Key Concepts in Capacity Analytics > VM Activity

VM Activity

To ensure optimal usage of the existing enterprise resources, you must be able to monitor the VMs that are idle or powered-off for a long time. SHO identifies the VMs that have been idle or powered-off based on threshold values that you can define. This enables you to identify and reduce the VM sprawl.

Idle VM Analysis

The concept of idle VMs is similar to that of oversized VMs. Idle VMs are those that have very low utilization for a prolonged period of time.

SHO identifies the VMs with an average utilization that is always less than the idle threshold for the specified time period as idle. You can define this idle threshold value.

SHO performs the idle VM analysis as follows:

  1. It obtains the user-defined idle threshold value. The default value is provided by SHO.
  2. It identifies whether the VM has an average utilization below the idle threshold for the specified analysis period.
  3. It obtains the user-defined deviation threshold which is the minimum percentage of hourly data points that must be beyond the utilization threshold for the VM to be labeled active.
  4. If the percentage of hourly data points crossing the utilization threshold is less than the deviation threshold, then the VM is termed as idle.

Powered-off VM Analysis

SHO monitors the time periods for which a VM has been powered-off in the total analysis time. If the percentage ratio of the total powered-off time to the total analysis time period is greater than the powered-off threshold value, SHO marks the VM as powered-off. You can define this powered-off threshold value by using the Thresholds configuration feature on the user interface.

The following figure illustrates powered-off VM analysis:


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