virtualization.info

VMware has recently released a new minor version of its free (if you are a VMware partner) capacity planning tool simply called Capacity Planner.

The new 2.7 version (build 32117) includes a long list of new features:

• Desktop Virtualization
  VDI assessments enable you to virtualize destops utilizing software profiles and base images.
• Software Profiles
  Software profiles replace application profiles and can now be edited by Partners. Software Profiles allow tags to describe the software. Software Profiles can represent applications and operating systems. They keep track of individual process utilization as well as system-wide use. More computing resource utilization dimensions are shown for each profile.
• Base Image Creation
  System Software Cluster analysis is used to build a few images that maximize software usage.
• VM Template Sizing
  You can create VM Templates, based on various base images, during an Optimization Scenario Analysis.
• Reporting
  Optimization reports now includes new reports. These reports are formally known as the Consolidation Estimator Reports. The new report is a complete assessment report. The controls for the output are located in the Assessment Global Settings. The link to get to the Global Settings is at the bottom of the Optimization Report Page. This report is the only place that contains the following information at this time: VM-to-VM Template mapping, VM Template Sizes, and Base Image Report. For the Custom Report, the display limit is set to 10,000. If the amount of data exceeds this limit, the data that exceeds the limit is not displayed.
• Scenario
  The scenario now includes the ability to select by system attributes. It also has a Base Image selection page. Selecting Base Images is required to include the Base Image, VM Template Size, and VM-to-VM Template mapping sections in the Assessment Report.
• User Group
  You can now create a user group to give users access to a company, template, report, or scenario.
• Access and Permissions
  The security model that has been used by company roles is now extended to templates. This allows individual access to templates by a single user or a group of users. Partners and VMware can create templates that are meant only for a certain group of users. This will remove the need to create multiple companies to manage users and templates.
• Date Range Selection
  Users can now select a range of dates to be used for the assessment.
• Alerts and Anomalies
  The behavior of alerts and anomalies has changed in this release.
• User Self-provisioning
  A Partner Company (only partner) can adjust the security settings in their company to allow users with the same email suffix that is supplied in the company information to request and automatically approve a login account. The Partner will need to create a suffix to enable this feature adjust the Security Policy to allow self-provisioning.
• Collector SSH Port setting
  The collector now allows the user to change the SSH port to something other than 22. This is a global setting and will not allow per system port settings for now.
• Collector/Dashboard Inventory Additions
  The Collector and the Dashboard now collect desktop inventory and show Video Card, PnP Devices, Pagefile, and Printers for the purpose of doing desktop assessments.
• Create new CE users
  You can now create a user within a CE assessment.
• Multiple Assessments
  More than one assessment per company is now supported.
• Sudo support
  Sudo support has been added in this release.

As Capacity Planner is a half-hosted solution, it seems that this update is still causing some service downtime as the VMware website reports at the moment of writing:

Special Notice: Temporary Maintenance
Emergency Service Interruptions to VMware Capacity Planner

You may encounter performance issues or may not have any access to the Capacity Planner Dashboard.
We appreciate your patience during this maintenance period. System maintenance is part of our commitment to continued service improvements and will help VMware better serve your needs.

Thank you,
The Capacity Planner team

Thanks to the Daily Hypervisor for the news.