Report

Part 2 Chapter 10

How can report, which is static, complement dashboard?

Report | Dashboard

The nature of report means it is better than dashboards in certain situation or use case, such as:

Offline	A typical example is the user is travelling, such as in a plane. If the user is not offline, but has limited network bandwidth, a text-based AI-powered chat could be better than report.
	Typical audience: Senior IT Leaders.
No access	The users don’t have network access or security clearance to login to VCF Operations.
	Typical audience: external users who cannot reach VCF Operations
Casual User	Both PDF files and CSV files require less training to users than a system. There is no login required, and usage is generally much simpler.
Export	Export into spreadsheet for further analyzis & reporting. Typically, the Finance team or Audit Team want the data as part of their spreadsheet report or PowerPoint presentation. If it makes sense, educate and empower users on using a dashboard instead. They will need to know how to filter a table and do data transformation.
Legal requirement	Legal requirement may dictate that the information is pushed to the user. Politically, in some situations you can say you’ve done your job when the report is delivered to the user inbox, regardless whether the user actually reads it or not.
	Typical audience: different legal entity. Paying customer.
Printed document	In some meetings, stack of printed documents can complement laptop as it’s easier to pass around.
	In some situations, government policy may require the report to be signed.
	Limitation: you need to manually design the widget size to fit the paper.
Historical copies	You need to keep an external copy of the data. This is applicable for functions such as capacity management and compliance management. If you want to compare at fixed and regular intervals, such as every week from Monday 00:00 hours to Sunday 00:00 hours, then it’s more convenient via report. Comparing a specific date (e.g. each month of the year) is also easier on a report. This is best done via a simple CSV file as files can be compared in a spreadsheet if they have identical layout. Since many historical data is stored, be specific on the information as changing the format makes comparison difficult.
Attachment	A file can easily be attached to email or other system.

Suitability

Report is not suitable for:

• Daily consumption.\

  If you need the information daily, you’re better off using interactive dashboard. You get richer experience this way. Even if you login once a week, consider using personalized dashboard with rich interactivity. It’s way more adaptive to your needs, which can have variations over time.

• Details.\

  Vast amount of data that requires analysis is better served via a set of interactive dashboards. The exception is you need free style analysis on spreadsheet.

• Dynamic time period.\

  Unlike dashboard, in which users can change the date and time being covered, report is fixed. To change the coverage from say 1 day to 1 week, you need to have design access and change of each widget one by one.

Because of the limitations above, report is not where you do management. However, it’s great for planning and overall review, especially long-term planning where you don’t want to be distracted with details.

Unlike dashboard, report has 2 models of consumption:

• To be read.

• To be explained.

If a report is to be read, then it must be self-explanatory.

If a report is to be presented and explained, keep the content for strategic conversations. The inability to drill down help your goal to focus on the big picture. If what you need is details, you’re better off using dashboard. In this way, you can drill down as needed to answer questions from your senior management.

Inventory	Focus on the big picture.
Availability	The goal is just to capture overall availability. Focus on the big picture. As a result, individual ESXi host availability is not suitable for reports.
Performance	Not for monitoring or troubleshooting. The goal is just to report (proof) that performance was good. So capture the overall performance. Focus on the big picture. As a result, individual VM level performance is not suitable for reports.
Compliance	Not for remediation. The goal is simply reporting for compliance purpose.
Capacity	The goal is for planning, not managing the capacity. Focus on the big picture. Look ahead, preferably 1 quarter ahead.
Configuration	Use it as a backdrop on why you have configuration issues, and what can be done to address them.
Security	Not for remediation. The goal is simply reporting.

Target Audience

Report should be purpose-built, designed specifically for a persona and use case. A persona may need multiple reports, with different frequency and contents. Avoid lumping these different reports into a single report. Find out the actual, end persona.

In the product, it’s impossible to cater for everyone in all customers, so we’re providing the building block approach. You may need to combine the reports, and perhaps even customize the input and output. As a convenience, we provide some examples out of the box.

Once you know the actual human being reading the report, schedule a meet to understand the need well.

Purpose	Is it for action or just FYI? Senior management may just want to receive, but not actually open the report on time and everytime. The report is just there for “just in case” additional details are needed.
Next Step	If it’s for action, it must not be time sensitive (within the day). For daily information, the users are better off served by dashboard. Exception is they need to export to spreadsheet for further integration
Timeline	How frequent do they need it? The longer the timeline, the less fresh the information becomes, so the focus needs to shift towards the bigger picture. The longer the timeline, the higher the chance the recipient forgets the previous value, so you might have to repeat and compare current and previous.
	Past focus or future focus? This requires brainstorming as users typically ask for historical data, while their intent is for future.
	The main limitation in report is the time period needs to be hardcoded in the widget. Unlike dashboard, report does not have date control at the report level.

The most common persona for report is IT senior management. As their requirements are comprehensive, they are documented separately in the Role-based Contents chapter.

Auditor

Majority of their needs are better addressed by dashboard.

This role is interested in knowing that the environment is kept secured. They also want to know if there are unauthorised changes, especially by privileged users (read: system administrators, yes, that means you and your team).

Report Frequency: Weekly – Monthly.

Capacity Planning Team

Majority of their needs are better addressed by dashboard.

There are several use cases where report is better than dashboard. They may need to keep historical data for years, to enable more accurate long-term planning. Having the record of each data center, cluster and datastore can be handy. This should be provided as simple CSV files.

Report Frequency: Weekly – Monthly.

Finance Department

They typically prefer information in a spreadsheet, so they can use it as part of their financial analyzis and reporting.

As they care about asset, only information about hardware is relevant. For example, a list of ESXi host with their purchase date, end of warranty, and cost.

Report Frequency: Weekly – Quarterly.

Tenant

In some organisations, it can be effective to send regular emails on reclamation to the respective owner. While the owner has access to a self-service portal, they may react differently as the email is cc-ed to their senior leadership and Office of the CFO.

It’s also useful and make actionable request highly visible to the broader team. The email can consist of Top 10 VMs, with the VM owner name, with the largest cost savings potential.

Report Frequency: Weekly – Monthly.

Consultant

This is a special kind of report for 2 reasons:

• The nature is comprehensive, covering all aspects of operations management.

• Typically, the consultant conducts an assessment and need to produce report. This assessment is done rarely, such as once a year.

Technical Considerations

Once the target audience and purpose are defined, the report design consideration comes into play:

Scope	Is it the whole environment or a subset? The amount of data can impact your choice of visualization. For example, while a table can handle 100 rows well, 10K rows results in endless pages. In a large environment with thousands of vSphere Clusters and datastores, the data at world level may be too high. The scope impacts the type of information shown. One way to address is to focus on the exception or important. For example, when listing VM to downsize, only focus on large VMs.
	The above translates into what objects to use. In general, we use vSphere World, vCenter and vCenter DC as the scope. This means the content is from lower-level objects.
Layout	For consumption on a laptop or desktop, a landscape will suit user better. This is why the default report is all landscape.
	For consumption on a mobile phone, a portrait fits how a user holds her phone. For consumption on a tablet, it depends on the size of the tablet.
Color	A report that is color coded will be easier to read.
Data Recency	Present value vs past value. There are use cases for both.
	The present data point is relevant when you need to know the current or latest situation.
	The historical data points are more relevant when you need to analyse over a period. Since there are more than 1 data points, you need to pick 1 to represent them. Typically you take the maximum, average, or percentile. If you need to present a pattern or trend, you plot a line chart.

Output

There are 2 types of outputs:

• PDF

• CSV

CSV	Only the view list is suitable. While Summary List can produce CSV output, the content lacks details for further analysis. So use it in PDF output, as you likely need another widget to show detail
	The page orientation is also not relevant. You can go as deep and as wide as you want.
	1 report per object. CSV file cannot support tab. 1 file only has 1 table or list.
	Do not color code as it will be ignored by the plain CSV format.
	Do not group the output, as it’s better to use a spreadsheet to group.
	While you can add a summary row at the end, it’s more flexible to use spreadsheets as you can have different formula for each column.
	There is a limit of 50 columns. For object with many metrics and properties, logically separate them.
	For utilization and contention, show at 95th percentile. Maximum will likely show outlier while average is “too late” as the goal is to serve everyone almost all the time.
	For event, sum the numbers. For example, the number of Guest OS rebooted.
PDF	Design the report to use landscape orientation. This makes it suitable for laptop, tablet and printed paper.
	Just like mobile phone friendly app is best designed separately, the same goes for report. The small screen requires a purpose-built design.

Context

Put a context. It helps when the CSV file contains thousands of rows. For example, for VM, add the following columns. I put them at the end as the first few columns should be more important information and used for sorting.

Column 1	The parent vCenter Data Center. This is the first column, so the VM is “grouped” by DC.
Column 2	The parent vSphere Cluster. This is the second column, so the VM is “grouped” by cluster.
Column 3	The parent folder. This is the third column, so the VM is “grouped” by cluster

Widgets

Only a handful of widgets are suitable for PDF printed report, because reports have no interaction and fixed height.

A report should flow from summary to details.

• Start with headline numbers. This shows large, eye-catching number.

• Break down the headline numbers by groups. The focus is on the groups, especially their relative size or value.

• Show trend over time, if the pattern is important.

• Last is show the individual members. To focus on the important ones, limit to say top 10.

The following shows the various section and the widgets suitable for it.

By being aware of the limitations of each widget in PDF layout format, you avoid redoing your report. Measure twice, cut once.

Purpose	Description
Headline	Large font, eye catching. 3 – 5 numbers shown on portrait paper visualize the summary well. If you put too many it will look crammed. If you put 1 – 2 numbers it will look sparse.
	Widget: Score Board. Limitation: score board can only show present value, hence not suitable for performance.
Summary	A simple table. Use when you need to summarize values of many members at the parent level. It complements the score board widget as you can do computation.
	Widget: Summary View. Limitation: The filter applies to all rows in the table, despite the fact each row has different metrics. There is no count function. Only sum, maximum, minimum, average and standard deviation
Grouping	Show objects by group. Focus is on the group, not the individual members.
	Use Pie Chart when you don’t know how many slices as it’s dynamic. Value wise, pie chart is good for relative distribution. Its focus on relative means it’s less suitable for performance management. Limitation: Legend gets truncated easily unless it’s short.
	Use Bar Chart when you need to control the range of each slice, or focus on the quantity of each slice. Value wise, bar chart is good for absolute distribution. Limitation: Need to manually set the number of buckets for best visualization
	Use Heat Map when you need to show relative size and intensity. For the color, heat map is the only widget capable of showing continuous gradient of values. Limitation: The group name is hard to read if there are too many groups
Trend	Shows trend line. Focus on pattern over time.
	Health Chart. Use when you can color code the value. Limitation: The shortest height is too small. Use the medium or tall option instead. It is less suitable if the number of objects is not fixed. Visually, there is no control for the y-axis minimum and maximum value.
	View Trend. When values can’t be color coded, and you need multiple lines on the same y-axis for comparison. Limitation: Quite tall, taking up sizeable page. Since your report is landscape, try to put 2 side by side.
Individual	Individual means listing each object on the report, with their names.
	Top-N. This is a simplified table. Focus on the value of 1 metric. Best when the relative values among them matter and you can color code. Use the Percentile function as the default roll up is average Limitation: Set the number of rows, so it’s only suitable for items when this number can be capped without losing meaning
	View List. This is a multi-column table. Focus on the object name. View can show before vs after. The limitation is the time setting is hardcoded in the view. User without designer access cannot modify it.

Functional Considerations

Let’s summarise the applicability of present value vs past value.

| | Present Data | Past Data |

|---------------|--------------|-----------|

| Inventory | Yes | Yes |

| Availability | No | Yes |

| Performance | No | Yes |

| Compliance | Yes | Yes |

| Capacity | Yes | Yes |

| Configuration | Yes | Yes |

| Cost | Yes | Yes |

For historical data, you need to hardcode the time period on each widget.

Since Performance and Availability requires data across time, not all widgets can be used. Specifically, the following widgets are not suitable:

• Scoreboard

• Heat Map

Synergy

The reports were designed together as one suite. As a result, none of them is independent as we minimize overlapping content. Run the reports as a set.

Let’s take an example on how they synergise. Inventory, Configuration, and Capacity synergize to provide complete coverage.

• Configuration is about settings of that object.

• Capacity is about size. It also tends to use line chart, so it can show changes or pattern over time.

• Inventory is about count. It focuses on the type of sizes, not the actual size. It’s showing the most common ones. The goal is to know the variation.

Let’s take VM configured size for example.

Inventory	It reports how many sizes you have, and which ones are the most popular size. Are the common sizes larger or smaller than your expectation? It’s using pie chart as it’s about relative distribution and the number of the variations.
Configuration	It reports the sizes in order, so you focus on the monster VMs. It’s using bar chart, with buckets filtering out the small ones, focusing on the large configuration.
Capacity	It reports the undersized and oversized VMs. It’s using bar chart, but the bucket shows the range of undersized – rightsized – oversized. For details, you can use a table to show the top 10 VMs to be acted upon.

Let’s take ESXi host for example:

| Inventory | Relative distribution of ESXi by vendors, server type (blade, rack mount), server generation. |

|----|----|

| Configuration | Absolute distribution of ESXi by version, by CPU model and generation. |

| Capacity | Absolute distribution of ESXi by CPU Size, by memory size. |

Let’s take vSphere Cluster for example:

Inventory	Bar chart of clusters, grouped by number of VM. You determine the value of each bar.
Configuration	Bar chart of clusters, grouped by number of ESXi host The number of VM is not part of a cluster configuration.
Capacity	Bar chart of clusters, grouped by size. For example, you group them into 5 buckets of size based on total memory capacity.

Overall Design

Executive Summary	1 summary report. Designed to be presented by someone familiar with the environment, not self-reading by the IT leaders. The content focuses on the big picture. It is to facilitate discussion on major initiative. It does not contain detail.
Operations Management	1 set of reports, covering inventory, capacity, performance and configuration. Run them as a set.
Spreadsheet Export	1 CSV export per vSphere object type. Run as needed.

Executive Report

They may not be familiar with the environment, so the report starts with key inventory.

It avoids the use of technical jargon, unless the generic term causes confusion.

It does not have details. As a result, it does not cover individual items. This means it does not list the names of any VM, clusters, datastore, etc.

Customisation tips:

• If the context allows, put items you want their approval at the top. For example, you need to get budget for technology refresh on ageing hardware.

Operations Management

For the Operations Management, the 4 reports have similar table of content.

• Consumer: VM

• Provider: Compute

• Provider: Storage

• Provider: Network

Depending on the number of pages, the above maybe further split or combined.

Based on the above, we end up with the following “section” across 4 reports. Each section, which is technically a dashboard, may span multiple pages.

Report	Consumer	Provider
Inventory	VM Inventory	vSphere Inventory
Performance	VM Performance	vSphere Compute Performance
		vSphere Storage Performance
Capacity	VM Capacity	vSphere Compute Capacity
	Reclaimable Capacity	vSphere Storage Capacity
Configuration	Guest OS Configuration	ESXi Hardware Configuration
	VM Configuration	ESXi Software Configuration
	VM Size Distribution	vSphere Cluster Configuration
		vSphere Network Configuration

END OF PART 2\

Part 3 covers metrics. It has been made as standalone book as Microsoft Word became slow at 1K page.