Capacity Planner Release Notes
Capacity Planner release notes contain the list of all new or enhanced features, and a list of all issues fixed in the current and past product releases. For the latest highlights, see What’s New in Capacity Planner.
July 2023 release
These are the highlights of this release:
AWS summary dashboard
New summary landing pages are now available for AWS estates. The visual dashboard provides a summary of cloud expenditure and make it easier to access key information on how savings can be made.
Clicking any of the recommendation boxes will take you the detailed list for that recommendation. For example, to see details of potential savings from unattached EBS storage volumes, click on the Delete EBS volumes box to see a list of those volumes.
For more information, see AWS summary dashboard.
Issues fixed
Issues in the Azure Recommendations report were fixed.
October 2022 release
These are the highlights of this release:
New user interface framework
The new UI framework is based on React and amCharts, and it brings a fresh look to and more consistency with the new Observability Platform, .
Standard lists are now used throughout, with a choice of the number of rows to display, pagination, and sorting options as well as easier access to Baseline Views, Scenarios and Reports.
We have also removed libraries reaching the end of support as part of our continuous improvement on security.
For more information about the interface, see Application interface.
Reporting enhancements
New report framework
This release comes with a new report framework with improved presentation of saved reports and report templates.
The report page now distinguishes more clearly between Reports which can be run immediately to produce output, and Report Templates which require parameters to be set before they can be run. Brief descriptions of each report are now available along with a link to the documentation pages for more information.
Reports that you have created from a template and saved now appear in the Reports section. This section also includes any reports created by other users that have been shared and standard reports.
For more information about reports, see Using advanced reports.
Standard pre-pack reports
solutions now include a set of standard, pre-packed reports. These are indicated by the Standard Report set as the owner, and provide a quick way for new clients to get started using reports, and to access key information more easily.
User-created standard reports
Users who are granted appropriate permissions can create new standard reports that become available to all users within their own solutions.
For the creation of standard shared reports, there are now shared views available that are not owned by individual users.
Filters are now visible in Baseline Views
When choosing baseline views in reports, groupings are now displayed in the view that filters the data, which helps you select the appropriate baseline view.
Standardisation of parameter handling
The way parameters are presented in reports is now standardised. In generic reports that can be applied to different entity types, you now choose a metric first, and if that metric is available for multiple entity types, then you can choose from those.
Grouping and filtering improvements and simplification
Standard grouping filters are now used in reports. You can first choose a grouping, then indicate whether a filter should apply on that grouping, and if so, what values should be included.
It is now possible to choose and filter directly on groupings that are associated with parent entities. For example, when reporting on Storage drive utilisation, it is possible to filter on groupings associated with the server on which the drive is located.
Performance improvements
Reports performance has been improved, and solution level caching is now used.
Cloud Cost Optimisation performance enhancements
Cloud Right-sizing is now performed quicker. Reference data is now being updated weekly.
Issues fixed
All reports now correctly show dynamic groupings in parameter lists.
February 2022 release
These are the highlights of this release:
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RDS recommendations now provides compute recommendations for Amazon RDS machines. These recommendations consider CPU and memory utilisation and, based on your chosen statistical measures and model, will recommend an appropriate configuration. RDS configuration options are available to restrict recommendations to ensure only specific engines, processors, network, and storage performance constraints are considered. These recommendations are displayed in the Recommend panel, in a new RDS Recommendations tab. EC2 compute recommendations are now displayed in the EC2 Recommendations tab. For more information, see Recommendations documentation.
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RDS metrics Amazon provides a comprehensive view of RDS specific metrics for each instance as part of the service. records these metrics and provides the statistical analysis and trending that is expected. Each of these metrics is available either from the right-click Headroom window or within the Metrics Explorer. When Metrics Explorer is opened for a group of RDS machines, a subset of the RDS specific metrics is shown by default. This list can be changed by using the settings icon on the right hand side of the interface.
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Cloud Service grouping You can now easily differentiate between instances or machines that make use of various cloud services using the new Cloud Service grouping. It can be used in the sunburst, timeburst, and reporting to identify EC2 or RDS machines. As support is added for further services across providers, this will expand to cover those services as well.
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Enhanced Savings Plans recommendations
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Savings Plans recommendations now take into consideration existing Reservation purchases before providing an optimised hourly rate across all accounts for compute Savings Plans.
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Enhanced recommendation engine Changes have been made to the recommendation engine to provide increased flexibility, configurability, and improved performance.
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EC2 Cost Coverage over Time report This report provides a comprehensive combined view of your EC2 running costs and an insight into how effective current saving mechanisms are. In an environment there are up to four time series displayed:
- Undiscounted costs
- Total current costs
- Savings Plans
- Reserved Instances.For more information, see AWS EC2 cost coverage over time report documentation.
September 2021 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Reporting improvements The order of the filtering options in advanced reports was changed to improve and simplify the report configuration.
- VM periodicity report A new report that analyses virtual machine utilisation and determines those times where individual machines can be determined to be reliably inactive or idle, and the costs of running those machines during those idle times.
- reservations can now analyse virtual machine use over the baseline period and suggest the optimum reservations.
June 2021 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Reserved Instances (RI) Optimisation can now analyse instance use over the baseline period and suggest the optimum RI purchase for a 3 year up-front commitment. It analyses existing RI purchases to determine how far from the optimum maximum savings potential they are.
- Reporting improvements Reports have been updated to allow you to pre-filter a report using a baseline view. For example, if you have a view focussed on a particular application and subset of workloads., you can select that view when configuring the report which will limit the report coverage to only those entities visible in the view.
- Periodicity report A new report that analyses cloud instance utilisation and determines those times where individual machines can be determined to be reliably inactive or idle, and the costs of running those machines during those idle times.
March 2021 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- A new online training course is now available on the training website: — On Premise to the Cloud.
- A version of Cloud Cost Optimisation was created with limited functionality for digital channel customers. This includes a self-service landing page for data collection, automated report scheduling, and automation of sending emails to users.
- A new Changed Instances report was added.
- This release introduces a number of fixes to improve the performance of and .
January 2021 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- New specific Exec report.
- You can add a machine to a list of instances that will be ignored from recommendations.
- You can set the value for memory and CPU utilisation while interactively right-sizing and right-buying.
- Inactivity highlighting in the timeburst.
November 2020 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Capacity Planner can now model environments and make recommendations on configuration changes to virtual machines in .
- Recommendations are now more detailed: now shows the cost impact of retrospectively applying recommendations over the baseline time period.
August 2020 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Recommendations for migration to Azure
June 2020 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- New timeburst visualisation is now available.
- Optimum savings plan is suggested in the Recommendation panel.
- Recommendations for right-sizing and right-buying of instances are now available with visual indication of alternatives.
- New dedicated reports providing visibility into daily costs, long term trends, forecasts, and running instances.
February 2020 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Automatic recommendations based on baseline analysis are now available in the new Recommend panel. This includes right-size recommendations, including target vCPU configurations, memory configuration and suggestions for machines that should be disabled. This is fully configurable allowing you to configure activity threshold settings and minimum configuration for right-sizing. For more information, see Recommend.
- now automatically suggests cloud instance configurations in scoped to a baseline view, taking optimal capacity configuration into consideration in order to reduce costs effectively. For more information, see Cloud migration.
- A new Service Infrastructure report has been created. It provides you with the facility to select a grouping of workloads and determine the aggregate long-term trend in CPU and memory utilisation across all workloads. For more information, see Service infrastructure report.
- You can now save and rerun a report at any time without having to reenter parameters. For more information, see Rerun a report.
- Reports are now displayed using the latest version of . This introduces a new layout of parameters, and it also offers more flexibility with varying resolutions.
- A new MCluster grouping is available on all VMs. It allows for more effective filtering by cluster when reporting using VMs.
- The Highly Inactive VMs report is now deprecated. A new, more flexible report is available and can be run in the same way.
December 2019 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- The right-sizing operation in has been enhanced to provide more flexibility. You can now specify a minimum number of vCPUs to be used in the operation and the minimum allowable memory configuration. You can also configure the buffer used when ensuring a level of headroom is available after right-sizing.
- A new dynamic grouping has been created that will automatically tag any workload with low or high levels of activity based on the selected summary model.
- A new data insertion API has been created, allowing for more flexibility with regards to submitting data for modelling with .
October 2019 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Release 102 mainly contains changes in administration and configuration of to assist in the on-premise deployment of the product, configure default views for users and further improve Application Demand Modelling configuration capabilities.
- Release 102.1 mainly contains bug fixes to address browser compatibility and styling issues.
August 2019 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- The Groupings Manager allows you to create, delete, and modify any grouping values directly from the sunburst avoiding the need to provide a CSV file. For more information, see Groupings Manager documentation.
May 2019 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Cluster headroom — drive time series information can now be viewed from the headroom dialog window. For more information, see Headroom documentation.
- Residuals — the residuals can now be visualized using reports.
- Reports — improvements were introduced in the following advanced reports:
- Metric analysis — multi-chart. For more information, see Metric analysis — multi-chart in Available Reports.
- Metric analysis — single-chart. For more information, see Metric analysis — single-chart in Available Reports.
December 2018 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Single Sign On — SSO support using SAML 2.0 was added.
- Reports — a number of enhancements were introduced to the reports. The reports were also redesigned.
- Benchmarking — a more automated process has been put in place to apply benchmarking scores to servers as they are discovered.
May 2018 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Viewing different models — the models tab has been enhanced to allow the user to select from multiple available models.
- Workload summary — a new workload summary option is now available for workloads.
- Excluding metrics from migrations — you can now exclude metrics from any scenario operation that involves the movement of workloads.
- Setting demand — you can now specifically set demand for a workload.
March 2018 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Models panel — the model panel was added to .
- Clusters panel — the panel now provides a summary of all clusters shown in the current active baseline view.
- Time series available from headroom charts — the time series for each metric is now available directly from the headroom chart.
- 5 minute average data in metrics explorer — the metrics explorer now has a new option per metric to view 5 minute grain data.
- Entity baseline report — a new report was added allowing the user to summarise utilisation over any time period that has been modelled.
January 2018 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Capacity events — a new event processing algorithm has been introduced to provide more accuracy and mine further different trends from utilisation patterns.
December 2017 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Cluster trends report — a new report was added to the advanced reporting.
- VMs on the watch list — VMs that currently, as of the latest processing of the model, do not have enough capacity to meet their 95th percentile are indicated on the sunburst with the red circle.
October 2017 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Right-sizing with measures — you can now select the metric measures that you want to use when right-sizing workloads.
- VM storage summary report — a VM storage summary report has been added to the default list of standard reports.
September 2017 release
These are the highlights of this release:
- Cluster high availability policies
- Number of redundant servers — a new feature has been added to the Headroom Summary available from the right click menu at any point of the sunburst.
- Long term cluster trends — a new event type has been introduced showing long term trends towards cluster capacity.
Disclaimer
The information contained in this document is for general information and guidance on our products, services, and other matters. It is only for information purposes and is not intended as advice which should be relied upon. We try to ensure that the content of this document is accurate and up-to-date, but this cannot be guaranteed. Changes may be made to our products, services, and other matters which are not noted or recorded herein. All liability for loss and damage arising from reliance on this document is excluded (except where death or personal injury arises from our negligence or loss or damage arises from any fraud on our part).