PlateSpin PowerRecon ...

[surfup]

Hi all,

Have anyone use the PowerRecon Inventory Edition (FREE download for the first 100 servers)? Is this a FULL version or some limitted function?

Also, does anyone know that cost of CPSA training and how good it's? Thanks.

Cheers,

[vmroyale]

Hello.

I downloaded and installed the free PowerRecon Inventory Edition. I had what I am pretty sure were MDAC problems and getting it to work properly with SP2 on Server 2003, but finally got everything solved by rolling back to SP1. The product is exactly what the title says - Inventory Edition. It discovers your systems and gives you a great inventory of what you have. There is no performance data included, just inventory data. The performance data collection is the piece you have to purchase a license for. I spoke with a sales rep and was given a 15 server trial license to use for the full functionality, but never have gotten around to testing it. If you decide to go that route, I would definitely give them a call and see about a trial first.

Good Luck!

[surfup]

Thanks for the input and much appreciated. I will give them a call and asked for the FULL free trial licenses.

Cheers,

[vmroyale]

Good deal, let me know if you want my contact there.

Good Luck!

[davidbarclay]

As already answered, the inventory doesn't include monitoring/performance data collection.

In addition to this in the paid version, you also get a modelling tools which lets you do what if analysis. i.e. what do my workloads look like on 4 socket/32GB RAM hosts compared to 2 socket/16GB RAM hosts?

Dave

[happyhammer]

with regards to the CPSA training, when i did mine it was a 2 day course with only a couple of hours at the end for Recon and most content on PowerConvert, there is no real info on recon and best practices, thresholds for analysing the recon data

and creating the scenarios. Also one thing ive learnt since which wasnt covered was Reconn is very powerfull for creating graphs/charts of the data and is a much better tool than the vmware Cap Planner for creating the analysis reports

[davidbarclay]

I've heard much the same about CPSA (which is why I didn't do it) - all about PowerConvert, quick mention of PowerRecon.

PowerRecon is intuative, you just need to play with it for a few days and you will be ok.

I agree, the charts etc are very powerful. The whatif engine is why we didn't standardise on the VMware tool.

Dave

[azn2kew]

Speaking of CPSA training, if you're working for consulting firm and want to become Platespin Consulting partner, it requires two CPSA in your organization. I was told the training is not to extensive and you can pick it up and learn quickly with the demo product and user guide. I wouldn't spend the money unless you need to perform the task strictly using PowerRecon or your company is paying for it. The course fee is about $1500USD or $695 Euro.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant