6.4 Generating Inventory Reports

6.4.1 Finding Servers That Meet the Consolidation Criteria

  1. In the Report Explorer, right-click the Hardware Inventory report template under Inventory, then select Edit Report Template.

    The Edit Report Template dialog box is displayed.

  2. On the Group tab, select a filter or group to use when you generate reports based on this template.

  3. Click the Views tab and select a view. Use the buttons adjacent to the list to add or edit a view. See Section 5.4, View Customization

  4. Click the Field Filter tab. Use the drop-down lists to specify query parameters. See Field Filter Tab.

  5. Click OK.

  6. In the Report Explorer, right-click Hardware Inventory and select Generate Report.

  7. Schedule the report for Now, and accept the default Delivery Type of the Report Explorer.

  8. Click Generate.

    The report instance, shown as the date and time the report was generated, is displayed under the report template in the Report Explorer and the report is previewed in the Document Viewer, showing the servers that meet your consolidation requirements.

6.4.2 Selecting Candidates for Consolidation

  1. In the Report Explorer, right-click the Analysis report template for Hardware Utilization - Peak and select Edit Report Template on the menu.

    The Edit Report Template dialog box is displayed.

  2. On the Group tab, make the same selection you made in Step 1.

  3. On the Views tab, select the table view and click Edit.

    The Create View dialog box is displayed.

  4. On the General tab, select the Summary Rows (applied to columns containing calculated data) you want to create in the report.

  5. Click Finish.

    The Edit Report Template dialog box is displayed again.

  6. On the Date Filter tab, set the date and time range to view utilization expressions for all servers that were monitored.

  7. On the Field Filter tab, use the drop-down lists to specify the same query parameters you selected in Step 1.

  8. On the Summaries tab, select AVG.

  9. Click the Calculation type drop-down list and a type:

    • Average: Average of all hourly values across business days and business hours.

    • Peak Hour: A calculation based on the highest hourly value.

    • Total: Sums all the data points in the time frame. For example, Disk IOs per second for a 1-hour period equates to 10 disk IOs per second X 60 seconds X 60 minutes = 36000. Select the Summary Rows to create in the report of the columns containing calculated data.

  10. Click OK.

  11. In the Report Explorer, under Analysis, right-click the previously edited Hardware Utilization - Peak report template and click Generate Report on the menu. Accept the default Delivery Type of the Report Explorer.

  12. Click Generate.

    The report instance, shown as the date and time the report was generated, is displayed under the report template in the Report Explorer and the report is previewed in the Document Viewer.

    Comparing and contrasting the two reports generated in Step 1 and Step 1 will help you determine your consolidation needs.

    To help with this, while viewing a generated report, click a cell to display a customizable chart for that server/workload metric. For more information see Section 5.1, Chart Viewer.