Once you log into your VMAN integrated Orion Instance  you will immediately notice the updated UI and new Navigation bar.

1. From the My Dashboards drop-down choose Virtualization Summary from the list.

Once on the Virtual Summary page the new Recommendations resource can be found in the upper right hand corner.  The recommendations resource will provide you an at-a-glance view of clusters and their associated recommendations as well as the severity of the recommendation (Critical, Warning , Low).  This will be your gateway to recommendations.  You can access and view recommendations via 2 methods in the resource.

1. All Recommendations link -   This can be found in the upper right hand corner of the resource and will present all individual recommendations for all clusters.

2. Recommendations by Cluster link - This can be found in the third column next to the associated cluster it represents.  Entering recommendations using this link will pre-filter all recommendations to display only those associated to the host.

The severity references the the nature of the problem at hand based on Orion thresholds.

The All Recommendations page provides a high-level overview of individual recommendations.  This is broken out based the problem that needs to be solved on the left with the recommendation to remediate the problem on the right.  The ability to filter by Cluster/Host, Recommendation Type (Active/Predictive), and Problem Severity (Critical, Warning, or Low), or Strategy is available on the left-hand side of the screen.  Tabs across the top of the screen allow you to view current recommendations, scheduled, recommendations currently running, and completed/failed recommendations.

From this view it is easy to identify Active recommendations with the NOW tag preceding the recommendation.

By selecting an individual recommendation, related contextual details can be reviewed.  The recommendation details clearly break down the problem and the details of a recommendation to assist the administrator in making a decision to execute or ignore the action. Active recommendations will the associated alert that will be resolved by executing the recommendation. 

Additional actions can be found within the Steps To Perform tab such as power on/off the VM prior to performing the action. By default any migration action will not power off the VM unless the admin specifies.  All reconfiguration of Memory & CPU will power off the VM by default unless specified by the admin.

From here you can Apply, Ignore, Export & Schedule the recommendation

By selecting More Actions, an administrator can choose to ignore a recommendation to a later date.  This will remove the recommendation from the list until the specified date and will only return the recommendation if it is still valid.

The Statistics tab will provide advanced graphical data to provide context as to why a recommendation has been created for your environment.  All graphs will have a Now delimiter line in the graph to identify the expected results on the virtual environment after the proposed recommendation is applied. Metrics associated to counters used for the recommendation will provide a current and predicted value.

TIP:  You can zoom in on the graph by selecting a section and sliding your cursor  across the graph.

SImilar to the Steps to Perform tab the recommendation can be applied, ignored or exported.

To view running recommendations choose the RUNNING tab on the all recommendations page.  Running will provide you the current status of an in-progress recommendation with a progress bar indicator next to the action being run.  To cancel a running recommendation select Cancel & Revert .

To view all past recommendations choose the HISTORY tab on the all recommendations page.  This will display both successful and failed recommendation attempts as well as time initiated and time completed.

Double click on the completed recommendation to view details such as who executed the action and steps performed in the action.

In the event that a recommendation is no longer required for an entity select Manage Policies from the All Recommendations Page and select the Policies tab.

From here the admin can select the Add Exclusion.  The next screen will provide the option to select the object types you want to exclude (virtual machine, cluster, host, datastore).

After selecting the objects to exclude the exclusion policy can saved.

This will exclude the object from all future recommendation calculations until the exclusion policy is removed.

By selecting the Strategies Tab the recommendations can be completely disabled.  The individual strategies can be disabled/enabled from this page.

VM Right Sizing

Over-Allocation

Under-Allocation

Host Performance & Capacity Assurance - Identifies hosts that will run of CPU or memory resources.

Active recommendations

Predictive recommendations

Storage Capacity Assurance

Balancing VM Workloads on Hosts

Selecting Recalculate Now the recommendation calculations can be manually run.  The default running of the calculations occurs every 12 hrs unless an environment change occurs in which case the recalculation will immediately run.  An environment change includes:

• add/remove VM
• add/remove Hosts (including maintenance mode)
• Add/Remove storage
• Migration of VMs to another host
• Migration of VMs to different storage