Overview

In this lab you learn how to assess a customer's current environment with StratoZone's scalable discovery. You will also learn to generate inventory, cloud fit score, and financial reports including TCO and ROI analysis.

The StratoZone® SaaS platform provides customers with a data-driven cloud decision framework. The StratoProbe® Data Collector application delivers the ability to easily deploy and scale the discovery of a customer's IT environment for private, public, or hybrid-cloud planning. To ease and accelerate the VM migration journey, Google Cloud offers assistance and guidance in making the right decisions when deciding to go to cloud.

Objectives

In this lab, you will learn how to perform the following tasks:

• Create a new assessment
• Deploy a collector and start a scan of the deployed environment
• Group assets based on defined criteria
• Review collected data and run reports

Note: Before you start the lab, ensure that you have a suitable RDP client installed locally on your computer. You will need this to open an RDP client file in Task 1.

Setup and requirements

For each lab, you get a new Google Cloud project and set of resources for a fixed time at no cost.

1. Sign in to Qwiklabs using an incognito window.

2. Note the lab's access time (for example, 1:15:00), and make sure you can finish within that time.
   There is no pause feature. You can restart if needed, but you have to start at the beginning.

3. When ready, click Start lab.

4. Note your lab credentials (Username and Password). You will use them to sign in to the Google Cloud Console.

5. Click Open Google Console.

6. Click Use another account and copy/paste credentials for this lab into the prompts.
   If you use other credentials, you'll receive errors or incur charges.

7. Accept the terms and skip the recovery resource page.

Log in to Google Cloud Console

1. Using the browser tab or window you are using for this lab session, copy the Username from the Connection Details panel and click the Open Google Console button.

Note: If you are asked to choose an account, click Use another account.

2. Paste in the Username, and then the Password as prompted.
3. Click Next.
4. Accept the terms and conditions.

Since this is a temporary account, which will last only as long as this lab:

• Do not add recovery options
• Do not sign up for free trials

5. Once the console opens, view the list of services by clicking the Navigation menu () at the top-left.

Task 1. Prepare your environment

In this task you connect to a simulated customer environment running in a Windows VM that has been created for you in Google Cloud.

1. In the Google Cloud Console, from the Navigation menu, select Compute Engine > VM instances. If prompted, select the Google Cloud project assigned to your lab.

2. Click the RDP button next to the windows-vm instance.

3. In the Connect using RDP Client popup, click Download the RDP file if you will be using a 3rd-party client.

4. Open the file you downloaded using an RDP client. This is dependent on your operating system platform.

5. Type, (do not copy and paste) the following credentials to complete the RDP login:

User name	stratozone
Password	$tr@t0z0n3

Note: If you are using the Microsoft RDP client, click More choices in the Windows Security dialog box, then choose the option Use a different account. Next, specify the credentials above and connect to the Windows VM. Note: After login, you will need to wait a minute for the Windows desktop to complete user personalization and become ready.

Task 2. Log in to the StratoZone portal

In this task you log in to the StratoZone portal and navigate to the Analyze module.

1. From the windows-vm desktop, click on the Google Chrome icon, then open labs.stratozone.com. Use the lab credentials provided to log in to the StratoZone lab session.

2. Agree to the terms and conditions and click Next. Once logged in you will be able to access the assessments and review collected data.

Task 3. Start new assessment (automatic)

In this task you collect live data from a set of machines running in the Google Cloud environment. This automatically collected data is how 99% of assessments are conducted in real-world customer environments. The main benefit of this approach is that you will receive unbiased information directly from the systems scanned. This natively collected data provides machine inventory, specs, utilization, execution processes, services, software versions installed, and network connectivity.

This data enables all of the advanced StratoZone features, such as:

• Cloud fit scores
• Optimization of underutilized workloads
• Network dependency mapping
• Financial business case (TCO/ROI)
• Automated summary reporting and proposal

1. To begin the discovery and start the assessment wizard, click the Assessments tab, then click the Create New Assessment Group button in the top menu.

2. On the Create New Assessment Group page, specify the following values:

Assessment Group Type	Automatic Asset Discovery
Assessment Group Name	Lab-Assessment1
Customer Sponsor Name & Email	Enter your name and a personal email address
Customer Tech Contact Name & Email	Enter your name and personal email address Note: This email will receive an email with collector installation instructions

3. Click Save.

Once the assessment has been created, the system will automatically start the data collector configuration wizard.

4. On the Details tab, specify the following values:

Assessment / Data Center	Lab Datacenter
Expected Number of Assets to Collect	5

Leave the default values for the remainder of the options.

5. Click Save & Next.

6. Under the Run Schedule tab, leave the default values and click Save & Next.

7. Under the Data Security tab, note the available options for removing data sent from the data collector to StratoZone. For this lab you use the default option Level 1.

8. Click Save & Next.

Pre-configuration of the data collector has been completed and the install package can be downloaded.

9. Click Download to obtain the installation package.

10. Click the key icon to obtain the Temporary Access Code. Make a note of the Temporary Access Code, as you will need it in the next task.

11. Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify that the automated assessment has been created.

Task 4. Deploy the StratoProbe data collector

In this task you will configure the StratoProbe data collector. Once the assessment has been created in the StratoZone portal, the customer installs the collector and begins the discovery process within their current datacenter (or cloud) infrastructure.

1. Click on the setup.exe file, click Open and select Run.

2. Click Yes when prompted to confirm permitting changes to the system.

3. In the Microsoft Visual C++ setup window, click OK.

4. Accept the License Agreement and click Next.

5. In the Information window, click Next.

6. In the Select Destination Location window, accept the defaults and click Next.

7. In the Select Additional Tasks window, click Next and then click Install.

The installation will take a few minutes to complete. While you're waiting, check the email that you used earlier to see an alert from StratoProbe Collector.

8. Once the installation is complete, click Finish.

Note: If you see the message to restart your computer, click No, I will restart the computer later.

9. From the Windows menu, select Start > StratoProbe.

10. When the StratoProbe Data Collector opens, click Start Authorization.

11. Click Run Check link to verify installation completed successfully.

After verification completes and all checks pass, the collector can be activated.

12. Enter the Temporary Access Code and click the Authorize button.

HINT: To find the Temporary Access Code again, follow the steps below:

1. Click the Assessments tab, and then click Lab-Assessment1 > Edit Data Collector

2. Click Generate access code to obtain the Temporary Access Code.

3. Enter the Temporary Access Code and click the Authorize button.

Once activation completes, the StratoProbe Data Collector will open.

Create credential group

Multiple credentials can be stored within StratoProbe to allow the collector to access systems belonging to different Active Directory domains, or having local accounts or SSH keys.

1. Click Add Credentials button in the upper left menu.

2. Choose OS Scan as the scanning method and then click Configure.

3. To set up a credential group, specify the following values:

Credential Name	Lab
Credential Type	Username and Password
Username	stratozone
Password	$tr@t0z0n3
Group Scheduling	Accept Defaults

4. Click Add Credential button.

5. Click Add Resources > Machine > Scan IP address ranges.

   IP address range scan allows for discovery of assets across the network.

6. Agree to the Terms & Conditions, and then click Accept.

IMPORTANT: Make a note of the Internal IP address configured for the lab VM Instances (e.g. 10.128.0.2). You will use the first three octets in the bulk scan.

7. Click Add IP Address Ranges > Enter ranges.

8. For the beginning IP address, use the first three octets plus .1 (10.128.0.1 in this example).

9. For the ending IP address, use the first three octets plus .5 (10.128.0.5 in this example).

10. Click the Add IP Ranges button.

11. In the Start to scan IP address range dialog, click Start Scan.

12. Click on the arrow button on the upper left to go back to the dashboard.

Note: It may take up to 2 minutes for the scan to start and complete.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify that the collector is activated and the IP scanner is properly configured.

Task 5. Start new assessment (manual)

In this task you will conduct the assessment by ingesting external data directly into the StratoZone portal. This method is used when a customer does not want to scan their environment, but instead wants to provide a list of assets to achieve high-level pricing estimates.

The data can be sourced from a current CMDB, inventory list, vCenter exports, or any other internal system that provides the minimum required machine specs. This method offers a very quick turnaround for basic pricing, but will not offer the ability to optimize for utilization, understand running software components, or view network relationships.

Note: You may need to log back in to the StratoZone portal on the Google Chrome.

1. To begin a manual-load assessment, create a new assessment as outlined for the automatic scan in Task 3.

   You may need to minimize the open Stratoprobe Data Collector window.

2. Click on the Assessments tab, then click the Create New Assessment Group button in the top menu.

Establish a collector

1. Specify the following values and click Save when done:

Assessment Type	Manual Asset Entry
Assessment Group Name	Lab-Assessment2
Customer Sponsor Name & Email	Enter your name and personal email address

2. When prompted, specify the following values for manual inventory assessment:

Assessment Name	Lab Datacenter Manual
Upload Type	Manual

3. Click Save & Next button to go to the Upload tab.

4. Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Start new assessment (manual) and establish a collector.

Import manual assessment data

Importing a CSV document is the fastest way to start a manual assessment. In this lab you will use a pre-existing Machine information CSV file. That is the only file required for manual import.

1. In the windows-vm, open a new tab in your browser and navigate to the following URL:

http://storage.googleapis.com/cloud-training/OCBL226/machine_info_list.csv

2. Download the file. This is a list of servers that we want to manually import into StratoZone.

3. Return to the Stratozone tab, and then click the UPLOAD button next to Machine Information.

Note: In a customer environment, the starting point for the CSV approach would be to download the asset import template using the link provided on the page.

4.In the Import Inventory from a File dialog box, click Choose File, browse to Downloads, choose the machine_info_list.csv file, and then click Open.

5. Select Use only provided IP addresses specified in import file, then click the Upload button.

File should be imported successfully into the staging area for review. Check the status displayed next to the file. Initially file status will be Uploaded, Processing. Once completed, you will receive notification on the screen.

After 2 minutes, if the status does not change click the refresh button.

6. Once the status changes to Updated, Processed, click Save & Next button to go to the next tab.

Servers should be imported successfully into the staging area for review. If the import was successful there will be a ✓ icon in the status column. If there are problems with a server from the import, there will be an X icon in the status column for the affected row.

7. Click the Add Inventory button at the bottom of the page.

Note: You may need to enlarge the window to see the button.

Once processing completes, the "Add Inventory" button will be disabled and notification will popup that import completed successfully.

Verify assets were loaded (inventory check)

1. Click the Results tab in the top menu, and then in the left pane, click Inventory in the Asset-level Data menu.

2. On the Filters menu in the left pane, expand Assesment and then click Lab Datacenter Manual.

The system should display 19 records. Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify assets were loaded (inventory check).

Task 6. Generate initial reports

In this task you will work through a few critical reports that contain key results of an assessment. The findings can be delivered either interactively by presenting StratoZone portal screens to the customer, or by generating reports that can be used for presentation or offline delivery and transmission.

Summary report

The StratoZone platform continuously analyzes data based on the discovery of assets in this sample customer environment. The findings, analysis, and recommendations are made available to you within your StratoZone® portal and summarized in this report. This report is generated iteratively for customers during various assessment phases to capture various groupings and financial scenarios.

To generate the summary report:

1. Click the Reports tab.
2. On the Assessment Summary and Proposal tile, click Generate Report.
3. When prompted, specify the following settings:

Report Name	Initial Summary Report
Report Format	Google Slides
Select Filters	Select All
Baseline Vendor Catalog	Private Data Center
Comparison Vendor Catalog	Google Cloud On-Demand
Comparison Vendor Catalog	Google Cloud 1 Year Commit
Comparison Vendor Catalog	Google Cloud 3 Year Commit

4. Click Create Report. The report takes a few minutes to build.

5. From the Report Queue, click the Google Slides icon to view the report in Google Slides.

6. Log in with your lab credentials to view the report.

7. To access generated reports, open the Analyze module and click on Download Queue.

8. Review the report for some of the key deliverables:

• Automatically generated customer-ready narrative about the nature of the assessment
• What locations were assessed
• Technical findings (asset counts, CPU/RAM/Storage resource information, etc)
• Cloud readiness (cloud fit score)
• Financial analysis, comparison, and savings (including cost of current brick-and-mortar datacenter vs potential cloud options)

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify that the StratoZone reports have been generated.

Inventory report

To generate the inventory report:

1. Click the Reports tab.

2. On the Inventory tile, click Generate Report.

3. Specify the following settings to create the report:

Report Name	Initial Inventory Report
Report Format	Google Sheets
Select Filter	Select All

4. Click Create Report.

Note: You will need to wait a few minutes for the report to generate.

5. Click on the Google Sheets icon to view the report.

Task 7. Create and manage groups

In this task, you create and manage groups. Grouping allows you to present the information in a format that is familiar to the customer's environment. Groups can reflect business units, departments, dev/test/prod environments, applications, and so on. Groups can be created and managed directly in the platform.

1. Click on the Grouping tab.

2. From the left menu, click on Build Groups.

3. In the top menu, click Add New Group.

4. In the Create New Build Group dialog box, specify a Group Name of Production, leave the rest of the settings as default, and then click Save.

5. Click Close on the next screen.

6. From available group actions, click Add Assets to: Production.

7. In the search field, type stz to filter the server names.

8. Click the Asset box in the header row to select all filtered assets.

9. Click the Add Selected Assets to Group button.

10. Create a second group from Step 3 above, and use the following configuration:

Group Name

Development

11. When adding assets, type dev in the search criteria.

12. Select all dev assets and click the Add Selected Assets to Group button.

13. Create a third group using the steps above and use the following configuration:

Group Name

Single CPU servers

14. To add assets, click Search for the group.

15. From the pop-up, check the Number of CPUs option and select 1 from the list. Leave the rest of the default values.

16. Click the Add Selected Assets To Group button.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify that the groups were created.

Task 8. Optimize assets

In this task you apply a pre-built optimization level to your assets. Optimizing underutilized resources may be the single most impactful action you can take to affect cloud spend projections and savings. Optimization can be applied globally to all assets, or applied by group.

1. Click on the Sizing tab.

2. From the left menu, select Customize Assessments and then click on Customize For All Assets.

3. Slide the value for Optimization Mode to Aggressive.

4. Click Save Sizing for All Assets.

   The process to update pricing may take a few seconds.

5. Click the Close button.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify that the optimization mode was set to Aggressive.

Task 9. Generate final reports

In this task you generate a final report based on the created groups. The report displays financials based on the applied optimization settings. Overall costs and savings will reflect these optimizations.

1. Click the Reports tab.
2. On the Assessment Summary and Proposal tile, click Generate Report.
3. When prompted, specify the following settings:

Report Name	Final Summary Report
Report Format	Google Slides
Select Filters	Select All
Baseline Vendor Catalog	Private Data Center
Comparison Vendor Catalog	Google Cloud On-Demand
Comparison Vendor Catalog	Google Cloud 1 Year Commit
Comparison Vendor Catalog	Google Cloud 3 Year Commit

4. Click Create Report.

5. Click the Google Slides icon to view the report in Google Slides.

Note: You may have to log in with your lab credentials to view the report.

6. Compare the values to the initial summary report.

Financial comparisons that are visible in this report can also be generated live in the Plan module under the StratoMatch tab to evaluate any number of configurations or procurement scenarios.

7. Click the Reports tab.
8. On the Detailed Pricing tile, click Generate Report.

The Pricing report provides a detailed breakdown of pricing that was applied to each individually evaluated workload. It gives additional visibility into the choices that are recommended. It also identifies specific VM and storage selections.

9. When prompted, specify the following settings:

Report Name	StratoMatch Report
Report Format	Google Sheets
Select Filters	Select All
Vendor Catalog 1	Private Data Center
Vendor Catalog 2	Google Cloud On-Demand
Vendor Catalog 3	Google Cloud 1 Year Commit
Vendor Catalog 4	Google Cloud 3 Year Commit

10. Click the Create Report button.

11. Click the Google Sheets icon to view the report in Google Sheets.

Note: You may have to log in with your lab credentials to view the report.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify that the second set of reports was generated.

Task 10. Verify that data is being received

In this task you return to check on the progress of the automatic discovery. In a real situation, you would validate that the discovery has been correctly started by the customer in the first few hours or days of the assessment.

1. Select the Results tab in the top menu, and then click on Inventory link in the left menu.
2. On the Filters menu, expand Assesment and then click Lab Datacenter.

The assessment list should show Lab-Assessment1 and the number of assets collected.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Verify data is being received.

Review

In this lab you have completed an assessment for a sample customer. You've scanned an environment within Google Cloud in the same way you would discover physical or virtual servers on a customer's network within their datacenter(s). You've also loaded an inventory list of assets to be analyzed without the scan.

You've navigated through some of the key areas of delivery such as forming groups, optimizing around utilization of assets, and generating reports (inventory, TCO/ROI).

While there is significantly more functionality in the StratoZone platform that ultimately feeds into a comprehensive cloud transformation plan, we hope that this quick lab serves as an introduction to approaching customers' transformation goals in a prescriptive, pragmatic, and measurable way and helps you establish a trusted advisory role by quickly providing this valuable information.

Next steps

• gogcp.stratozone.com/

• labs.stratozone.com/Documentation/StratoProbeOverview

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