Virtualization Planning & Reporting with MOM 2005 Reporting

Everyone is familiar with the advantages of server consolidation by now. With the recent announcement of the Virtual Server 2005 R2 MP refresh marks the return of one of the most useful reports you'll find in MOM 2005 - the "Virtualization Candidates Report". This report was pulled from the report xml file long ago when it was discovered it was not "SQL 2005 friendly". This report provides a quick way to identify all those underutilized boxes from the days when deploying a new application meant automatically deployed a server to host it. Essentially, the report parameters ask you to define your criteria for a good candidate. You simply select: Target computer group (e.g. - Windows 2003 Servers) Max and Avg CPU Max and Avg Memory Max number of CPUs present Max physical memory In most cases, you're going to be looking for 1-2 CPU / <= 2GB RAM as easy targets for virtualization Here's a quick screenshot of what I am talking about (sorry if it doesnt come out clear). There are several other reports I really like in this MP as well: VM Machine Details Performance History (CPU/MEM) Disk Usage Sadly, VMWare admins will discover these reports only work for Virtual Server 2005 VMs. :( I still have several MS VMs in production. I have both MS and VMWare in production, so maybe a hybrid version of this report can be hashed out in the community at some point.