This looks interesting. I'm wondering how it
compares to ESX Charter.
Just out of curiosity, what data is management asking
you for? Is it related to capacity, performance,
alerts...?
Our company lives by metrics. We have dashboards around every major application or technology that we have. For virtualization nobody is currently asking for specific data. In our desktop realm we report on how long a workstation takes to do the following tasks: copy 1 MB file, open email client, go to a few external websites, internal web page, etc.
Mgt also likes to be abe to dive deeper reports. They loved vmkusage/vmktree when we were using 2.5.
At a high level what I am thinking of would be to report on the # of hosts and virtual machines per farm along with helping us to keep track of performance so that we can react to capacity and replenish as needed. So performance reporting is what we are looking for with the ability to utilize/ modify it for capacity reporting. We also want close to real time data. For example, if we are having an issue the performance data should be available to help us see how a host/ virtual machine performed over the last week or month to help us troubleshoot.
Alerting or monitoring is not what we are looking for. I have tried charter a few times and really liked it, but the last time it didn't have a lot of report options yet. They are adding alot of features in the near future and it will get better. I have also looked at getting cacti working in our environment but haven't had the time to pursue.
