What is a HW Template in Sizer ?
HW (Hardware) templates are pre-defined node configurations that can be created and saved by user. These will appear in their list of saved HW templates and can be used/applied while current or future sizings.
Similar to Cluster templates, HW template is a user-defined settings, only difference being HW templates allows to create exact specific HW config whereas Cluster templates provides attributes or settings guiding the sizer to pick up best configuration.
How can one create a HW Template?
There are two ways to define your fixed configuration of node via HW templates:
One – Upon landing to sizer (my scenario) dashboard, users can click on “Templates” and select HW Templates which opens up the HW configuration page ( similar to Manual mode page) where they can choose the vendor / platform and everything else (CPU/MeM/SSD/HDD/NICs/GPU)
Second – In order to save the effort, users can also create the HW templates while in the midst of a current sizing. While in a sizing exercise, in manual mode, when users would be defining a configuration , they can also quickly save it as a HW template in one additional step by giving it a name (either for a workload or by customer for example: HW Template-Databases, or HW Template-BestBuy)
How to use the HW templates ?
The objective for HW template is that you create once and use every time for that particular situation ( by workload or for a particular customer or any other scenario).
After creating the workload, when users are presented the Cluster settings/Sizing options screen, it shows them the option of HW Templates which can be applied for that sizing. This is in along with the other Cluster / SW settings they would like to use for that scenario. Sizer , then, iterates through the different solutions meeting the workload criteria and the cluster settings but restricting itself to only the HW Template(s) that the user selected for that sizing. Sizer would then recommend the right number of nodes (of the selected HW template(s)) meeting all the workload and cluster settings criteria.
How is HW Templates useful ?
The biggest advantage for HW Templates is that it optimizes the sizing activity for situations where their is a fixed BOM involved. That could be whether based on a customers existing server farm or a Service Provider or a reseller/distributor with a fixed BOM(like Arrow with custom built HPE configs) or simply SE preferred config for a given workload.
Another use case can be for upgrades. SEs can define the NG8 equivalent of their older HW upgrades(like NX G5) and always map the existing cluster on older models to a mapped one via Templates.
Once the config is fixed, Sizer then comes up with number of nodes avoiding any back and forth for number of nodes of that BOM to meet the criteria.
Also, for future sizings for the similar criteria, users need not do all the manual exercise all over again (and even run the risk of manual errors) but simply import the HW Template for that criteria and get uniform/consistent sizing in one single click.
While creating the fixed BOM configuration, HW Templates also ensures all the platform rules are adhered to. Additionally, after importing the templates, users can edit/modify configs and tweak it from the original template and before going ahead with the sizing, can save the edited template with a different name.
Here is a short demo on HW Templates, how to create and use :
