What is the objective of this? Simple because creating virtual machines is quick and easy and after a few months they can become hundreds or even thousands. Once you create a virtual machine you normally have some information concerning its use and lifecycle: how long it is going to run? Or when is it going to be deleted? but within a few days of working in other projects it is likely that you will forget about this and the virtual machine will keep running in your infrastructure for ever.
In some cases, this happens with hundreds of virtual machines that remain in your infrastructure making use of resources, limiting the performance of the servers and forcing to buy new equipment. Usually, at this point is when we start to think about which virtual machines are really being used and due to the lack of information, the question that we make is: How can we identify the useless virtual machines in the infrastructure?
You can answer this question from different perspectives, lets check some of them:
Contact the virtual machine manager and ask him if the virtual machine is still in use.
Search for the records that we have about the virtual machine: the life cycle.
Check the consumption performance of the virtual machine and we will know if it is being used.
The first two points may answer the question, however, in a medium/large infrastructure it can be really time consuming to contact all virtual machine the owners, and tracking the records of all the virtual machines is not a common practice when sysadmins have other priorities. The third option is the most accurate approach, but if you don’t have a solution adapted, it will be impossible to analyze the behavior virtual machine per virtual machine.
DC Scope® allows to track and centralize the information for each virtual machine, including the owner, the person in charge and its complete life-cycle. Additionally, it analyzes the performance and consumption rates of the virtual machines every minute. Each virtual machine is then labeled with one of the following categories:
Idle: If during a given period of time, 100% of the processor and memory consumption values are less than certain activity rate (Y%). The activity rate is proportional to the processor and memory capacity of the server where the virtual machine is hosted. In this category, we will find all the virtual machines that have low consumption rates and therefore those who are likely to not being used.
Lazy: for Idle virtual machines where one of the resources (processor or memory) has consumption peaks higher than 30% for less than 10%.
Undersized: If during a given period of time, 100% of the processor and memory consumption values are higher than 70%.
Busy: If during a given period of time, 100% of the processor and memory consumption values are higher than 90%.
Oversized: If during a given period of time, 100% of the processor and memory consumption values are less than 30%.
Ghost: virtual machines turned off.
So, how to identify the useless virtual machines? Let’s focus on the Idle (unused virtual machineS) and Ghost virtual machines.
The ghosts virtual machines are virtual machines that were turned OFF, but it does not mean that these are useless virtual machines (think about templates), but it is likely that some of them are just virtual machines that we no longer use. In this case will be important to check the end date of these virtual machines! And if it has already expired and has not been turned on since then, that’s a clue to delete that virtual machine.
For the virtual machines Idle, the process is a little bit tricky. In order to be more precise with the detection of useless virtual machines, DC Scope® includes a notion of noise. In the previous definitions, the detection of virtual machines is strict, 100% of points must be below or above a certain threshold. However, a virtual machine still has some activity (activity peaks) even if it is no being used. This activity results from the activity of the operating system (checking, installation, updates, etc.) or from the temporary activity of an application in the virtual machines (updates). So, in order to improve the detection of useless virtual machines, DC Scope® performs these analyzes according to four thresholds: 100%, 99.99%, 99.9% and 99%.
Here you can check the analysis, starting by those virtual machines idle un the lower threshold (2%) and over a higher period of time (100%). Just like the Ghost virtual machines, some Idle virtual machines can have a specific function and can be deleted, but if they are in this category, it is very likely that they are useless virtual machines.
Once you go through the list, you can start with the deletion process. We recommend to turn the virtual machines OFF before deleting them and if nobody complaints then you can go ahead and delete the virtual machine.
The deletion of useless virtual machines is a fundamental optimization and cleaning step to correctly manage your infrastructure, it allows you to:
Reduce the allocation rates vCPU/VRAM in the ESX.
Gain in stockage (virtual machine sizing, swap, logs)
Improve the visibility over the virtual machines in your infrastructure.
Now you have the information, you just need to download DC Scope® to start an audit of your infrastructure, delete all the useless virtual machines and recover all those wasted resources!
Here you have a few useful tips:
Try to be informed concerning the creation and end-of-life of each virtual machine.
Analyze all the ghost virtual machines as a priority. They could had been there for a long time.
When checking the idle virtual machines, start by those with the lower activity threshold during longer periods of time.
What is the objective of this? Simple because creating virtual machines is quick and easy and after a few months they can become hundreds or even thousands. Once you create a virtual machine you normally have some information concerning its use and lifecycle: how long it is going to run? Or when is it going to be deleted? but within a few days of working in other projects it is likely that you will forget about this and the virtual machine will keep running in your infrastructure for ever.
In some cases, this happens with hundreds of virtual machines that remain in your infrastructure making use of resources, limiting the performance of the servers and forcing to buy new equipment. Usually, at this point is when we start to think about which virtual machines are really being used and due to the lack of information, the question that we make is: How can we identify the useless virtual machines in the infrastructure?
You can answer this question from different perspectives, lets check some of them:
So, how to identify the useless virtual machines? Let’s focus on the Idle (unused virtual machineS) and Ghost virtual machines.
The ghosts virtual machines are virtual machines that were turned OFF, but it does not mean that these are useless virtual machines (think about templates), but it is likely that some of them are just virtual machines that we no longer use. In this case will be important to check the end date of these virtual machines! And if it has already expired and has not been turned on since then, that’s a clue to delete that virtual machine.
For the virtual machines Idle, the process is a little bit tricky. In order to be more precise with the detection of useless virtual machines, DC Scope® includes a notion of noise. In the previous definitions, the detection of virtual machines is strict, 100% of points must be below or above a certain threshold. However, a virtual machine still has some activity (activity peaks) even if it is no being used. This activity results from the activity of the operating system (checking, installation, updates, etc.) or from the temporary activity of an application in the virtual machines (updates). So, in order to improve the detection of useless virtual machines, DC Scope® performs these analyzes according to four thresholds: 100%, 99.99%, 99.9% and 99%.
Here you can check the analysis, starting by those virtual machines idle un the lower threshold (2%) and over a higher period of time (100%). Just like the Ghost virtual machines, some Idle virtual machines can have a specific function and can be deleted, but if they are in this category, it is very likely that they are useless virtual machines.
Once you go through the list, you can start with the deletion process. We recommend to turn the virtual machines OFF before deleting them and if nobody complaints then you can go ahead and delete the virtual machine.
The deletion of useless virtual machines is a fundamental optimization and cleaning step to correctly manage your infrastructure, it allows you to:
