level is low simply because GC hasn't had much time analyzing this server (I just gave it about 8 hours).
The SUPERQUAD server, on the other hand, was unable to be analyzed because of "bad credentials or insufficient privileges". That means that, very likely, the username, password, or domains I entered were wrong for that server.
So what's the next step? To virtualize! (of course) If I click on the SHUTTLE server that has had some minimal level of analysis and click the
Plan Consolidation button, the Consolidation Wizard appears. It's from here that I can specify my destination (Figure 6).
Figure 6
The destination is the list of possible ESX Servers that I am considering moving this physical server to with virtualization.
Next, it tells me that this server, SHUTTLE, is an excellent candidate for virtualization and would work well on the servers at this destination. I know this because of the
destination rating that is shown (in Figure 7) with the "golden stars".
Figure 7
When I click
Next, I'm asked to confirm that I really want to start the P2V consolidation for this server, to this destination.
Figure 8
When I click
Finish a new task will be created to convert this physical server to a virtual server. Note that the P2V conversion won't always work perfectly but that is a topic for another article. Still, once the physical server is consolidated into your virtual infrastructure, the benefits will be worth it and I believe that you will be happy the results.