How Intelligent Placement Works

This topic explains how Commander decides where to deploy new service requests.

Commander first filters out all invalid deployment destinations. Then, if multiple deployment destinations are valid, it rates them.

To configure automated deployment, see Configure Automated Deployment for Approved Service Requests.

How Commander filters out invalid deployment destinations

To be considered valid, a deployment destination must fulfill many criteria. For example, a deployment destination must:

  • Be assigned to the requester, the requester's group, or the requester's organization
  • Target the same cloud account as the service. For multi-cloud services, the deployment destination must target one of the cloud accounts in the multi-cloud template.
  • Have access to required storage and network resources. See also Set Storage Tiers and Assign Network Zones.
  • Provide the capabilities required by the service. You can configure both required and preferred placement attributes that define the capabilities offered by deployment destinations.

There are also many cloud-account-specific criteria, such as:

  • vCenter and SCVMM targets must have sufficient capacity without exceeding the configured datastore threshold. Note that Storage reserved for in-progress deployment and fulfillment is excluded from available capacity.
  • AWS targets must also be in the same region as the source AMI (unless the AMI is from the Amazon Marketplace). This means that you need to configure a separate deployment destination for each AWS region.
  • For Azure, a valid target must fulfill several additional criteria. For example, it must:
    • Target the same region as the source image. This means that you need to configure a separate deployment destination for each Azure region.
    • Target a region that offers the required instance type, in the case of custom images.
    • offer the required storage. This requirement applies only for components requiring unmanaged storage on a particular storage tier, and for custom images with an OS disk in a particular unmanaged storage account.
    • Have a subnet with the required network zone, if the component requires a particular network zone.
    • Have a subnet with free IP addresses.

The Placement Report provides more information on how deployment destinations are validated.

How Commander rates valid deployment destinations

If Commander has determined that multiple deployment destinations are valid, four criteria are used to rate each destination:

  • Quota: How many of the requested workloads it can accommodate, given the quota available on that destination, when per-destination quota is configured? The destination accommodating the highest number of workloads is given a rating of 100. A destination that can accommodate 0 workloads is given a rating of 0. Destinations that can accommodate any number between 1 and the highest number are given proportional ratings. For example, if the destination that can accommodate the greatest number of workloads can hold 10, a destination that can hold 7 workloads is given a rating of 70.
  • Cost: What's the service cost? The cheapest destination is given a rating of 100. A destination that's at least twice as expensive as the cheapest destination is given a rating of 0. All other destinations in the range are given proportional ratings. For example, if the cheapest destination costs 1000 USD, any destination that costs 2000 USD or more is rated 0, and a destination that costs 1500 USD is given a rating of 50.

    • If you’ve implemented the Cost Adjustments feature to apply markups and discounts to your costs, adjusted costs will be used for the Service Portal cost ratings.

  • Placement attributes: Does the destination provide the placement capabilities preferred for this service (remember that you can configure both required and preferred Intelligent Placement capabilities)? All placement attribute ratings for a particular destination are averaged for a total placement attribute rating.
  • Capacity: For private clouds, each destination is rated based on how much capacity is available on the target cluster, given the configured default VM workload. The destination accommodating the highest number of workloads is given a rating of 100. A destination that can accommodate 0 workloads is given a rating of 0. Destinations that can accommodate any number between 1 and the highest number are given proportional ratings. For example, if the destination that can accommodate the greatest number of workloads can hold 10, a destination that can hold 7 workloads is given a rating of 70.

By default, quota is rated as the highest priority, cost is the second priority, and placement attributes are the third priority, but you can customize the placement priority. The Capacity rating always has the lowest priority because it's based on the last seven days of performance data.

All four individual ratings are combined into a single destination rating, using a weighted average that considers the customizable placement priority:

  • First priority: 2
  • Second priority: 1.5
  • Third priority: 1.0
  • Capacity: 0.5

You can tune the relative weighting of placement priorities as well as how destinations are rated for placement attributes and cost through advanced system properties. To find properties that control Intelligent Placement, search on the Advanced Configuration page in Commander for "placement". See Advanced Configuration With System Properties for more information.

Lower-priority individual ratings can combine to override a higher-priority rating. For example, assuming the default placement priorities are used, a cheaper destination might be chosen even if it has less available quota than a destination that's expensive and doesn't provide preferred placement attributes.

The overall rating is used to display the star rating for the Destination element on the service form (for more information, see Service Request Form Elements). A rating of 100 translates into a 5-star rating; a rating of 80 translates into a 4-star rating, and so on.

Understanding placement decisions

For a service request, you can examine why Commander chose a particular destination, or why no destinations were valid.

The following information may be provided for the placement decisions that were made:

  • Filtered-out Destinations: A list of destinations that were filtered out because:
    • They were invalid for this service; for example, destinations that don't provide a required placement attribute
    • There's a temporary configuration issue, such as lack of disk space

    • For multi-cloud services, a destination appears under Filtered-out Destinations if it's filtered out for all possible multi-cloud configurations of the service.

  • Rated Destinations: A list of all valid destinations, with an overall rating from 1 to 100. Ratings are also provided for cost, quota, preferred placement attributes and capacity. If no destinations were valid for this service, the placement report explains why. The cost displayed in the Rated Destinations section of the Placement Tab will be displayed in the global default currency at the time the request was created, even if the user preference is a different currency. The currency of this Rated Destinations cost won’t change for this request, even if the global default currency is changed.

Access:

Views > Service Requests

Available to:

All Access Rights Levels

To find out the reasoning behind the destination choice for a service request:

  1. On the Service Requests page, select a listed service request, and click Request Details.
  2. Click the Service level in the tree, then click the Placement tab.